Goesaert v. Cleary

Goesaert v. Cleary
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued November 19, 1948 Decided December 20, 1948
Full case name	Valentine Goesaert et al. v. Owen J. Cleary et al.
Citations	335 U.S. 464 (more) 69 S.Ct. 198; 93 L. Ed. 163; 1948 U.S. LEXIS 2715
Case history
Prior	74 F. Supp. 735 (E.D. Mich. 1947), probable jurisdiction noted, 68 S. Ct. 1340 (1948).
Holding
A state law prohibiting a woman from being licensed as a bartender unless she was the wife or daughter of the bar owner did not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Court membership
Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson Associate Justices Hugo Black · Stanley F. Reed Felix Frankfurter · William O. Douglas Frank Murphy · Robert H. Jackson Wiley B. Rutledge · Harold H. Burton
Case opinions
Majority	Frankfurter, joined by Vinson, Black, Reed, Jackson, Burton
Dissent	Rutledge, joined by Douglas, Murphy
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. XIV, Mich. Stat. Ann. § 18990(1).
Overruled by
Craig v. Boren (1976)

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Goesaert v. Cleary

Goesaert v. Cleary, 335 U.S. 464 (1948), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court upheld a Michigan law, which prohibited women from being licensed as a bartender in all cities having a population of 50,000 or more unless their father or husband owned the establishment.^[1] Valentine Goesaert, the plaintiff in the case, challenged the law on the ground that it infringed on the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. Speaking for the majority, Justice Felix Frankfurter affirmed the judgment of the Detroit district court and upheld the constitutionality of the state law. The state argued that since the profession of bartending could potentially lead to moral and social problems for women, it was within the state's power to bar them from working as bartenders. Only when the owner of the bar was a sufficiently close relative to the women bartender could it be guaranteed that such immorality would not be present.

The decision was subsequently overruled by Craig v. Boren.^[2]