Susannah William Pollvogt

Beyond Suspect Classifications

Suspect classification analysis and the associated tiers of scrutiny framework are the primary doctrinal features of contemporary equal protection jurisprudence. How plaintiffs fare under these twin doctrines determines the ultimate fate of their equal protection claims. But neither doctrine finds firm footing in precedent or theory. Rather, a close examination of the United States Supreme Court’s equal protection jurisprudence reveals these doctrines as historically contingent and lacking in any principled justification. But rather than disregard the contributions of these cases altogether, this Article mines that same body of law not for the discrete doctrinal mechanisms developed in each case, but for the transcendent equal protection values expressed in their development. It then proposes a doctrinal intervention—based in the Court’s precedent but as of yet unacknowledged—that cures the primary shortcomings of contemporary equal protection