Caseflicks

Supreme Court of the United States • 1976

Craig v. Boren

429 U.S. 190 | 97 S. Ct. 451 | 50 L. Ed. 2d 397 | 1976 U.S. LEXIS 183

Full access

Unlock the video and quiz

The written brief is free to read below. Subscribe to watch the video explainer and take the quiz.

Create an account Log in

Takeaway

In short, this case established intermediate scrutiny for sex-based classifications: they must serve important governmental objectives and be substantially related to those objectives.

Background

Oklahoma permitted women to buy 3.2% beer at age 18 but prohibited its sale to men until age 21. Curtis Craig, then a male between 18 and 21, and Carolyn Whitener, a licensed beer vendor, sued for declaratory and injunctive relief. Whitener alleged that the law shrank her lawful market and exposed her to sanctions or loss of her license if she sold beer to under-21 men.

A three-judge federal district court upheld the statute. It accepted traffic safety as the State's objective and concluded that arrest and accident statistics showing greater alcohol-related risks among young men supplied a rational basis for the sex-based age difference. After the Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction, Craig turned 21, mooting his individual claim; Whitener's challenge remained live.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether Whitener, a beer vendor, could continue the case and assert the equal-protection rights of males ages 18 to 20 after Craig's claim became moot.

Holding

Yes. Craig's claim was moot, but Whitener had Article III standing and could assert the rights of her prospective male customers.

Reasoning

Craig's request for prospective declaratory and injunctive relief became moot when he reached age 21. Whitener, however, remained directly subject to the challenged law: she had to forgo sales to 18-to-20-year-old men and lose business, or violate the statute and risk penalties and loss of her license. That direct economic and regulatory injury gave her a concrete stake in the controversy.

The Court treated the restriction on third-party standing as a prudential rule rather than a constitutional bar. The constitutional issue had already been fully litigated, Oklahoma had not objected to Whitener's standing below, and refusing to decide the case would only require repetitive litigation by another young man whose claim might likewise expire when he turned 21.

Whitener was also an appropriate advocate for the affected purchasers. Because the statute regulated sales rather than drinking or possession, vendors were the most natural parties to challenge its enforcement. Enforcing the law against Whitener would directly impair young men's ability to purchase beer, just as enforcement against a distributor in Eisenstadt v. Baird impaired third parties' access to contraceptives.

Issue #2

Whether Oklahoma's different minimum ages for men and women to purchase 3.2% beer violated the Equal Protection Clause.

Holding

Yes. Gender classifications must serve important governmental objectives and be substantially related to achieving those objectives, and Oklahoma's sex-based age difference did not satisfy that standard.

Reasoning

The Court articulated what became intermediate scrutiny for sex classifications: the government must pursue an important objective, and the gender classification must be substantially related to that objective. Earlier cases, including Reed v. Reed, rejected laws that used sex as a convenient but overbroad proxy for traits that could be assessed more directly or through gender-neutral rules.

The Court accepted, for purposes of decision, that traffic safety was an important governmental objective. But the State's evidence did not establish a sufficiently close connection between being male and the specific danger Oklahoma claimed to address: drinking 3.2% beer and driving while impaired.

The most relevant arrest figures showed that about 2% of males ages 18 to 20, compared with .18% of females, had been arrested for driving under the influence. Although the disparity was statistically real, it did not justify treating every young man as if he posed the risk. The State's other studies had further defects: many concerned alcohol generally rather than 3.2% beer, did not isolate the relevant age-and-sex group, or did not connect accident data to intoxication.

The poor fit was especially evident because the statute prohibited only sales to young men, not their consumption of beer obtained from women or older buyers. The law therefore did little to prevent the conduct assertedly threatening traffic safety. Sex was too loose and inaccurate a proxy for drinking and driving to sustain the classification.

Issue #3

Whether the Twenty-first Amendment's protection of state authority over alcohol regulation insulated Oklahoma's gender-based beer law from equal-protection review.

Holding

No. The Twenty-first Amendment did not override the Equal Protection Clause or save invidious sex discrimination.

Reasoning

The Twenty-first Amendment primarily alters the ordinary operation of the Commerce Clause by giving states substantial authority over the importation and distribution of alcohol. Its text and history do not suggest that it displaces individual rights secured by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Prior cases allowing substantial state authority over liquor regulation involved economic regulation or alcohol importation, not a proven equal-protection violation. The Court had never held that the Amendment authorizes a state to engage in invidious discrimination.

