Brief Fact Summary. The Respondent, Feeney (Respondent), challenges the Petitioner, Personnel Administration of Massachusetts’s (Petitioner), rule that provides a hiring preference to military veterans.
Synopsis of Rule of Law. A gender neutral statute that adversely impacts one gender does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution (Constitution) if it does not have a discriminatory purpose and it does not actually classify one gender.
Issue. Does the hiring practice that favors veterans violate the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution?
Held. No. The benefit of this act was offered to any person who was a veteran. The law is a preference for veterans of either sex over non-veterans of either sex. It was not designed to favor men over women.
The Constitution presumes that, absent some reason to infer antipathy, even improvident decisions will eventually be rectified by the democratic process and that judicial intervention is generally unwarranted no matter how unwisely we may think a political branch has acted.
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