Significance: This ruling was the first decision to establish that gender discrimination violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause. This case was later used to strike down several other statutes that violated women’s rights.
Background: This case arose because of a law that gave preference to certain categories of people when appointing administrators to the estates of people who died without having written wills. The law gave preference to spouses over children, children over siblings, and within each category, males over females. Cecil and Sally Reed were separated, and when their son died, the law gave preference to Cecil to be appointed the administrator of the son’s estate. Sally sued Cecil for the right to administer the estate, challenging the gender preference in the law.
Decision: This case was argued on October 19, 1971, and decided on November 22, 1971, by a vote of 7 to 0. Two seats on the Supreme Court were vacant. Chief Justice Warren Burger spoke for the unanimous Court. Although the Court had upheld laws based on gender preference in the past, in this case it reversed its position. The Court declared that gender discrimination violated the equal protection clause and therefore could not be the basis for a law.
Excerpt from the Opinion of the Court: “To give a mandatory preference to members of either sex over members of the other, . . . is to make the very kind of arbitrary [irrational] 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 [decided] solely on the basis of sex.”
