MUW is a nursing school and limits its enrollment to women.
Hogan is a male nurse who wanted to go to school at MUW. He was qualified for admission but was rejected because of his sex.
Procedural History:
SCOTUS held unconstitutional.
Issues:
Does the exclusion of males from a nursing school violate equal protection?
Holding/Rule:
The exclusion of males from a nursing school violates equal protection.
Reasoning:
The party seeking to uphold a statute that makes a classification must carry the burden of showing that the classification serves important gov't objectives and that the means employed are substantially related to the achievement of those objectives.
Care must be taken in determining whether the statutory objective itself reflects archaic and stereotypic notions.
If the objective is to exclude or protect members of one gender because they are presumed to suffer from an inherent handicap or to be innately inferior, the objective is illegitimate.
MS says the purpose was to compensate for past discrimination against women.
A state can only evoke a compensatory purpose to justify a classification if members of the gender benefitted by the classification actually suffer a disadvantage related to the classification.
The state has made no showing that women lacked opportunities to obtain training in the field of nursing.
94% of nurses in MS are female.
Rather than compensating for past discrimination, the policy tends to perpetuate the stereotyped view of nursing as an exclusively woman's job.
The state failed to establish that the alleged objective is the actual purpose underlying the discriminatory classification.
The classification is also invalid because the classification is not substantially and directly related to the compensatory objective.
MUW allows men to attend classes as auditors and participate fully.
Thus, this reveals that admitting men to nursing classes does not affect teaching style and would not affect the education that women receive.
Dissent:
Powell
Single sex education is out the window with this decision.
The Court appears to be using strict scrutiny here.
There is not a constitutional right to go to a state-supported nursing school in your neighborhood.
