holding unconstitutional statutory classification giving to widowed mothers benefits not available to widowed fathers even though “the notion that men are more likely than women to be the primary supporters of their spouses and children is not entirely without empirical support”
How later courts described this case
- holding unconstitutional statutory classification giving to widowed mothers benefits not available to widowed fathers even though “the notion that men are more likely than women to be the primary supporters of their spouses and children is not entirely without empirical support”
- holding unconstitutional a Social Security Act classification authorizing benefits to widows but not to widowers despite the fact that the justification for the differential treatment was "not entirely without empirical support"
- holding that a statute that treats widowers less favorably than widows — which, in the Title VII context, might have been called a “sex plus marital status” claim — violates the Equal Protection Clause
- explaining that the Supreme Court’s “approach to Fifth Amendment equal protection claims has always been precisely the same as to equal protection claims under the Fourteenth Amendment”
Written by the judges who cited it.
Distinguished
Distinguished by Wengler v. Druggists Mutual Insurance Co., 1979 Mo. LEXIS 286 (1979)
The social security cases of Califano v. Goldfarb, supra, and Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld, supra, are also distinguishable.
The opinion
*654 Mr. Justice Powell,
with whom The Chief Justice joins,
concurring.
I concur in the judgment and generally in the opinion of the Court. But I would identify the impermissible discrimination effected by § 402 (g) somewhat more narrowly than the Court does. Social Security is designed, certainly in this context, for the protection of the family. Although it lacks the contractual attributes of insurance or an annuity, Flemming v. Nestor, 363 U. S. 603 (1960), it is a contributory system and millions of wage earners depend on it to provide basic protection for their families in the event of death or disability.
Many women are the principal wage earners for their families, and they participate in the Social Security system on exactly the same basis as men. When the mother is a principal wage earner, the family may suffer as great an economic deprivation upon her death as would occur upon the death of a father wage earner. It is immaterial whether the surviving parent elects to assume primary child care responsibility rather than work, or whether other arrangements are made for child care. The statutory scheme provides benefits both to a surviving mother who remains at home and to one who works at low wages. A surviving father may have the same need for benefits as a surviving mother. * The statutory scheme therefore impermissibly discriminates against a female wage earner because it provides her family less protection than it *655 provides that of a male wage earner, even though the family needs may be identical. I find no legitimate governmental interest that supports this gender classification.
I attach less significance to the view emphasized by the Court that a purpose of the statute is to enable the surviving parent to remain at home to care for a child. In light of the long experience to the contrary, one may doubt that fathers generally will forgo work and remain at home to care for children to the same extent that mothers may make this choice. Under the current statutory program, however, the payment of benefits is not conditioned on the surviving parent’s decision to remain at home.