## 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

1. Whether Louisiana Civil Code art. 2404’s grant of unilateral community-property control to husbands violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
2. 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.


Kirchberg v. Feenstra, 450 U.S. 455 (1981)