Cite as: 523 U. S. 420 (1998)
Opinion of Stevens, J.
Our conclusion that Congress may require an affirmative act by unmarried fathers and their children, but not mothers and their children, is directly supported by our decision in Lehr v. Robertson, 463 U. S. 248 (1983). That case involved a New York law that automatically provided mothers of "illegitimate" children with prior notice of an adoption proceeding and the right to veto an adoption, but only extended those rights to unmarried fathers whose claim of paternity was supported by some formal public act, such as a court adjudication, the filing of a notice of intent to claim paternity, or written acknowledgment by the mother. Id., at 251-252, n. 5, 266. The petitioner in Lehr, an unmarried putative father, need only have mailed a postcard to the State's "putative father registry" to enjoy the same rights as the child's undisputed mother, id., at 264, yet he argued that this gender-based requirement violated the Equal Protection Clause. We rejected that argument, and we find the comparable claim in this case, if anything, even less persuasive. Whereas the putative father in Lehr was deprived of certain rights because he failed to take some affirmative step within about two years of the child's birth (when the adoption proceeding took place), here the unfavorable gender-based treatment was attributable to Mr. Miller's failure to take appropriate action within 21 years of petitioner's birth and petitioner's own failure to obtain a paternity adjudication by a "competent court" before she turned 18.19
Even though the rule applicable to each class of children born abroad is eminently reasonable and justified by important Government policies, petitioner and her amici argue that § 1409 is unconstitutional because it is a "gender-based classification." We shall comment briefly on that argument.
19 Justice Breyer questions the relevance of Lehr because it was decided before advances in genetic testing, see post, at 487; there was, however, no question about the paternity of the father in that case. As in this case, the father there failed to act promptly to establish a relationship with his child.
441
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