Cite as: 511 U. S. 127 (1994)
Opinion of the Court
fers virtually no support for the conclusion that gender alone is an accurate predictor of juror's attitudes; yet it urges this Court to condone the same stereotypes that justified the wholesale exclusion of women from juries and the ballot box.11 Respondent seems to assume that gross generalizations that would be deemed impermissible if made on the
amount is to be proved by clearly demonstrated blackboard figures for example, generally he would want a male juror.
. . . . . "[But] women . . . are desired jurors when plaintiff is a man. A woman juror may see a man impeached from the beginning of the case to the end, but there is at least the chance [with] the woman juror (particularly if the man happens to be handsome or appealing) [that] the plaintiff's derelictions in and out of court will be overlooked. A woman is inclined to forgive sin in the opposite sex; but definitely not her own." 3 M. Belli, Modern Trials §§ 51.67 and 51.68, pp. 446-447 (2d ed. 1982).
11 Even if a measure of truth can be found in some of the gender stereotypes used to justify gender-based peremptory challenges, that fact alone cannot support discrimination on the basis of gender in jury selection. We have made abundantly clear in past cases that gender classifications that rest on impermissible stereotypes violate the Equal Protection Clause, even when some statistical support can be conjured up for the generalization. See, e. g., Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld, 420 U. S. 636, 645 (1975) (holding unconstitutional a Social Security Act classification authorizing benefits to widows but not to widowers despite the fact that the justification for the differential treatment was "not entirely without empirical support"); Craig v. Boren, 429 U. S. 190, 201 (1976) (invalidating an Oklahoma law that established different drinking ages for men and women, although the evidence supporting the age differential was "not trivial in a statistical sense"). The generalization advanced by Alabama in support of its asserted right to discriminate on the basis of gender is, at the least, overbroad, and serves only to perpetuate the same "outmoded notions of the relative capabilities of men and women," Cleburne v. Cle-burne Living Center, Inc., 473 U. S. 432, 441 (1985), that we have invalidated in other contexts. See Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U. S. 677 (1973); Stanton v. Stanton, supra; Craig v. Boren, supra; Mississippi Univ. for Women v. Hogan, supra. The Equal Protection Clause, as interpreted by decisions of this Court, acknowledges that a shred of truth may be contained in some stereotypes, but requires that state actors look beyond the surface before making judgments about people that are likely to stigmatize as well as to perpetuate historical patterns of discrimination.
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