Craig v. Boren is the 1976 Supreme Court decision that struck down an Oklahoma law setting different minimum ages for men and women to buy 3.2% beer, and it is the case that created intermediate scrutiny, the two-part test courts still use to judge laws that classify people by sex under the Equal Protection Clause.
The Oklahoma Beer Law
Oklahoma Statutes Title 37, Sections 241 and 245, banned the sale of “nonintoxicating” 3.2% beer to men under 21 and to women under 18.1Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Craig v. Boren An 18-year-old woman could legally buy the beer; an 18-year-old man could not. The word “nonintoxicating” was a regulatory label for the low-alcohol category, not a description of its effects.
Curtis Craig, a man between 18 and 21, and Carolyn Whitener, a licensed vendor of 3.2% beer, sued in federal court in December 1972, arguing the age split violated the Fourteenth Amendment.2Legal Information Institute. Craig v. Boren Craig turned 21 before the Supreme Court heard the case, so the decision rested on Whitener’s continuing stake as a seller subject to the law.
The Intermediate Scrutiny Standard
Justice Brennan, writing for a 7-2 majority, announced a new test for sex-based classifications: they must serve important governmental objectives and be substantially related to achieving those objectives.2Legal Information Institute. Craig v. Boren
That standard sits between the two review levels that already existed. Rational basis review, the most deferential, asks only whether a law is rationally related to a legitimate government interest. Strict scrutiny, used for race, demands narrow tailoring to a compelling interest. Intermediate scrutiny lands in the middle. The burden falls on the government to prove both parts, and a loose or speculative link between the sex classification and the state’s goal is not enough. The Court designed the requirement to screen out laws built on stereotypes rather than evidence.
Before Craig, the Court had struck down sex-based laws but had never settled on a standard. Reed v. Reed (1971) invalidated an Idaho probate rule that preferred men as estate administrators, but it used rational-basis language, leaving the level of scrutiny for gender unclear.3Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Reed v. Reed Craig was the case that put a name and a formula to the heightened review.
Why Oklahoma’s Statistics Failed the Test
Oklahoma defended the age split as a traffic-safety measure. The state pointed to arrest data showing that 2% of men and 0.18% of women in the 18-to-20 age group had been arrested for driving under the influence.2Legal Information Institute. Craig v. Boren
The Court accepted traffic safety as an important objective but rejected the state’s evidence as too weak to support the classification. Raw arrest figures said nothing about how many young men and women actually drove or drank. The numbers measured arrests, not accidents, and offered no evidence that a ban on 3.2% beer specifically did anything for highway safety.1Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Craig v. Boren Even taken at face value, the majority found the showing “too tenuous” to justify treating sex as a useful proxy for regulating drinking and driving. The law fell.
The Concurrences and Dissents
The seven-justice majority did not agree on the reasoning. Justice Blackmun joined most of the opinion but thought the Court should have applied something closer to strict scrutiny.1Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Craig v. Boren Justice Stevens rejected tiered scrutiny altogether, writing that the Equal Protection Clause is a single command and does not tell courts to apply different standards in different categories.
Justice Rehnquist dissented, arguing for rational basis review of gender classifications, the same deferential standard used for ordinary economic laws.1Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Craig v. Boren He viewed the new standard as an unjustified expansion of judicial power. Chief Justice Burger joined the dissent without writing separately.
What Craig v. Boren Changed
The two-part test has been the baseline for sex-discrimination challenges ever since. Mississippi University for Women v. Hogan (1982) used it to strike down a women-only nursing school admissions policy, holding the state had not shown an important interest because women had not faced discrimination in that profession.
United States v. Virginia (1996) tightened the standard further. Reviewing the Virginia Military Institute’s male-only admissions, the Court held that the government must offer an “exceedingly persuasive justification” for a sex-based classification.4Oyez. United States v. Virginia The justification has to be the government’s actual reason, not one invented for litigation, and it cannot rest on broad generalizations about men and women. That refinement built on the framework Craig put in place.
The case also expanded who can bring an equal protection claim. The Court held that Whitener, as a vendor facing real economic loss from the law, could raise the constitutional rights of her male customers who were kept from buying.1Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Craig v. Boren That third-party standing principle lets businesses challenge regulations that restrict their customers when the business itself bears direct consequences.
What Happened to the Beer Law
The specific dispute over 3.2% beer became largely academic after Congress passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act in 1984. The federal law conditions a portion of highway funding on states setting 21 as the minimum age to purchase or publicly possess alcohol.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 23 USC 158 – National Minimum Drinking Age Every state complied, and gender-based drinking-age splits disappeared. What remained was the constitutional standard Craig v. Boren set for every other law that treats men and women differently.