''Kirchberg v. Feenstra'', 450 U.S. 455 (1981), was a

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

case in which the Court held a Louisiana

Head and Master law The "Head and Master" laws were a set of American property laws that permitted a husband to have final say regarding all household decisions and jointly owned property without his wife's knowledge or consent. In 1979, Louisiana became the final stat ...

, which gave sole control of marital property to the husband and indicate the husband's dominance over the wife in the marriage, unconstitutional.

Background

In 1974, Joan Feenstra charged her husband Harold had

molested Sexual abuse or sex abuse, also referred to as molestation, is abusive sexual behavior by one person upon another. It is often perpetrated using force or by taking advantage of another. Molestation often refers to an instance of sexual assau ...

their daughter. Harold hired an attorney, Karl Kirchberg, to defend himself against the charges, and mortgaged the Feenstras' home toward paying the cost of that attorney. Joan was not informed of this mortgage because Head and Master provisions of Louisiana law allowed him to do so without her consent or knowledge. She dropped the charges, and the couple separated. Joan did not learn about the mortgage until 1976, when Harold's attorney returned to demand payment and threatened foreclosure. She then filed a lawsuit arguing that Louisiana's laws giving sole control of marital property to the husband were unconstitutional. The district court upheld Louisiana's law. On appeal, the Fifth Circuit overturned the district court, finding the law unconstitutionally violated the Equal Protection Clause, but limited the application of their ruling to future decisions. Feenstra appealed to the Supreme Court.Opinion of the Court at Justia
/ref>

Opinion of the Court

Applying intermediate scrutiny as they had in '' Craig v. Boren,'' the court held that Louisiana's law lacked an "exceedingly persuasive justification" for its sex-based classification, and therefore was in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Further developments

In 1980, during the appeals process, Louisiana changed their laws to eliminate the Head and Master provisions.

''Obergefell v. Hodges''

In 2015, during oral arguments in the

same-sex marriage Same-sex marriage, also known as gay marriage, is the marriage of two people of the same sex or gender. marriage between same-sex couples is legally performed and recognized in 33 countries, with the most recent being Mexico, constituting ...

case ''

Obergefell v. Hodges ''Obergefell v. Hodges'', ( ), is a landmark LGBT rights case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the fundamental right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples by both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protect ...

'' U.S. Supreme Court Justice

Ruth Bader Ginsburg Joan Ruth Bader Ginsburg ( ; ; March 15, 1933September 18, 2020) was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1993 until her death in 2020. She was nominated by Presiden ...

used the example of the Supreme Court's striking down of Louisiana's Head and Master rule in ''Kirchberg v. Feenstra'' to illustrate how "traditional" concepts of marriage had been revised over time.

References

External links

* 1981 in United States case law United States Supreme Court cases United States equal protection case law United States Supreme Court cases of the Rehnquist Court Gender discrimination lawsuits United States gender discrimination case law Marriage law in the United States Legal history of Louisiana History of women in Louisiana {{SCOTUS-case-stub