Reed v. Reed

404 U.S. 71 (1971), argued 19 Oct. 1971, decided 22 Nov. 1971 by vote of 7 to 0; Burger for the Court, two seats (to be occupied by Rehnquist and Powell) were vacant. This was the first decision in a century of Fourteenth Amendment litigation to rule that statutory gender discrimination violated the Equal Protection Clause. Earlier cases had established that the clause did not forbid group‐based discrimination as long as the legislature might have some reason for believing the statutory distinction promoted some aspect of the public good. Under this “rational basis test” the Supreme Court had upheld flat bans on the practice of law by women (Bradwell v. Illinois, 1873), prohibitions on women's tending bar (Goesaert v. Cleary, 1948), and blanket exclusions of women from jury service (Hoyt v. Florida, 1961). In Reed the Court ignored this unbroken line of precedents and explained in an extraordinarily short opinion that this case of gender discrimination presented “the very kind of arbitrary legislative choice forbidden by the Equal Protection Clause” (p. 76).

The law in question had distinguished categories of preference for selecting administrators of the estates of people deceased intestate. Part of the law preferred spouses to offspring, offspring to parents, parents to siblings, and so on; another preferred males to females within each category. The Reeds were the separated parents of a deceased son. Sally, challenging the statutory gender preference, sued Cecil for the right to administer an estate valued at less than one thousand dollars. After striking down this law in Reed, the Court often used the Reed precedent during the following decade to strike down many other statutes that discriminated on the basis of gender.

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See also Equal Protection

— Leslie Friedman Goldstein

• 404 U.S. 71 (1971)
• Vote: 7–0
• For the Court: Burger

Sally and Cecil Reed were the separated parents of a deceased son, Richard Reed. Both parents petitioned an Idaho court for appointment as the administrator of their son's estate. The court denied Sally Reed's petition in favor of Cecil Reed. This decision was based on an Idaho statute that preferred males to females in choosing administrators of estates.

Sally Reed sued Cecil for the right to administer Richard's estate, which was valued at less than $1,000. She claimed that the Idaho law giving preference to a male over a female violated the 14th Amendment guarantee of “equal protection of the laws.” Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, argued Sally Reed's case before the Supreme Court.

The Issue

The 14th Amendment says, “No State shall … deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” However, in past cases the Court had not used the “equal protection” clause of the 14th Amendment to overturn laws that discriminated against individuals on the basis of gender. The Court had used what it called a rational basis test to uphold sex-based laws. According to this test, such laws were constitutional unless one could prove they were not reasonably connected to a compelling public interest. Did the Idaho law in this case violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment? Was there any compelling public reason for sustaining this law?

Opinion of the Court

The Court decided this case in favor of Sally Reed, ruling that the Idaho statute did not meet the rational basis test. Chief Justice Warren E. Burger wrote, “To give a mandatory preference to members of either sex … merely to accomplish the elimination of hearings on the merits, is to make the very kind of arbitrary legislative choice forbidden by the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

Significance

This case was the first to rule that laws mandating gender discrimination are violations of the 14th Amendment. The Court has used the precedent established in the Reed case to strike down many laws that unfairly discriminated against women. For instance, in Kahn v. Shevin (1974) it ruled that a Florida law that gave a property tax exemption to widowers (males), but not to widows (females) was unconstitutional.

See also Equality under the Constitution

Reed v. Reed, 404 U.S. 71 (1971), a case deriving from a provision of Idaho probate law preferring men as administrators of the estate of a deceased child, was the first in a series of 1970s cases associated with the future Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg that successfully challenged laws discriminating on the basis of sex. The case arose when Sally Reed sought to serve as administrator of her deceased teenage son's meager estate. Challenged by her divorced husband Cecil Reed, the boy's father, the case made its way through the Idaho courts to the Supreme Court. Writing the brief, Ginsburg argued that legislative classification by sex served no compelling state interest in this instance. Furthermore, it violated the right of Sally Reed to the even-handed application of governmental action guaranteed by the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In a unanimous decision, the Court agreed, although the justices differed as to whether the decision encouraged stricter scrutiny of legislation that discriminated on the basis of sex. Subsequent decisions, however, would confirm that Reed marked the beginning of a major effort, using equal protection analysis, to make the law gender neutral.

Bibliography

Rhode, Deborah L. Justice and Gender: Sex Discrimination and the Law. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989.

Reed v. Reed
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued October 19, 1971 Decided November 22, 1971
Full case name	Reed v. Reed, Administrator Appeal from the Supreme Court of Idaho
Citations	404 U.S. 71 (more)
Subsequent history	93 Idaho 511, 465 P.2d 635, reversed and remanded
Holding
Administrators of estates cannot be named in a way that discriminates between sexes.
Court membership
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger Associate Justices Hugo Black · William O. Douglas John M. Harlan II · William J. Brennan, Jr Potter Stewart · Byron White Thurgood Marshall · Harry Blackmun
Case opinions
Majority	Burger, joined by unanimous court

Reed v. Reed, 404 U.S. 71 (1971), was an Equal Protection case in the United States in which the Supreme Court ruled that the administrators of estates cannot be named in a way that discriminates between sexes. After the death of their adopted son, Sally and Cecil Reed sought to be named the administrator of their son's estate; the Reeds were separated. The Idaho Probate Court specified that "males must be preferred to females" in appointing administrators of estates, so Cecil was appointed administrator. In a unanimous decision, the Court held that the law's dissimilar treatment of men and women was unconstitutional. From Chief Justice Burger's opinion:

To give a mandatory preference to members of either sex over members of the other, merely to accomplish the elimination of hearings on the merits, is to make the very kind of arbitrary legislative choice forbidden by the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment; and whatever may be said as to the positive values of avoiding intrafamily controversy, the choice in this context may not lawfully be mandated solely on the basis of sex.

Contents 1 Protecting women 2 See also 3 References 4 External links

Protecting women

While the first equal protection case to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, Reed did not issue a particularly strong prohibition of this type of legislation. Instead of elevating women to suspect classification by reviewing the law under a very restrictive standard known as strict scrutiny, the court subjected the Idaho statute using rational basis review. The court found that the Idaho statute failed to satisfy this lower standard because the statute did not provide a rational way to pursue a legitimate state interest. This had a less profound effect than the litigant's supporters had hoped, "because the reasonableness test was so malleable, challenges to discriminatory legislation would now have to be resolved on a case-by-case basis."^[1]

See also

• Craig v. Boren
• Frontiero v. Richardson
• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 404

References

1. ^ Wexler, Natalie (2000). "Sex Discrimination: The Search for a Standard". Supreme Court Decisions and Equal Rights. Congressional Quarterly. http://www.supremecourthistory.org/05_learning/subs/05_e.html. Retrieved 2007-05-12. 

External links

• Works related to Reed v. Reed at Wikisource
• Text file of Supreme Court opinion at Findlaw.com

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