Allowing states to rely on broad demographic generalizations about alcohol use would undermine equal protection. Statistical group tendencies cannot justify imposing legal burdens on an entire sex when the classification is insufficiently connected to the asserted safety goal.

Concurrences

Justice Powell

Reasoning

Justice Powell joined the Court's result but resisted reading Reed v. Reed as broadly as the majority's language might suggest. In his view, sex classifications receive more searching review than ordinary economic classifications, but the Court did not need to formulate or endorse an additional, rigid tier of equal-protection scrutiny.

He considered the case straightforward. Traffic safety was unquestionably legitimate and important, and the evidence generally suggested that young men drove more, may have drunk more, and were involved in more accidents. Even so, the three-year sex-based difference did not bear a fair and substantial relation to traffic safety, particularly because young men could easily obtain beer through other sources.

Justice Stevens

Reasoning

Justice Stevens rejected the idea that the Equal Protection Clause requires different formal tiers of review. In his view, there is one command of impartial government, and doctrinal labels such as rational basis, intermediate scrutiny, and strict scrutiny can obscure rather than explain the Court's actual reasoning.

He found the classification offensive because it rested on an immutable accident of birth, preserved a largely abandoned tradition of treating young men as less mature, and was arguably perverse given men's generally greater capacity to consume alcohol before becoming impaired. The State's evidence showed that a small minority of young men had engaged in dangerous conduct, but the law burdened every young man in the age group.

The statute also seemed poorly designed to promote traffic safety. It did not prohibit possession or consumption, affected only low-alcohol beer, and could be easily circumvented. In Justice Stevens's view, the modest and uncertain safety benefit could not justify imposing a sex-based restriction on all young men for the behavior of a small fraction.

Justice Blackmun

Reasoning

Justice Blackmun joined the Court's opinion except for Part II-D, which discussed the Twenty-first Amendment at length. He nonetheless agreed with the bottom-line conclusion that the Amendment did not save Oklahoma's statute.

Justice Stewart

Reasoning

Justice Stewart agreed that Whitener could assert the equal-protection claims of her customers and agreed that the statute was unconstitutional. He emphasized that the Twenty-first Amendment gives states broad authority over alcohol, but not authority to act with total irrationality or invidious discrimination.

For Justice Stewart, the State's statistics did not even colorably show that 3.2% beer was more harmful in the hands of a man ages 18 to 20 than in the hands of a woman of the same age. Without a valid explanation for that specific disparity, the statute amounted to invidious discrimination under Reed v. Reed.

Dissents

Chief Justice Burger

Reasoning

Chief Justice Burger would have affirmed. He first disagreed that Whitener could assert the constitutional rights of her customers. In his view, third-party standing is a narrow exception, and young men who wished to challenge the law faced no obstacle to bringing their own suits. A commercial vendor's relationship with prospective buyers was not comparable to the special relationships recognized in cases such as Griswold or Eisenstadt.

On the merits, he objected to treating gender as a disfavored classification when the law did not burden a fundamental right and did not reflect a history of discrimination against the affected group. He would apply ordinary rational-basis review and uphold the legislature's policy choice so long as it was not irrational, even if judges regarded it as unwise or foolish.

Justice Rehnquist

Reasoning

Justice Rehnquist argued that the Court improperly created a new, intermediate level of scrutiny without support in the Equal Protection Clause or prior precedent. In his view, strict scrutiny was reserved for suspect classifications and fundamental rights, while ordinary classifications received rational-basis review. Young men seeking to buy 3.2% beer implicated neither category.

He maintained that the Oklahoma Legislature could rationally rely on evidence that young men drove more, drank more, were arrested for alcohol-related offenses more frequently, and suffered more traffic injuries than young women. Legislatures need not prove their factual judgments with courtroom-quality statistical precision, and courts should not substitute their own evaluation of imperfect data for reasonable legislative inferences.

Justice Rehnquist also contended that the majority confused an equal-protection question with a due-process objection to the law's overinclusiveness. The relevant equal-protection inquiry was whether young men posed a sufficiently greater drinking-and-driving risk than young women to justify different treatment. Because the evidence reasonably supported that conclusion and the burden was only a restriction on purchasing 3.2% beer, he would uphold the statute.