The Legal Classification of Men and Women

Usually sex classifications were challenged by women who felt they deprived of equal legal treatment, but they were also challenged by men who felt women were given unfair legal protection. Originally, most of the gender specific legislation in the United States was passed because stereotypes regarding women pervaded the mentalities of many of our nation's lawmakers. Slowly the government realized that women had been sealed into the domestic sphere and attempted to reverse this discrimination by giving women special compensations. In some instances the treatment women received was leftover from old notions of role typing, while in others, laws directly tried to remedy harmful effects of the past. In both cases, men claimed their equal protection rights were violated by laws which separated women from men.

In Stanley v. Illinois 1972, Peter Stanley challenged an Illinois statute which "automatically conferred custody on a married father and on a mother, married or unmarried, and automatically denied it to an unmarried father" after the death of a parent (Goldstein 196). Stanley claimed that his equal protection right, protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, was violated because other parents who were similarly situated, that is, women and married men, were given a benefit which he was denied. A constitutional law must demonstrate a clear goal of the state, and represent the "least restrictive means to achieve those ends" (Mezey 16). In this case, however, the Supreme Court observed "that the State registers no gain towards its goals when it separates children from the custody of fit parents" (Goldstein 199). Clearly this law is a remnant of the past when women were thought to be the only caretakers of children. The underlying motive for this law was "the theory that an unwed father is not a "parent" whose existing relationship with his children must be considered" (Goldstein 198). While it is common for the state to defend their stereotypical legal relics on the grounds of "administrative convenience," the Court now identifies these laws as problematic (Reed v. Reed 1971, Frontiero v. Richardson 1973). "Procedure by assumption is always cheaper and easier than individual determination(,) but when the procedure... explicitly disdains present realities in deference to past formalities... it cannot stand" (Goldstein 200). Thus, the Illinois law which automatically awarded women the custody of their children, but not similarly situated men, was declared unconstitutional, because it was grounded in outdated stereotypes.

Leon Goldfarb, in Calfifano v.