overturning law barring high school girls from participating in interscholastic contact football program
How later courts described this case
- overturning law barring high school girls from participating in interscholastic contact football program
- issuance of liquor license to place of public accommodation constitutes state action that prevents exclusion of women
- "under our ERA discrimination on account of sex is forbidden" (emphasis added)
- though challenged regulation was based on justification that a majority of girls would be unable to compete with boys in contact football, there was no finding that what was true for a majority of girls was true for the particular plaintiffs
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Hamilton, J.
(concurring) — With some qualms I concur in the result reached by the majority. I do so, however, exclusively upon the basis that the result is dictated by the broad and mandatory language of Const. art. 31, § 1, Washington’s Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Whether the people in enacting the ERA fully contemplated and appreciated the result here reached, coupled with its prospective variations, may be questionable. Nevertheless, in sweeping language they embedded the principle of the ERA in our constitution, and it is beyond the authority of this court to modify the people’s will. So be it.
Stafford, C.J., and Rosellini and Hunter, JJ., concur with Hamilton, J.