320
Stevens, J., dissenting
The gloss that Justice Stewart placed on the statute in Griffin, then, did not exclude gender-based discrimination from its coverage. But it does require us to resolve the question whether a conspiracy animated by the desire to deprive women of their right to obtain an abortion is "class based."
V
The terms "animus" and "invidious" are susceptible to different interpretations. The Court today announces that it could find class-based animus in petitioners' mob violence "only if one of two suggested propositions is true: (1) that opposition to abortion can reasonably be presumed to reflect a sex-based intent, or (2) that intent is irrelevant, and a class-based animus can be determined solely by effect." Ante, at 270.
The first proposition appears to describe a malevolent form of hatred or ill will. When such an animus defends itself as opposition to conduct that a given class engages in exclusively or predominantly, we can readily unmask it as the intent to discriminate against the class itself. See ibid. Griffin, for instance, involved behavior animated by the desire to keep African-American citizens from exercising their constitutional rights. The defendants were no less guilty of a class-based animus because they also opposed the cause of desegregation or rights of African-American suffrage, and the Court did not require the plaintiffs in Griffin to prove that their beatings were motivated by hatred for African-Americans. Similarly, a decision dis-favoring female lawyers,15 female owners of liquor estab-15 See Bradwell v. State, 16 Wall. 130 (1873). The reasoning of the concurring Justices surely evidenced invidious animus, even though it rested on traditional views about a woman's place in society, rather than on overt hostility toward women. These Justices wrote: "[T]he civil law, as well as nature herself, has always recognized a wide difference in the respective spheres and destinies of man and woman. Man is, or should be, woman's protector and defender. The natural and
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