Cite as: 511 U. S. 127 (1994)
Opinion of the Court
tional discrimination before the party exercising the challenge is required to explain the basis for the strike. Batson, 476 U. S., at 97. When an explanation is required, it need not rise to the level of a "for cause" challenge; rather, it merely must be based on a juror characteristic other than gender, and the proffered explanation may not be pretextual. See Hernandez v. New York, 500 U. S. 352 (1991).
Failing to provide jurors the same protection against gender discrimination as race discrimination could frustrate the purpose of Batson itself. Because gender and race are overlapping categories, gender can be used as a pretext for racial discrimination.18 Allowing parties to remove racial minorities from the jury not because of their race, but because of their gender, contravenes well-established equal protection principles and could insulate effectively racial discrimination from judicial scrutiny.
V
Equal opportunity to participate in the fair administration of justice is fundamental to our democratic system.19 It not
18 The temptation to use gender as a pretext for racial discrimination may explain why the majority of the lower court decisions extending Batson to gender involve the use of peremptory challenges to remove minority women. All four of the gender-based peremptory cases to reach the Federal Courts of Appeals and cited in n. 1, supra, involved the striking of minority women.
19 This Court almost a half century ago stated: "The American tradition of trial by jury, considered in connection with either criminal or civil proceedings, necessarily contemplates an impartial jury drawn from a cross-section of the community. . . . This does not mean, of course, that every jury must contain representatives of all the economic, social, religious, racial, political and geographical groups of the community; frequently such complete representation would be impossible. But it does mean that prospective jurors shall be selected by court officials without systematic and intentional exclusion of any of these groups. Recognition must be given to the fact that those eligible for jury service are to be found in every stratum of society. Jury competence is an individual rather than a group or class matter. That fact lies at the very heart of
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