FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: SHELLEY GOLDEN, 771; DIANE MINOR, 773
NOW leaders are pleased at the U.S. Supreme Court's 7-1 ruling today rejecting Virginia Military Academy's male-only admissions policy, but disappointed that the court did not take this opportunity to extend a strict scrutiny standard to sex discrimination.
"Finally, we have an affirmation that the qualities important for military leaders -- integrity, tenacity and bravery -- have nothing to do with a person's sex," said NOW National Secretary Karen Johnson, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel who is named in an amicus brief military women filed in support of the government's case against VMI.
"VMI will have to open the doors of opportunity to the daughters of Virginia, as well as to the sons," NOW Executive Vice President Kim Gandy said, after a demonstration activists staged today on the steps of the Supreme Court. "And state taxpayers will no longer sponsor a system that locks those daughters out of a lifetime of networking."
Gandy is an attorney who coordinated NOW's endorsement of an amicus brief asking the court to apply a strict scrutiny standard to sex discrimination. "We're hailing a victory on VMI, specifically, but protesting only a slight tightening, at best, of the legal standards for sex discrimination, generally.
"We had hoped the Supreme Court would use this case to finally raise sex discrimination to the same level of constitutional scrutiny as race," she said. "But at least the court said the discrimination at VMI didn't even pass muster under an intermediate scrutiny standard.
Johnson expressed similar concerns about the different standards applied to race and gender. "I am black and I am female, and I can tell you that my sex affects me as much as my race," Johnson said. "You can't separate the two and shouldn't apply a different standard to the two. This ruling is a mixed bag for women."
Both NOW leaders predict the first young women accepted at VMI will have a hard time, and that they'll need to enroll in sizeable numbers.
"I doubt VMI is going to do what it should do -- say they were wrong and welcome women," said Gandy. "I think they're going to do it grudgingly, and the irony is that it'll be good for the young men themselves. The men at VMI need to learn to work with women leaders as well as with men."