Writing for a 7-to-1 majority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the school’s objection to coeducation reflected the same “ancient and familiar fear” that had long kept women out of law and other professions. The state of Virginia had established a separate women’s “leadership” program at a nearby women’s college – students just completed their first year but Ginsburg declared it a “pale shadow” of VMI. In theory, VMI – along with the Citadel, the country’s other all-male military school – could continue to exclude women if they stopped accepting government money. But that’s highly unlikely.
The VMI ruling was expected -as was Justice Antonin Scalia’s impassioned dissent. The court’s been down this road before; in 1982, it barred the exclusion of men from a state-funded nursing school in Mississippi. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman on the high court, wrote that opinion. As she announced her VMI decision last week, Ginsburg-the second woman -mentioned the earlier case and looked over at her colleague. The usually placid O’Connor smiled.
