Laws Subject To Equal Protection Scrutiny
Constitutional Equal Protection analysis applies not only to challenges against the federal government, but also to state and local governments. Although the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause applies only to state and local governments, the United States Supreme Court has implied an Equal Protection limitation on the federal government through a process known as "reverse incorporation." As the Fourteenth Amendment applies directly to the states, the incorporation process was unnecessary to hold this restriction against state and local governments. Equal Protection analysis also applies to both legislative and executive action regardless if the action is of a substantive or procedural nature. Judicially-crafted (common law) rules are also valid only if they conform to the requirements of Equal Protection. See, e.g., Reed v. Campbell, 476 U.S. 852 (1986).
Read more about this topic: Intermediate Scrutiny
Famous quotes containing the words laws, subject, equal and/or protection:
“Nearest to all things is that power which fashions their being. Next to us the grandest laws are constantly being executed. Next to us is not the workman whom we have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—Alison Neilans. “Justice for the Prostitute—Lady Astor’s Bill,” Equal Rights (September 19, 1925)
“Without infringing on the liberty we so much boast, might we not ask our professional Mayor to call upon the smokers, have them register their names in each ward, and then appoint certain thoroughfares in the city for their use, that those who feel no need of this envelopment of curling vapor, to insure protection may be relieved from a nuisance as disgusting to the olfactories as it is prejudicial to the lungs.”
—Harriot K. Hunt (1805–1875)