Within United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515 (1996), the Supreme Court of the United States struck down the Virginia Military Institute's long-standing male-only admission policy in a 7-1 decision. (Justice Clarence Thomas recused himself from a out break because his boy attended a institution.)

Writing for the majority, Justice Ruth Joan Bader Ginsburg stated that because VMI failed to show "exceedingly persuasive justification" for its gender-biased admissions policy, it violated a Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause. Around an attempt to satisfty equal protection requirements, a state of Virginia had proposed a therefore-supposed "separate but equal" parallel program for women, called a Virginia Women's Institute for Leadership (VWIL), located at Mary Baldwin College, a private liberal arts school for women. Yet, Justice Ginsberg held that a VWIL would non provide women by owning a equivalent nature & severity of rigorous military machine how to videos, facilities, courses, faculty, fiscal chance, and/or alumni reputation and modems that VMI affords male plebe.

Using a VMI guide, a supreme court profits struck down any law which, when Justice Ginsburg wrote, "denies to women, simply because they are women, full citizenship stature -- equal opportunity to aspire, achieve, participate in and contribute to society."