Facts
- Massachusetts law gave an absolute civil service hiring preference to qualified veterans over all qualified nonveterans.
- The preference applied to any honorably discharged veteran of either sex who met service requirements, including at least 90 days of active wartime duty.
- Helen B. Feeney, a long-time Massachusetts state employee and nonveteran, passed several competitive civil service examinations for better positions.
- Despite higher test scores, Feeney was repeatedly ranked below veterans who scored lower because the preference controlled appointment order.
- Veterans in Massachusetts were overwhelmingly male, so the preference substantially disadvantaged women seeking higher civil service positions.
Issues
- Whether an absolute veterans’ preference that disproportionately benefits men violates the Equal Protection Clause by discriminating against women.
- Whether severe disparate impact on women, without proof of discriminatory purpose, is sufficient to establish unconstitutional sex discrimination under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Decision
- The Supreme Court reversed the judgment invalidating the statute and held the veterans’ preference constitutional.
- The Court treated the statute as classifying between veterans and nonveterans, not between men and women.
- Applying the disparate-impact framework, the Court held that equal protection is violated only if the law was enacted or maintained because of, not merely in spite of, adverse effects on a protected group.
- The Court found no evidence that Massachusetts adopted or retained the preference to exclude women and accepted the State’s objectives of rewarding veterans and assisting their return to civilian employment as legitimate.
Legal Principles
- A facially neutral law with a disproportionate adverse effect does not violate equal protection absent proof of discriminatory purpose.
- Discriminatory purpose requires showing the challenged measure was adopted or maintained because of its adverse effects on the protected group, not merely with awareness that such effects would occur.
- A preference for veteran status applicable to both sexes is not, without proof of invidious purpose, a sex-based classification and is generally reviewed under deferential rational-basis standards.
- Even severe disparate impact does not, by itself, establish unconstitutional intent.
Conclusion
Massachusetts’ absolute veterans’ preference, though it markedly reduced women’s access to higher civil service positions, did not deny equal protection because it was a facially neutral veteran-status preference and the record did not show it was enacted or maintained for the purpose of disadvantaging women.