Craig v. Boren | |
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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 ( more ) 97 S. Ct. 451; 50 L. Ed. 2d 397; 1976 U.S. LEXIS 183 |
Case history | |
Prior | Dismissed, Walker v. Hall, 399 F. Supp. 1304 (W.D. Okla. 1975), probable jurisdiction noted sub. nom., Craig v. Boren, 423 U.S. 1047(1976). |
Subsequent | Rehearing denied, 429 U.S. 1124(1977). |
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 | |
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Case opinions | |
Majority | Brennan, joined by White, Marshall, Powell, Stevens; Blackmun (all but Part III–D) |
Concurrence | Powell |
Concurrence | Stevens |
Concurrence | Blackmun (in part) |
Concurrence | Stewart (in judgment) |
Dissent | Burger |
Dissent | Rehnquist |
Laws applied | |
U.S. Const. amend. XIV | |
This case overturned a previous ruling or rulings | |
Goesaert v. Cleary (1948) |
Craig v. Boren, 429 U.S. 190 (1976), was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court ruling that statutory or administrative sex classifications were subject to intermediate scrutiny under the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. [1] The case was argued by future Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg while she was working for the American Civil Liberties Union. [2]
An Oklahoma statute prohibiting the sale of "nonintoxicating" 3.2% beer to males under the age of 21 but allowed females over the age of 18 was challenged as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause in the District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma in 1971. [3]
Curtis Craig was a Freshman in College at Oklahoma State University at the time. [4] Both Curtis Craig and Carolyn Whitener were friends of a man named Mark Walker who was one of the first people to challenge the law. Craig joined the case because Walker had turned 21 and no longer had standing to sue. [5] Carolyn Whitener owned a drive-in convenience store called the Honk N Holler. [6] Whitener, as a licensed vendor, became the sole plaintiff. [4]
The nominal defendant was David Boren, who was sued ex officio by virtue of his serving as Governor of Oklahoma at the time of the lawsuit. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, working as an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, advised the plaintiff's attorney, submitted an amicus brief, and was present at the counsel table during oral argument before the Supreme Court. [7]
The District Court dismissed the action and the Supreme Court reversed.
Justice William J. Brennan delivered the opinion of the Court in which he was joined by justices White, Marshall, Powell and Stevens (Justice Blackmun joined all but one part of the opinion, and Blackmun, Powell, Stevens, and Stewart wrote concurrences). [1]
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.
The Court instituted a standard, dubbed "intermediate scrutiny," under which the state must prove the existence of specific important governmental objectives, and the law must be substantially related to the achievement of those objectives.
Both Craig and Whitener used a 1971 Supreme Court case, Reed v. Reed , in which the Oklahoma legislature had equalized the age for the purchase of alcohol, setting both at 18, but changed it when they faced a challenge from anti-liquor forces. [8] Reed set the precedent that classification by gender must substantially further important government objectives, which Craig and Whitener used to claim Oklahoma did not meet the requirements to impose their alcohol law based on that precedent. [9]
First the Court decided that Craig did not have standing to sue because he turned 21 before the Supreme Court heard the case. Next, the Court decided if Whitener had third-party standing. To have standing, one must show a "nexus" of the injury to oneself and the constitutional violation of the statute. In this case, the statute directly affected Whitener only economically, but the Supreme Court explained that Whitener and other vendors have standing under the precedent of Eisenstadt v. Baird to assert the concomitant rights of other parties, such as Craig. [10]
The Court acknowledged that "vendors and those in like positions have been uniformly permitted to resist efforts at restricting their operation by acting as advocates of the rights of third parties who seek access to their market or function." Although Baird was not a vendor of contraceptives the Court explains that standing in that case was because of "the impact of the litigation on the third-party interests" and enforcement of the statute would "materially impair the ability of single persons to obtain contraceptives" and enforcement in this case would impair the ability of males 18-20 years of age to purchase 3.2% beer. The statute regulated distribution but not use "leaving a vendor as the obvious claimant". [11]
Justice Blackmun wrote a concurring opinion, agreeing that a higher standard of scrutiny was appropriate. Blackmun disagreed with the discussion of the Twenty-First Amendment. [12]
Chief Justice Burger and Justice Rehnquist dissented.
