The Supreme Court reaffirmed that discrimination based on sex is contrary to the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, but only a plurality of the justices recognized all gender classifications as inherently suspect.
A federal law automatically allowed a male member of the armed service to claim his spouse as a dependent, but a female member did not receive this benefit unless she could show that her spouse depended on her for more than half of his support. Sharron Frontiero, a married Air Force lieutenant, asserted that the policy was unconstitutional. By an 8-1 vote, the Supreme Court upheld her claim.
Justice William J. Brennan, Jr.,
In Craig v. Boren
Craig v. Boren
Equal protection clause
Gender issues
Judicial scrutiny
Reed v. Reed
Rostker v. Goldberg