83 Wash. 2d 195 - Hanson v. Hutt’s Empirical Analysis
1974
Citation profile
30 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 32 later decisions — most recently January 2011 · most notably 109 Wash. 2d 796 - O'DAY v. King County (1988), Commonwealth v. Butler (1974)
30 state decisions
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 Dandridge v. Williams · Reed v. Reed · Frontiero v. Richardson · 5 Cal. 3d 1 - Sail'er Inn, Inc. v. Kirby · 48 Wash. 2d 545 - In RE OLSEN v. Delmore
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 32 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Sex, like race and lineage, is an immutable trait, a status into which the class members are locked by the accident of birth. What differentiates sex from nonsuspect statuses, such as intelligence or physical disability, and aligns it with the recognized suspect classifications is that the characteristic frequently bears no relation to ability to perform or contribute to society.... The result is that the whole class is relegated to an inferior legal status without regard to the capabilities or characteristics of its individual members.... Where the relation between characteristic and evil to be prevented is so tenuous, courts must look closely at classifications based on that characteristic lest outdated social stereotypes result in invidious laws or practices. ... Laws which disable women from full participation in the political, business and economic arenas are often characterized as "protective" and beneficial. Those same laws applied to racial or ethnic minorities would readily be recognized as invidious and impermissible. The pedestal upon which women have been placed has all too often, upon closer inspection, been revealed as a cage.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“With all of the foregoing considerations in mind, we hold that the classification based upon sex, contained in RCW 50.20.030, is inherently suspect and therefore must be subject to strict judicial scrutiny.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“The voters of this state approved the Equal Rights Amendment and it became article 31 of the Washington State Constitution on December 7, 1972.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.