Rehnquist dissented because he felt that the law needed to pass only "rational basis," as previous cases in the area, such as Stanton v. Stanton , had used only the "rational basis" test.
Burger was "in general agreement with Mr. Justice Rehnquist's dissent" but penned a separate dissent to emphasize that "a litigant may only assert his own constitutional rights or immunities." He felt that the indirect economic injury to Whitener and other vendors introduced "a new concept of constitutional standing to which I cannot subscribe."
As a result of Craig v. Boren and Reed v. Reed, Congress later passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act which penalized states 10% of their allotted Federal highway funds if they had a minimum drinking age below 21. This act was upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court in South Dakota v. Dole .
Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States generally protected a right to have an abortion. The decision struck down many abortion laws, and caused an ongoing abortion debate in the United States about whether, or to what extent, abortion should be legal, who should decide the legality of abortion, and what the role of moral and religious views in the political sphere should be. The decision also shaped debate concerning which methods the Supreme Court should use in constitutional adjudication. The Supreme Court repealed the Roe decision in June 2022, ending the constitutional right to abortion.
Joan Ruth Bader Ginsburg was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1993 until her death in 2020. She was nominated by President Bill Clinton to replace retiring justice Byron White, and at the time was viewed as a moderate consensus-builder. Ginsburg was the first Jewish woman and the second woman to serve on the Court, after Sandra Day O'Connor. During her tenure, Ginsburg authored the majority opinions in cases such as United States v. Virginia (1996), Olmstead v. L.C. (1999), Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services, Inc. (2000), and City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York (2005). Later in her tenure, Ginsburg received attention for passionate dissents that reflected liberal views of the law. She was popularly dubbed "the Notorious R.B.G.", a moniker she later embraced.
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Reed v. Reed, 404 U.S. 71 (1971), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States holding that the administrators of estates cannot be named in a way that discriminates between sexes. In Reed v. Reed the Supreme Court ruled for the first time that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibited differential treatment based on sex.
Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services, Inc., 528 U.S. 167 (2000), was a United States Supreme Court case that addressed the law regarding standing to sue and mootness.
Third party standing is a term of the law of civil procedure that describes when one party may file a lawsuit or assert a defense in which the rights of third parties are asserted. In the United States, this is generally prohibited, as a party can only assert his or her own rights and cannot raise the claims of right of a third party who is not before the court. However, there are several exceptions to this doctrine.
Laird v. Tatum, 408 U.S. 1 (1972), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court dismissed for lack of ripeness a claim in which the plaintiff accused the U.S. Army of alleged unlawful "surveillance of lawful citizen political activity." The appellant's specific nature of the harm caused by the surveillance was that it chilled the First Amendment rights of all citizens and undermined that right to express political dissent.
Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555 (1992), was a landmark Supreme Court of the United States decision, handed down on June 12, 1992, that heightened standing requirements under Article III of the United States Constitution. It is "one of the most influential cases in modern environmental standing jurisprudence." Lily Henning of the Legal Times stated that:
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Goesaert v. Cleary, 335 U.S. 464 (1948), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court upheld a Michigan law, which prohibited women from being licensed as a bartender in all cities having a population of 50,000 or more unless their father or husband owned the establishment. Valentine Goesaert, the plaintiff in the case, challenged the law on the ground that it infringed on the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. Speaking for the majority, Justice Felix Frankfurter affirmed the judgment of the Detroit district court and upheld the constitutionality of the state law. The state argued that since the profession of bartending could potentially lead to moral and social problems for women, it was within the state's power to bar them from working as bartenders. Only when the owner of the bar was a sufficiently close relative to the women bartender could it be guaranteed that such immorality would not be present.
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