The Fourteenth Amendment was ratified on July 9, 1868, and has been the law of the land ever since. The Equal Protection Clause (as this portion of the Fourteenth Amendment is known) has been the rubric under which a multitude of diverse issues have been decided: does one have the right to marry a person of a different racial background? (Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967)); are married, female service members eligible for the same automatic dependent's allowance for their husbands as married, male service members are for their wives? (Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U.S. 677 (1973)); and, is a system of separate (but allegedly equal) schools considered equal treatment of blacks under the Equal Protection Clause? (Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, 347 U.S. 483 (1954)).
Here we see different groups of people all appealing to the Constitution for equal protection under the law, and all receiving it. Are whites who choose to marry blacks to be afforded the same treatment as whites who choose to marry whites? Yes. Are women in the service entitled to the same dependent benefits and benefit- determining procedures as men in the service? Yes. Are blacks entitled to the same quality of education and the same educational opportunities as whites? Yes.
Are men who land in our nation's family courts entitled to be judged by the same standards as the women who sit opposite them? Yes.
Are those men in fact afforded such equal treatment? No.
Next month, Maternal bias in custody matters
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