West Virginia v. B. P. J. · ¶189

Today, for example, the majority states that a plaintiff must identify “an especially large subclass” in which the State’s asserted interest is not furthered before a court can find a classification’s fit lacking or grant relief of any kind. Ante, at 21. You would not know it from reading the majority’s opinion, but Justice Stevens made the same argument dissenting in Caban. He observed that the Court had wrongly found an equal protection violation because the State’s “justification [was] not as strong for some indeterminately small part of the disadvantaged class as it [was] for the class as a whole” and so was invalid “as it applie[d] to that subclass.” 441 U. S., at 409. That was wrong, Justice Stevens said, because Caban had not “demonstrate[d] that its unjust applications are sufficiently numerous and serious to render it invalid.” Id., at 410. To Justice Stevens, given that Caban…

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