Page:Adams ex rel. Kasper v. School Board of St. Johns County, Florida (2022).pdf/68

 administrative convenience is an insufficient justification for a gender-based classification.

Intermediate scrutiny requires a showing that the challenged classification “serves important governmental objectives and that the discriminatory means employed are substantially related to the achievement of those objectives.” United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515, 533 (1996) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). “The burden of justification is demanding,” and here it “rests entirely on” the School Board. Id.

In a number of cases applying intermediate scrutiny, the Supreme Court has held that a gender-based regulation cannot be justified on the basis of administrative convenience. These cases are Craig v. Boren, 429 U.S. 190, 198 (1976) (“Decisions following Reed [v. Reed, 404 U.S. 71 (1971)] … have rejected administrative ease and convenience as sufficiently important objectives to justify gender-based classifications.”); Orr v. Orr, 440 U.S. 268, 281 (1979) (where there is “no reason” to use “sex as a proxy for need,” “not even an administrative-convenience rationale exists to justify operating by generalization or proxy”); ''Wengler v. Druggists Mut. Ins.''