Reed v. Reed
Case Date: 07/22/1971
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Reed v. Reed, 404 U.S. 71 (1971), was an Equal Protection case in the United States in which the Supreme Court ruled that the administrators of estates cannot be named in a way that discriminates between sexes. After the death of their adopted son Richard Lynn Reed[1]. Sally and Cecil Reed sought to be named the administrator of their son's estate; the Reeds were separated. The Idaho Probate Court specified that "males must be preferred to females" in appointing administrators of estates, so Cecil was appointed administrator. In a unanimous decision, the Court held that the law's dissimilar treatment of men and women was unconstitutional. From Chief Justice Burger's opinion:
To give a mandatory preference to members of either sex over members of the other, merely to accomplish the elimination of hearings on the merits, is to make the very kind of arbitrary legislative choice forbidden by the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment; and whatever may be said as to the positive values of avoiding intrafamily controversy, the choice in this context may not lawfully be mandated solely on the basis of sex.
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