The legal status of women in the United States was rebuilt case by case at the Supreme Court beginning in 1971, and the women’s rights Supreme Court cases that produced that shift reach across employment, pay, pregnancy, harassment, education, credit, property, government benefits, jury duty, and reproductive decisions. Most of the doctrine rests on the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause and on federal statutes like Title VII and Title IX. One major line, the abortion cases, was reversed in 2022.
The Equal Protection Foundation
Before 1971, no Supreme Court decision had ever struck down a law for discriminating on the basis of sex. Reed v. Reed changed that. The Court unanimously invalidated an Idaho probate statute that said when two equally qualified people applied to administer an estate, “males must be preferred to females.” The ruling was the first time the Constitution was used to strike down a sex-based classification.1Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Reed v. Reed
Reed used only rational basis review, the weakest form of constitutional scrutiny. Frontiero v. Richardson (1973) pushed harder. A female Air Force officer challenged federal statutes that automatically gave housing and medical benefits to the wives of male service members but forced female service members to prove their husbands were actually dependent on them. The Court ruled 8–1 that the differential treatment violated the Due Process Clause. Four justices argued that sex, like race, should be a suspect classification triggering strict scrutiny. That position never got a fifth vote, but the signal was clear.
Craig v. Boren (1976) settled the standard. The case involved an Oklahoma law letting women buy low-alcohol beer at 18 while making men wait until 21. The Court struck it down and established intermediate scrutiny for sex-based classifications: a gender-based law must serve an important governmental objective and be substantially related to achieving that objective.2Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Craig v. Boren The beer-age dispute sounds trivial. The test it produced became the tool courts used to dismantle sex discrimination for the next half century.
Workplace Rights Under Title VII
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employers from discriminating based on sex in hiring, firing, compensation, and other conditions of employment.3U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 The Court first applied it to sex discrimination in Phillips v. Martin Marietta Corp. (1971), where an employer refused to hire women with preschool-age children while hiring fathers of young children without hesitation. The Court held that Title VII does not permit one hiring policy for women and a different one for men.4Legal Information Institute. Phillips v. Martin Marietta Corp. Employers could no longer dress up stereotypes about mothers as hiring criteria.
Pregnancy Discrimination
In General Electric Co. v. Gilbert (1976), the Court held that excluding pregnancy from an employer’s disability plan was not sex discrimination under Title VII, reasoning that the line drawn was between pregnant and non-pregnant persons rather than between women and men.5Legal Information Institute. General Electric Co. v. Gilbert Congress overrode the decision in 1978 with the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which amended Title VII to specify that discrimination “because of sex” includes discrimination “because of or on the basis of pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions.”6Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 U.S. Code 2000e – Definitions
Young v. United Parcel Service (2015) tested the Act’s reach. A pregnant UPS driver asked for a temporary light-duty assignment after her doctor restricted her lifting. UPS refused, even though it accommodated other workers with comparable physical limitations from on-the-job injuries or disabilities. The Court held that a pregnant employee can establish a prima facie case by showing she sought accommodation, the employer refused, and the employer did accommodate others with similar limitations. If the employer offers a justification, the employee can show it is pretextual, particularly if the policy puts a significant burden on pregnant workers that the stated reasons do not justify.7Legal Information Institute. United Parcel Service, Inc. v. Young
Pay Discrimination
In Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. (2007), Lilly Ledbetter discovered after nearly two decades at Goodyear that she had been paid significantly less than her male counterparts for the same work. The Court held that the filing clock began running with the original decision to pay her less, not with each paycheck that reflected it. Her claim was time-barred.
Congress responded with the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, which established that a new violation occurs each time an employee receives a paycheck or other compensation affected by a prior discriminatory decision. The deadline resets with each payment. In states with their own employment discrimination enforcement agencies, the filing window is 300 days rather than the default 180.8U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Time Limits for Filing a Charge It was the first bill President Obama signed into law.
Sexual Harassment
Title VII says nothing explicitly about sexual harassment. The Court built that doctrine case by case. Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson (1986) was the start. Mechelle Vinson alleged that her supervisor had coerced her into a sexual relationship over several years. The bank argued she had no Title VII claim because she had suffered no tangible economic harm. The Court rejected that argument and held that a hostile work environment created by sexual misconduct is itself a form of sex discrimination under Title VII. The harassment must be “sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of the victim’s employment and create an abusive working environment,” and the key question is whether the advances were unwelcome, not whether participation was voluntary.9Legal Information Institute. Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson
Harris v. Forklift Systems (1993) clarified how much was enough. A hostile environment claim requires both an objectively hostile workplace, measured by whether a reasonable person would find the conditions abusive, and the victim’s own subjective perception that it was abusive. Courts weigh the frequency and severity of the conduct, whether it was physically threatening or merely offensive, and whether it interfered with work performance.10Legal Information Institute. Harris v. Forklift Systems, Inc. A victim does not need to show psychological breakdown or inability to function.
Burlington Industries v. Ellerth (1998) addressed employer liability. When a supervisor’s harassment results in a tangible employment action like termination or demotion, the employer is automatically liable. When no tangible action is taken, the employer can raise an affirmative defense by proving two things: it exercised reasonable care to prevent and promptly correct harassment, and the employee unreasonably failed to use available complaint procedures.11Legal Information Institute. Burlington Industries, Inc. v. Ellerth That decision gave employers a reason to build anti-harassment policies and employees a reason to use them.
