Frontiero v. Richardson
Case Overview
CITATION
ARGUED ON
DECIDED ON
DECIDED BY
411 U.S. 677
Jan. 17, 1973
May 14, 1973
Legal Issue
Does the Air Force’s policy requiring only female servicemembers to prove dependency in fact to claim their husbands violate the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment?
Holding
Yes, by according differential treatment to male and female servicemembers for the solely for administrative convenience, the policy violated the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
Frontiero and her husband speaking to the press (1971) | Credit: CAFE
Frontiero and her family with Justice Ginsburg | Credit: KOSU/NPR
Background
Sharron Frontiero, a lieutenant in the United States Air Force, claimed her husband, Joseph, as a dependent and applied for him to receive housing and medical benefits. While men could claim their wives as dependents and receive automatic approval, women had to prove that their husbands were dependent on them for more than half their support. Joseph didn’t qualify under this rule, so the application was denied.
Frontiero sued in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, and a three-judge panel upheld the military’s policy because they were intended to promote administrative convenience. At the time, appeals from such panels were directly appealable to the Supreme Court, so the case was not reviewed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Future Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, representing the ACLU as amicus curiae, was permitted to argue in favor of Frontiero.
8 - 1 decision for Frontiero
USDA
Moreno
Stewart
Rehnquist
Powell
White
Burger
Marshall
Douglas
Blackmun
Brennan
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Writing for a plurality of the Court, Justice William Brennan (joined by by Justices Douglas, White, and Marshall) first established that sex is an immutable characteristic that “frequently bears no relation to ability to perform or contribute to society,” so “statutory distinctions between the sexes often have the effect of invidiously relegating the entire class of females to inferior legal status without regard to the actual capabilities of its individual members.” Therefore, he concluded that sex-based classifications are inherently suspect and must be subject to strict judicial scrutiny like classifications based on race, alienage, or national origin.
The government conceded that its rule served no purpose other than “administrative convenience, but Brennan pointed out that it offered no concrete evidence to support its assertion. He noted that the Court’s decision in Stanley v. Illinois (1972) “make[s] clear that, although efficacious administration of governmental programs is not without some importance, ‘the Constitution recognizes higher values than speed and efficiency.’” He added that “when we enter the realm of ‘strict judicial scrutiny,’ there can be no doubt that ‘administrative convenience’ is not a shibboleth, the mere recitation of which dictates constitutionality.”
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In his concurring opinion, Justice Lewis Powell (joined by Chief Justice Burger and Justice Blackmun) stated that he agreed that the military’s policy violated the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, he couldn’t agree with the conclusion that sex-based classifications should be held to the same level of scrutiny as those made on the basis of race or national origin. He wrote, “[i]t is unnecessary for the Court in this case to characterize sex as a suspect classification, with all of the far-reaching implications of such a holding.”
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