Facts
- A married couple jointly owned a home as community property in Louisiana.
- The husband, without his wife’s knowledge or consent, executed a mortgage on the home to secure his promissory note to attorney Karl J. Kirchberg.
- The husband relied on former Louisiana Civil Code art. 2404, which gave the husband unilateral power to manage and dispose of community property.
- After the wife refused to pay the note, Kirchberg initiated foreclosure and sought a federal declaratory judgment that the mortgage was valid.
- The wife counterclaimed that art. 2404 violated the Equal Protection Clause; Louisiana and its Governor were joined on that claim.
- While the case was on appeal, Louisiana enacted reforms giving spouses equal management powers, but the reforms did not govern the earlier mortgage.
Issues
- Whether Louisiana Civil Code art. 2404’s grant of unilateral community-property control to husbands violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
- Whether the court of appeals’ ruling (described as “prospective”) nonetheless invalidated the mortgage challenged in this litigation.
Decision
- The Supreme Court affirmed the court of appeals.
- The Court held art. 2404 unconstitutional because it imposed a facial sex-based classification without a sufficient justification under equal protection review.
- The Court held the court of appeals’ judgment applied to the specific mortgage at issue, resolving the parties’ dispute against Kirchberg.
Legal Principles
- Sex-based classifications under the Equal Protection Clause require a showing that the classification substantially furthers an important governmental interest.
- A discriminatory law is not saved by the possibility that the burdened party could have taken steps to avoid the discrimination; the absence of an “insurmountable barrier” does not cure an otherwise unconstitutional classification.
- When an appellate court decides the constitutionality of a rule in a case centered on a single transaction, its judgment is properly read to resolve that transaction’s validity unless the opinion clearly provides otherwise.
Conclusion
The Court invalidated Louisiana’s “head and master” community-property rule as unconstitutional sex discrimination and confirmed that the constitutional ruling applied to void the mortgage executed on the wife’s jointly owned home without her consent.