United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515, 73 (1996)

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Cite as: 518 U. S. 515 (1996)

Scalia, J., dissenting

Visitors, Report, May 16, 1986). "Surely," the Court says, "that goal is great enough to accommodate women." Ante, at 545.

This is lawmaking by indirection. What the Court describes as "VMI's mission" is no less the mission of all Virginia colleges. Which of them would the Old Dominion continue to fund if they did not aim to create individuals "imbued with love of learning, etc.," right down to being ready "to defend their country in time of national peril"? It can be summed up as "learning, leadership, and patriotism." To be sure, those general educational values are described in a particularly martial fashion in VMI's mission statement, in accordance with the military, adversative, and all-male character of the institution. But imparting those values in that fashioni. e., in a military, adversative, all-male environment—is the distinctive mission of VMI. And as I have discussed (and both courts below found), that mission is not "great enough to accommodate women."

The Court's analysis at least has the benefit of producing foreseeable results. Applied generally, it means that whenever a State's ultimate objective is "great enough to accommodate women" (as it always will be), then the State will be held to have violated the Equal Protection Clause if it restricts to men even one means by which it pursues that objective—no matter how few women are interested in pursuing the objective by that means, no matter how much the single-sex program will have to be changed if both sexes are admitted, and no matter how beneficial that program has theretofore been to its participants. 5. The Court argues that VMI would not have to change very much if it were to admit women. See, e. g., ante, at 540-542. The principal response to that argument is that it is irrelevant: If VMI's single-sex status is substantially related to the government's important educational objectives, as I have demonstrated above and as the Court refuses to dis-

587

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