United States v. Virginia

United States v. Virginia
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued January 17, 1996 Decided June 26, 1996
Full case name	United States, Petitioner v. Virginia, et al.
Citations	518 U.S. 515 (more) 116 S. Ct. 2264; 135 L. Ed. 2d 735; 1996 U.S. LEXIS 4259; 64 U.S.L.W. 4638; 96 Cal. Daily Op. Service 4694; 96 Daily Journal DAR 7573; 10 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 93
Prior history	Judgment for defendants, 766 F. Supp. 1407 (W.D. Va. 1991) vacated, 976 F.2d 890 (4th Cir. 1992), certiorari denied, 508 U.S. 946 (1993, on remand, judgment for defendants, 852 F. Supp. 471 (W.D. Va. 1994), aff'd, 44 F.3d 1229 (4th Cir. 1995), motion for rehearing en banc denied, 52 F.3d 90 (4th Cir. 1995), certiorari granted ___ U.S. ____ (1995)
Holding
Commonwealth of Virginia's exclusion of women from the Virginia Military Institute violated Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Court membership
Case opinions
Majority	Ginsburg, joined by Stevens, O'Connor, Kennedy, Souter, Breyer
Concurrence	Rehnquist
Dissent	Scalia
Thomas took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. XIV

United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515 (1996), is a landmark case in which the Supreme Court of the United States struck down the Virginia Military Institute (VMI)'s long-standing male-only admission policy in a 7-1 decision. (Justice Clarence Thomas, whose son was enrolled at VMI at the time, recused himself.)

Writing for the majority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg stated that because VMI failed to show "exceedingly persuasive justification" for its sex-based admissions policy, it violated the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. In an attempt to satisfy equal protection requirements, the state of Virginia had proposed a parallel program for women, called the Virginia Women's Institute for Leadership (VWIL), located at Mary Baldwin College, a private liberal arts women's college.

However, Justice Ginsburg held that the VWIL would not provide women with the same type of rigorous military training, facilities, courses, faculty, financial opportunities, and/or alumni reputation and connections that VMI affords male cadets, a decision evocative of Sweatt v. Painter, when the Court ruled in 1950 that segregated law schools in Texas were unconstitutional, since a newly formed black law school clearly did not provide the same benefits to its students as the state's prestigious and long-maintained white law school. In her opinion, she stated that "The VWIL program is a pale shadow of VMI in terms of the range of curricular choices and faculty stature, funding, prestige, alumni support and influence."