Page:Adams ex rel. Kasper v. School Board of St. Johns County, Florida (2021).pdf/32

 dissent suggests the constitutionality of a policy turns on the soundness of the statistical correlation supporting it, when the Supreme Court in, following a long line of precedent, rejected that precise premise.

In, the Supreme Court invalidated a sex-based regulation despite the fact that men in the relevant age group were more likely than women of the same age group to be arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol. 429 U.S. at 201, 97 S. Ct. at 459. Other statistics recounted in showed that 78% of drivers in a relevant geographic area who were under the age of 20 were male, and 84% of men expressed a preference for beer. at 203 n.16, 97 S. Ct. at 460 n.16. This too was not enough to save the challenged regulation. The Court warned of the regulations that would be blessed “if statistics were to govern the permissibility of state [action] without regard to the Equal [P]rotection Clause as a limiting principle.” at 208 n.22, 97 S. Ct. at 463 n.22. “Indeed,” the Court wrote, “prior cases have consistently rejected the use of sex as a decisionmaking factor even though the statutes in question certainly rested on than” the one in. at 202, 97 S. Ct. at 459