Maintenance of single-sex programs, the court concluded, was essential to that objective. The appeals court deferentially reviewed Virginia's plan and determined that provision of single-gender educational options was a legitimate objective. The District Court found that Virginia's proposal satisfied the Constitution's equal protection requirement, and the Fourth Circuit affirmed. In response, Virginia proposed a parallel program for women: Virginia Women's Institute for Leadership (VWIL), located at Mary Baldwin College, a private liberal arts school for women. The Fourth Circuit reversed and ordered Virginia to remedy the constitutional violation. The United States sued Virginia and VMI, alleging that VMI's exclusively male admission policy violated the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. Reflecting the high value alumni place on their VMI training, VMI has the largest per-student endowment of all public undergraduate institutions in the Nation. Using an "adversative method" of training not available elsewhere in Virginia, VMI endeavors to instill physical and mental discipline in its cadets and impart to them a strong moral code. VMI's distinctive mission is to produce "citizen-soldiers," men prepared for leadership in civilian life and in military service. Virginia Military Institute (VMI) is the sole single-sex school among Virginia's public institutions of higher learning. He also used this dissent as an opportunity to reiterate his opinion that the appropriate standard of review for gender-based classifications should be rational basis rather than any heightened standard.ĬERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT Pointing out that the majority seemed to apply a standard higher than intermediate scrutiny, Scalia argued that it created doctrinal uncertainty by failing to use either intermediate or strict scrutiny. This contrasted with Ginsburg's apparent view that the all-male policy was unconstitutional on its face, regardless of the alternatives offered by the state. While Rehnquist agreed that this specific situation was unconstitutional, he felt that Virginia's separate-but-equal system could be acceptable if it had been implemented more diligently so that the quality of education between institutions was roughly comparable. The standard of review in the majority opinion arguably seems higher than the usual intermediate scrutiny for gender-based classifications, since Ginsburg stated that an exceedingly persuasive justification was required from the state. She thus considered not only the program itself but also the benefits that it would provide to its graduates in the long term. Ginsburg was not convinced that the VWIL was equivalent to VMI in terms of either education and training or post-graduation advantages. This program, known as the Virginia Women's Institute for Leadership, was woven into the structure of that women's-only liberal arts institution, which created a very different experience from VMI. However, it seemed to acknowledge that there might be a potential problem with its policy, since it created an alternative program for women at Mary Baldwin College. The state argued that this restriction was appropriate because women would not be able to withstand the rigors of its training programs. The Virginia Military Institute had a policy that limited enrollment to men.
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