Mississippi University for Women v. Hogan

Mississippi University for Women v. Hogan, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (5–4), on July 1, 1982, that a publicly funded women’s university, in denying admission to a male applicant on the basis of his gender, violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, because the university’s admissions policy was not substantially related to a compelling governmental objective. The court also reasoned that exemptions provided to single-sex institutions by Title IX of the Federal Education Amendments of 1972 did not exempt university officials from compliance with constitutional obligations. The case is significant because the Supreme Court relied on it in subsequent gender-related admissions cases, notably including United States v. Virginia (1996), in which it found that the Virginia Military Institute’s refusal to admit women violated the equal protection clause.

Facts of the case

Established in Columbus, Mississippi, in 1884, Mississippi University for Women (MUW) historically limited its enrollment to female students. In 1974 the university instituted a four-year baccalaureate program in nursing. Five years later the plaintiff, Joe Hogan, applied for admission. The plaintiff, a registered nurse in Columbus, Mississippi, did not possess a bachelor’s degree. Although he otherwise met enrollment requirements, the plaintiff was denied admission to the nursing program on the basis of his gender. Officials at MUW informed the plaintiff that he could audit courses in which he was interested but could not enroll for credit.

The plaintiff filed suit in a federal district court, arguing that the nursing school’s single-sex admission policy violated the equal protection clause (“No state shall…deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”). The court rejected the plaintiff’s claim, deciding that maintaining MUW as a single-sex public institution bore a rational relationship to Mississippi’s stated objective in providing the greatest practical range of educational opportunities for females.

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On appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit remanded the case, holding that, because MUW’s admissions policy discriminated on the basis of gender, the trial court had improperly analyzed the case using the rational relationship test rather than the higher intermediate scrutiny standard. That higher standard of review required the state to carry the more substantive burden of demonstrating that the gender classification was substantially related to an important governmental objective.

Upon the rehearing before the district court, the university argued that, through enacting Section 901(a)(5) of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which provides some exemptions from Title IX’s gender prohibitions for single-sex institutions, Congress had expressly authorized officials at MUW to continue the single-sex admission policy. On appeal, the Fifth Circuit rejected that argument, pointing out that Congress could not authorize states to continue practices that otherwise violated the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Supreme Court’s ruling

In 1982 the Supreme Court affirmed the Fifth Circuit’s judgment in an opinion authored by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. The majority determined that MUW’s single-sex admission policy violated the equal protection clause and that Title IX’s exemptions did not nullify the university’s constitutional obligations.

At the heart of its rationale, the Supreme Court agreed with the Fifth Circuit that the case should have been analyzed through the frame of intermediate scrutiny, not the lower level of rational basis scrutiny, because the admissions policy discriminated on the basis of gender. Citing the Supreme Court’s earlier decisions in Personnel Administrator of Mass. v. Feeney (1979) and Kirchberg v. Feenstra (1981), the court held that university officials were required to demonstrate an “exceedingly persuasive justification” for its discriminatory gender classification. In keeping with the Supreme Court’s decision in Wengler v. Druggists Mutual Insurance Company (1980), the university needed to show (in the words of Wengler) that the classification served “important governmental objectives and that the discriminatory means employed” are “substantially related to the achievement of those objectives.”

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The record reflected that MUW’s primary objective in maintaining the single-sex admission policy was that it compensated for prior discrimination against women, thereby constituting educational affirmative action. To the contrary, however, the Supreme Court found that Mississippi had made no showing that women lacked opportunities to obtain nursing education and training in the state. Rather, the court interpreted the exclusion of males from the nursing program as perpetuating the perception of nursing as the exclusive province of females.

The Supreme Court also noted that Mississippi had not demonstrated that a gender-based admission classification was substantially or directly related to the proposed compensatory intent. Indeed, the court observed that allowing men to audit classes, but not to enroll for credit, undermined officials’ claim that separating the genders benefited female students. The court quickly dispensed with MUW’s Title IX argument, finding it unclear that Congress intended to exempt MUW from any constitutional obligation through Section 901(a)’s exemptions.