Docket 71-1694
Frontiero v. Richardson
DecidedMay 14, 1973
8-1decision
Source: CourtListener.
Court strikes down military rule requiring servicewomen, but not servicemen, to prove spouse's dependency
What it does
The ruling strikes down the part of federal military benefits statutes that required female service members, but not male service members, to prove their spouse's actual financial dependency before receiving increased housing allowances and medical benefits. A four-justice plurality would have declared sex-based classifications "inherently suspect," requiring the highest level of judicial scrutiny, similar to race-based classifications, but this view did not command a majority.
Who benefits
Female members of the uniformed services who seek spousal dependency benefits, such as housing allowances and medical/dental care, without having to prove their husbands are financially dependent on them.
Who is affected
The federal government and military branches, which must now extend automatic dependency benefits to husbands of servicewomen on the same terms as wives of servicemen, without requiring proof of actual financial dependency.
Practical impact
Servicewomen no longer need to prove their husbands are financially dependent on them to receive spousal housing and medical benefits; these benefits are extended automatically, just as they already were for servicemen's wives. Because only a plurality of four justices endorsed treating sex as a suspect classification requiring strict scrutiny, that broader standard did not become binding law, leaving the level of scrutiny for sex-based classifications unsettled for future cases.
Majority reasoning
Justice Brennan's plurality opinion reasoned that sex-based classifications, like those based on race, alienage, or national origin, should be treated as "inherently suspect" and subjected to strict judicial scrutiny, pointing to the nation's long history of sex discrimination and the immutable, birth-determined nature of sex. The plurality found support for heightened scrutiny in the Court's earlier decision in Reed v. Reed, and noted that Congress itself had recognized sex discrimination as a serious problem through Title VII, the Equal Pay Act, and passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. Applying strict scrutiny, the plurality held that the government's only justification—administrative convenience, based on the assumption that wives are usually dependent while husbands rarely are—was insufficient, especially since the government offered no concrete evidence that the differential treatment actually saved money, and since dependency determinations for husbands were already made cheaply through affidavits rather than costly hearings.
Dissent reasoning
Justice Rehnquist dissented for the reasons given by Judge Rives in the district court opinion below, which had upheld the statutes as constitutional based on the reasoning that Congress could reasonably have concluded that requiring female members to prove their husbands' dependency, given that husbands are typically breadwinners and only about 1% of service members were women, would produce meaningful administrative savings.
Constitutional question
Does a federal law that lets servicemen automatically claim their wives as "dependents" for benefits, while requiring servicewomen to prove their husbands actually depend on them for over half their support, violate the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause?
Precedent changed
The plurality extended Reed v. Reed's rejection of a sex-based classification but did not overrule it; it sought to build on the lower standard applied in Reed to justify a higher standard.