429 U.S. 190 (1976)
In December 1972, appellant Craig, a male between the ages of 18 and 21, was arrested in Oklahoma for possessing and consuming 3.2% beer while under the age of 21.1 Subsequently, Craig and appellant Whitener, a licensed vendor of 3.2% beer in Oklahoma City, filed suit in the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma seeking declaratory and injunctive relief.2
The Oklahoma statute at issue, Okla. Stat., Tit. 37, §§ 241 and 245, prohibited the sale of nonintoxicating 3.2% beer to males under 21 years of age and to females under 18 years of age.3 Prior to 1972, Oklahoma had set different ages of majority and criminal responsibility for males and females.4 After a 1972 court decision, the legislature adjusted most age distinctions to 18 for both sexes while retaining the gender differential in the beer statute.5
A three-judge District Court convened under 28 U.S.C. § 2281 heard the case and upheld the constitutionality of the statutory differential, dismissing the action in 1975.6 Craig attained the age of 21 after the Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction, rendering his personal claim moot.7 The State of Oklahoma introduced statistical surveys of arrest data for driving under the influence and drunkenness, traffic accident statistics, and roadside surveys to support the gender distinction.8
Whitener, as the vendor subject to sanctions for violations, asserted economic injury from the restriction on her customer base and sought to challenge the law on equal protection grounds on behalf of the affected males.9
Whether a licensed vendor of 3.2% beer has standing to assert the equal protection rights of males aged 18 to 20 who are prohibited from purchasing the beverage?10
Yes. Whitener faced sanctions and potential loss of license for selling 3.2% beer to males aged 18 to 21 under the Oklahoma statute.14 She alleged direct economic injury through constriction of her buyers' market and impairment of profits from enforcement of the gender differential.15 The statute addressed legal duties directly to vendors like Whitener, creating a concrete adverseness that satisfied Article III requirements.16
Because the vendor-purchaser relationship positioned Whitener to assert the rights of the affected males vigorously, she established independent standing to raise the equal protection claim on their behalf.17
The licensed vendor has standing to assert the equal protection rights of the young males affected by the statute.18
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Chief Justice Burger dissented from the standing holding.19 He maintained that in this Court a litigant may only assert his own constitutional rights or immunities.20 Males aged 18 to 20 faced no barrier to asserting their own claims in an appropriate forum, as Craig's own litigation of the issue demonstrated before his claim became moot.21
The vendor-customer relationship lacked the special character of the physician-patient relationship that justified third-party standing in Griswold v. Connecticut.22 Permitting vendors to assert customer rights whenever those rights are arguably infringed would introduce a new concept of constitutional standing to which he could not subscribe.23 He would affirm the District Court's judgment upholding the statute.24
Whether Oklahoma's gender-based age differential for the sale of 3.2% beer violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?25
Yes. The Oklahoma statute created an explicit gender-based classification by prohibiting sales of 3.2% beer to males under 21 but allowing sales to females at 18.28 The State advanced traffic safety as an important objective.29 Yet the arrest statistics showed only a 2% rate for males versus 0.18% for females in the 18-to-20 age group, a correlation too tenuous to establish a substantial relationship.30
The surveys failed to isolate the effects of 3.2% beer specifically, account for mileage driven, or demonstrate that the gender line closely served the safety goal rather than reflecting overbroad stereotypes.31 Because the classification did not satisfy the substantial-relationship requirement, it violated the Equal Protection Clause.32
Oklahoma's gender-based age differential for the sale of 3.2% beer violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.33
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Joined by Justice Stevens
Justice Powell concurred in the judgment.34 He agreed that Reed v. Reed supplied the controlling precedent for gender-based classifications subject to a more critical examination than ordinary rational-basis review.35 The statistics offered by the State generally supported the view that young men drive more, possibly are inclined to drink more, and for various reasons are involved in more accidents than young women.36
Even so, those facts and the inferences fairly drawn from them did not justify this classification based on a three-year age differential between the sexes.37 The classification was so easily circumvented as to be virtually meaningless. This gender-based classification did not bear a fair and substantial relation to the object of the legislation.38
Justice Stevens concurred in the judgment.39 He observed that there is only one Equal Protection Clause requiring every State to govern impartially. The classification rested on an accident of birth.40
It perpetuated a rejected tradition of discriminating against males in this age bracket and to the extent it reflected any physical difference between males and females it was actually perverse.41 The statute imposed a restraint on 100% of the males in the class allegedly because about 2% of them had probably violated laws relating to consumption of alcoholic beverages.42 The traffic-safety justification was therefore unacceptable because it visited the sins of the 2% on the 98%.43
Justice Blackmun concurred in the judgment except as to the Twenty-first Amendment discussion.44 He joined the Court's opinion in all other respects.45 He agreed that the Twenty-first Amendment does not save the challenged Oklahoma statute from invalidation under the Equal Protection Clause.46
His position reflected agreement with the majority's application of equal protection principles to the gender classification while reserving judgment on the Amendment's scope in this context.
Justice Stewart concurred in the judgment.47 He agreed that the appellant Whitener has standing to assert the equal protection claims of males between 18 and 21 years old. The disparity created by these Oklahoma statutes amounted to total irrationality.48
The statistics upon which the State relied wholly failed to prove or even suggest that 3.2% beer is somehow more deleterious when it comes into the hands of a male aged 18-20 than of a female of like age.49 The disparate statutory treatment of the sexes without even a colorably valid justification amounted to invidious discrimination.50
Whether the Twenty-first Amendment permits a State to enact a gender-discriminatory regulation of alcoholic beverages that would otherwise violate the Equal Protection Clause?51
No. Although the Twenty-first Amendment grants states broad authority to regulate the sale and distribution of alcoholic beverages, it does not relax the requirements of the Equal Protection Clause or permit invidious gender discrimination.55 Precedent established that state liquor regulations remain subject to equal protection scrutiny.56 The Amendment supplies no independent justification for a classification that fails intermediate scrutiny.57 The gender differential therefore could not be saved by the Twenty-first Amendment.58
The Twenty-first Amendment does not permit Oklahoma's gender-discriminatory regulation of 3.2% beer.59
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Justice Rehnquist dissented on the merits.60 He argued that the rational-basis standard should apply to the gender classification because men challenging a statute that treats them less favorably than women may not invoke a more stringent standard absent impairment of a fundamental interest.61 The statistical evidence of higher male arrest and accident rates provided a sufficient rational relationship to the traffic-safety objective.62
The statute was therefore constitutional without need for heightened scrutiny.63 He would affirm the District Court's judgment.64