United States v. Virginia

The Virginia Military Institute (VMI), founded in 1839, was Virginia’s only exclusively male undergraduate institution of higher learning and had enjoyed a long tradition as a training ground for military officers. The United States brought suit against VMI and the state of Virginia, arguing that the male-only admissions policy of the school was an unconstitutional violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause. Initially, the district court ruled in favor of VMI, but the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the decision of the district court, finding VMI’s admissions policy to be unconstitutional. In response, VMI proposed a solution: the creation of the Virginia Women’s Institute for Leadership as a parallel program for women. After the district court affirmed the plan, the Fourth Circuit ruled that despite the difference in the prestige of the Women’s Institute and VMI, the two would be “substantively comparable” in educational benefits. The United States disagreed and appealed to the Supreme Court, which ruled in United States v. Virginia that the VMI admissions policy was unconstitutional.