Cite as: 515 U. S. 200 (1995)
Opinion of the Court
suggests that the Court understood the standards for federal and state racial classifications to be the same.
Cases decided after McLaughlin continued to treat the equal protection obligations imposed by the Fifth and the Fourteenth Amendments as indistinguishable; one commentator observed that "[i]n case after case, fifth amendment equal protection problems are discussed on the assumption that fourteenth amendment precedents are controlling." Karst, The Fifth Amendment's Guarantee of Equal Protection, 55 N. C. L. Rev. 541, 554 (1977). Loving v. Virginia, 388 U. S. 1 (1967), which struck down a race-based state law, cited Korematsu for the proposition that "the Equal Protection Clause demands that racial classifications . . . be subjected to the 'most rigid scrutiny.' " 388 U. S., at 11. The various opinions in Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U. S. 677 (1973), which concerned sex discrimination by the Federal Government, took their equal protection standard of review from Reed v. Reed, 404 U. S. 71 (1971), a case that invalidated sex discrimination by a State, without mentioning any possibility of a difference between the standards applicable to state and federal action. Frontiero, 411 U. S., at 682-684 (plurality opinion of Brennan, J.); id., at 691 (Stewart, J., concurring in judgment); id., at 692 (Powell, J., concurring in judgment). Thus, in 1975, the Court stated explicitly that "[t]his Court's approach to Fifth Amendment equal protection claims has always been precisely the same as to equal protection claims under the Fourteenth Amendment." Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld, 420 U. S. 636, 638, n. 2; see also Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1, 93 (1976) ("Equal protection analysis in the Fifth Amendment area is the same as that under the Fourteenth Amendment"); United States v. Paradise, 480 U. S. 149, 166, n. 16 (1987) (plurality opinion of Brennan, J.) ("[T]he reach of the equal protection guarantee of the Fifth Amendment is coextensive with that of the Fourteenth"). We do not understand a few contrary suggestions appearing in cases in which we found special deference to
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