United States vs. Virginia of 1996

HIST 4020

Court Case #2: United States vs. Virginia

In the court case United States vs. Virginia of 1996, it began with the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), which was a 157-year-old state-supported college that was a male-only institute. VMI’s mission is to produce “citizen soldiers”, (male) leaders of the future. VMI achieves its mission through its “adversative method”, which is characterized by physical rigor, mental stress, absolute equality of treatment, absence of privacy, etc. At trial, the District Court acknowledged that women were missing out on a unique educational opportunity, but upheld the school’s policy on the rationale that admitting women could not be done without compromising the school’s adversative method. Pursuant to a decision by the Court of Appeals, the State established the Virginia Women’s Institute for Leadership (VWIL) for women. VWIL offered fewer courses than VMI and was run without the adversative method.

The issue with this case was the fact that this alternative institute for women was not offering them an equal opportunity of that offered to the men at VMI. This questioned that the VMI was violating the fourteenth amendment’s equal protection clause. When the fourteenth amendment was ratified in 1968 after the Civil War, they added the equal protection clause. This clause forbids any state to deny equal protection of the laws to any individual within its jurisdiction.

In the cases ruling, the court said that VWIL was no substitute for VMI’s unique education. It was stated to be inferior to the male version of the program at VMI in several ways including: fewer courses, less qualified faculty members, and lower admission standards. They also ruled that the state of Virginia had failed to provide an exceedingly persuasive argument for its policy and that the plan for the alternative institution was not a remedy for the discrimination issue and constitutional violation (it does not provide equal opportunity).

A case...