FRONTIERO V. RICHARDSON
The fight to end gender discrimination in the U.S. began in the nineteenth century with the
women’s suffrage movement and the enactment of laws that protected the property that women brought into marriages. By the 1960s, the focus had shifted to ending pay and benefit discrimination based on gender. By the early 1970s, Congress had passed the EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT (ERA) of the U.S. Constitution, which
proclaimed equality between the genders. Ratifi-
cation appeared close by 1973, as 38 states had
ratified the ERA. The court system also became
an arena for the issue of gender discrimination.
The U.S. Supreme Court began to consider cases
of gender discrimination but hesitated to place
gender in the same category as race or ethnicity
as a SUSPECT CLASSIFICATION inviting the most
rigorous constitutional review. However, a plu-
rality of the court endorsed gender as a suspect
classification in Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U.S.
677, 93 S. Ct. 1764, 36 L. Ed.2d 583 (1973). This
important case pushed the Court, and society in
general, to recognize the legal disabilities that
women had lived with for centuries. Though not
a landmark decision, Frontiero signaled the will-
ingness of the high court to take gender issues
seriously.
The facts of the case illustrated the disparate
treatment built into U.S. society concerning the
role of women. Sharron Frontiero was a U.S. Air
Force officer who was married to Joseph Fron-
tiero, a full-time student at a college near the
Alabama base where Sharron was stationed.