Reproductive Rights
The reproductive line began with contraception. Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) struck down a state law criminalizing the use of contraceptives by married couples, identifying a right to marital privacy drawn from “penumbras” of several Bill of Rights guarantees. Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972) extended the right to unmarried people, holding that a Massachusetts law restricting contraception based on marital status violated the Equal Protection Clause.
Roe v. Wade (1973) built on that privacy framework to recognize a right to terminate a pregnancy under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court set out a trimester framework: during the first trimester, the decision belonged to the woman and her doctor; during the second, states could regulate the procedure to protect maternal health; after viability, states could prohibit abortion except where necessary to preserve the woman’s life or health. Roe treated the right as fundamental, meaning restrictions had to survive strict scrutiny.
Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) kept Roe’s core holding but swapped the trimester framework for an “undue burden” standard. States could regulate pre-viability abortion as long as the regulation did not place a “substantial obstacle” in the path of a woman seeking the procedure. The Court used that test to uphold a 24-hour waiting period and informed consent requirement, and to strike down a spousal notification provision that would have effectively given husbands veto power. Casey governed abortion law for three decades, including Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt (2016), which struck down Texas clinic regulations that would have closed most of the state’s abortion providers.12Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt
Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) overturned both Roe and Casey. The Court held that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion, concluding that abortion is neither mentioned in the constitutional text nor deeply rooted in the nation’s history and traditions. Federal constitutional protection for abortion access ended, and regulation returned to state legislatures. The result is a patchwork, with some states banning abortion almost entirely and others moving to codify or expand access.
Education
Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits sex-based discrimination in any education program or activity that receives federal funding.13U.S. Department of Education. Title IX and Sex Discrimination The Supreme Court used it to reach well beyond athletics.
United States v. Virginia (1996) challenged the male-only admissions policy at the Virginia Military Institute. VMI argued that admitting women would destroy its adversative training method, and Virginia offered to open a separate program for women at a nearby college. Justice Ginsburg, writing for the majority, held that any government actor using a sex-based classification must demonstrate an “exceedingly persuasive justification” for the distinction.14Legal Information Institute. United States v. Virginia Virginia’s alternative failed because it offered women none of the prestige, alumni network, or rigorous training that gave VMI its value. The ruling forced VMI to admit women.
Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education (1999) addressed student-on-student harassment. A fifth-grader’s mother sued after her daughter was subjected to months of severe sexual harassment by a classmate and school officials did essentially nothing. The Court held that a school district receiving federal funds can be liable when it has actual knowledge of conduct “so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive” that it effectively denies the victim access to educational opportunities, and the district responds with deliberate indifference.15Legal Information Institute. Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education Schools are not liable simply because harassment occurs, but when administrators know about severe, ongoing conduct and respond unreasonably, Title IX reaches them.
Credit and Property
Until the mid-1970s, women routinely faced discrimination applying for credit. Banks could refuse a woman a credit card without her husband’s co-signature, and lenders could discount a wife’s income when evaluating a mortgage. The Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 made it illegal for any creditor to discriminate against an applicant based on sex or marital status.16Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1691 – Scope of Prohibition It also requires creditors to give specific reasons for denying an application.17Federal Trade Commission. Equal Credit Opportunity Act
Kirchberg v. Feenstra (1981) reached a deeper layer. Louisiana law designated the husband as “head and master” of community property, giving him unilateral authority to sell, mortgage, or dispose of jointly owned assets without his wife’s knowledge or consent. A husband in that case used the matrimonial home as collateral for an attorney’s fee without telling his wife. The Court struck the statute down under the Equal Protection Clause, holding that a gender-based classification is unconstitutional unless the government can show it substantially furthers an important interest. Louisiana offered no justification at all.18Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Kirchberg v. Feenstra The head-and-master doctrine was among the last vestiges of coverture, the old legal fiction that a married woman’s identity was absorbed into her husband’s.
Government Benefits
Several decisions targeted federal and state laws that distributed benefits based on assumptions about who earns and who stays home. Laws that appeared to favor women often reinforced the view that women’s paid work was less valuable.
Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld (1975) made the point. Under the Social Security Act, when a working father died, both his children and his widow could receive survivors’ benefits. When a working mother died, only the children qualified. Stephen Wiesenfeld, whose wife had been the family’s primary earner before dying in childbirth, challenged the distinction. The Court unanimously held that the classification violated the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. The purpose of survivors’ benefits was to let the surviving parent care for the children, and that purpose applied regardless of which parent survived.
Califano v. Goldfarb (1977) extended the reasoning. The Social Security Act paid survivors’ benefits to a widow regardless of actual financial dependence on her deceased husband, but required a widower to prove he had received at least half his support from his deceased wife. The Court struck the distinction down, rejecting the government’s argument that it saved administrative costs by assuming all widows were dependent. Benefits “directly related to years worked and amount earned by a covered employee” cannot be distributed based on “archaic and overbroad” generalizations about which spouse earns the income.19Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Califano v. Goldfarb
Jury Service
Taylor v. Louisiana (1975) ended one of the more persistent forms of institutional exclusion. Louisiana law provided that women would not be called for jury duty unless they had filed a written declaration volunteering for service. In practice, juries were almost entirely male. In the judicial district where Taylor was tried, women made up 53 percent of eligible jurors but were effectively absent from jury pools. The Court held that the systematic exclusion of women from jury service violated the Sixth Amendment’s requirement that juries be drawn from a fair cross-section of the community.20Legal Information Institute. Taylor v. Louisiana States could no longer treat jury service as something women had to opt into while men were expected to do it by default.