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I'm looking through my notes on Craig v. Boren. The facts of the case are:

-State gov passes law that women over 18 may purchase low alcohol beer, but men must be over 21 to do so.
-State cites its purpose as traffic safety.
-State says that a gender classification is substantially related to traffic safety because something like 0.3% of women 18-21 drink and drive, but 2% of men 18-21 drink and drive.

The court bats these statistics down, arguing that a 2% propensity for a certain gender to do something isn't a strong enough correlation. (Note this is poor reasoning - the stats show that men are nearly 10 times more likely to drink and drive at that age).

My teacher said that a better reason to reject these stats is the concept of "differential overinclusiveness."

I can see how a no beer drinking law would be overinclusive to the different groups by a different degree (98% for men, 99.7% for women). Is the teacher's point simply that there is not enough of a difference in the level of overinclusiveness between males and females to justify the use of a gender classification?

sounds like an LSAT question the Court failed.

daesonesb wrote:I'm looking through my notes on Craig v. Boren. The facts of the case are:

-State gov passes law that women over 18 may purchase low alcohol beer, but men must be over 21 to do so.
-State cites its purpose as traffic safety.
-State says that a gender classification is substantially related to traffic safety because something like 0.3% of women 18-21 drink and drive, but 2% of men 18-21 drink and drive.

The court bats these statistics down, arguing that a 2% propensity for a certain gender to do something isn't a strong enough correlation. (Note this is poor reasoning - the stats show that men are nearly 10 times more likely to drink and drive at that age).

My teacher said that a better reason to reject these stats is the concept of "differential overinclusiveness."

I can see how a no beer drinking law would be overinclusive to the different groups by a different degree (98% for men, 99.7% for women). Is the teacher's point simply that there is not enough of a difference in the level of overinclusiveness between males and females to justify the use of a gender classification?

Out of a population of a million (assuming equal numbers of men and women), you'd have 1,500 female drunk drivers and 10,00 male. So based on the behavior of 8,500 people (the number more men than women that will engage in the risky behavior), you'd be penalizing 491,500 people for nothing other than being male. That would fail the "narrow tailoring" requirement for sex-based discrimination.

Renzo wrote:

daesonesb wrote:I'm looking through my notes on Craig v. Boren. The facts of the case are:

-State gov passes law that women over 18 may purchase low alcohol beer, but men must be over 21 to do so.
-State cites its purpose as traffic safety.
-State says that a gender classification is substantially related to traffic safety because something like 0.3% of women 18-21 drink and drive, but 2% of men 18-21 drink and drive.

The court bats these statistics down, arguing that a 2% propensity for a certain gender to do something isn't a strong enough correlation. (Note this is poor reasoning - the stats show that men are nearly 10 times more likely to drink and drive at that age).

My teacher said that a better reason to reject these stats is the concept of "differential overinclusiveness."

I can see how a no beer drinking law would be overinclusive to the different groups by a different degree (98% for men, 99.7% for women). Is the teacher's point simply that there is not enough of a difference in the level of overinclusiveness between males and females to justify the use of a gender classification?

Out of a population of a million (assuming equal numbers of men and women), you'd have 1,500 female drunk drivers and 10,00 male. So based on the behavior of 8,500 people (the number more men than women that will engage in the risky behavior), you'd be penalizing 491,500 people for nothing other than being male. That would fail the "narrow tailoring" requirement for sex-based discrimination.

Got it. Thanks.