Califano v. Webster’s Empirical Analysis
1977
Citation profile
113 federal appellate · 27 district · 117 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 485 later decisions (62 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Personnel Administrator of Mass. v. Feeney (1979), Davis v. Passman (1979)
113 federal appellate · 27 district · 117 state decisions — followed in 20 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Craig v. Boren · Flemming v. Nestor · Frontiero v. Richardson · Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld · Rodriquez v. United States
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 485 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“'classifications by gender must serve important governmental objectives and must be substantially related to achievement of those objectives.'”
18 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[r]eduction of the disparity in economic condition between men and women caused by the long history of discrimination against women has been recognized as such an important governmental objective.”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Orr v. Orr · Ensley Branch, N.A.A.C.P. Donald Nixon William Moss Alvin Mahaffey, Jr., Birmingham Fire Fighters Association 117 Birmingham Association of City Employees, Intervenors v. George Seibels, Individually and as Mayor of the City of Birmingham, John W. Martin Major Florence Ida McGruder Sam Coar, Birmingham Fire Fighters Association 117 Birmingham Association of City Employees Billy Gray, Intervenors v. City of Birmingham George C. Seibels, Jr. Mayor of Birmingham Jefferson County Personnel Board, United States of America, Birmingham Fire Fighters Association 117, Intervenors, Robert K. Wilks James A. Bennett Floyd E. Click James D. Morgan Joel Alan Day, Plaintiffs-Intervenors-Appellants v. Jefferson County, City of Birmingham and George G. Seibels“the legislative history is clear that the differing treatment of men and women in former § 215(b)(3) was not “the accidental byproduct of a traditional way of thinking about females,” Califano v. Goldfarb, supra, 430 U.S. 199, at 223 , [ 97 S.Ct. 1021, at 1035 ], 51 L.Ed.2d 270 (Stevens, J., concurring in the result), but rather was deliberately enacted to compensate for particular economic disabilities suffered by women.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.