Craig v. Boren

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Craig v. Boren
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued October 5, 1976
Decided December 20, 1976
Full case name: Craig et al. v. Boren, Governor of Oklahoma, et al.
Citations: 429 U.S. 190; 429 U.S. 190; 97 S. Ct. 451; 50 L. Ed. 2d 397; 1976 U.S. LEXIS 183
Holding
To regulate in a sex-discriminatory fashion, the government must demonstrate that its use of sex-based criteria is substantially related to the achievement of important governmental objectives.
Court membership
Chief Justice: Warren E. Burger
Associate Justices: William J. Brennan, Jr., Potter Stewart, Byron White, Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., William Rehnquist, John Paul Stevens
Case opinions
Majority by: Brennan
Joined by: White, Marshall, Powell, Stevens
Concurrence by: Blackmun
Dissent by: Burger
Dissent by: Rehnquist
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. XIV

Craig v. Boren, 429 U.S. 190 (1976), was the first case in which a majority of the United States Supreme Court determined that statutory or administrative sex classifications had to be subjected to an intermediate standard of judicial review. (For more on different Equal Protection review standards, see the appropriate section in the article on the Equal Protection Clause.)

Contents

[edit] Facts

Oklahoma passed a statute prohibiting the sale of "nonintoxicating" 3.2 percent beer to males under the age of 21, but allowed females over the age of 18 to purchase it. The statute was challenged as Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection violation by Curtis Craig, a male who was over 18 but under 21, and by an Oklahoma vendor of alcohol.

[edit] Issue

The Supreme Court was called upon to determine whether a statute that denies the sale of beer to individuals of the same age based on their gender violates the Equal Protection Clause.

[edit] Result

Justice William J. Brennan delivered the opinion of the Court, in which he was joined by Justices White, Marshall, Powell and Stevens. The Court held that the gender classifications made by the Oklahoma statute were unconstitutional because the statistics relied on by the state were insufficient to show a substantial relationship between the statute and the benefits intended to stem from it. Furthermore, the Court found that analysis of the Equal Protection Clause in this case had not been changed by the subsequently passed Twenty-first Amendment.

The court instituted a standard dubbed, "Intermediate Scrutiny", whereby the state must prove the existence of specific governmental objectives, and the law must be substantially related to the achievement of those opinions.

Justice Blackmun wrote a concurring opinion, agreeing that a higher standard of scrutiny was appropriate.

[edit] Dissent

Chief Justice Burger and Justice Rehnquist dissented. Rehnquist dissented because he felt that the law only needed to pass the “rational basis” analysis.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links