430 U.S. 762 (1977)
Deta Mona Trimble is the illegitimate daughter of Jessie Trimble and Sherman Gordon.1 Trimble and Gordon lived together in Chicago with Deta Mona from 1970 until Gordon died in 1974 as the victim of a homicide.2 On January 2, 1973, the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, entered a paternity order finding Gordon to be the father of Deta Mona and ordering him to pay fifteen dollars per week for her support.3 Gordon thereafter supported Deta Mona in accordance with the paternity order and openly acknowledged her as his child.4
Gordon died intestate at the age of twenty-eight, leaving an estate consisting only of a 1974 Plymouth automobile worth approximately twenty-five hundred dollars.5 Shortly after Gordon's death, Trimble, as the mother and next friend of Deta Mona, filed a petition for letters of administration, determination of heirship, and declaratory relief in the Probate Division of the Circuit Court of Cook County.6 That court entered an order determining heirship, identifying as the only heirs of Gordon his father Joseph Gordon, his mother Ethel King, and his brother, two sisters, and a half brother.7 The Circuit Court excluded Deta Mona on the authority of section twelve of the Illinois Probate Act.8
The Illinois Supreme Court affirmed the decision of the Circuit Court on the authority of its earlier decision in In re Estate of Karas.9 The United States Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction to consider the arguments that section twelve violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by invidiously discriminating on the basis of illegitimacy and sex.10
Whether § 12 of the Illinois Probate Act violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by invidiously discriminating on the basis of illegitimacy?11
The Equal Protection Clause requires that statutory classifications based on illegitimacy bear some rational relationship to a legitimate state purpose. Although such classifications are not suspect, the scrutiny applied to classifications based on illegitimacy is not toothless, and a statute must be carefully tuned to alternative considerations rather than broadly discriminating between legitimates and illegitimates without more.12
Yes. The prior paternity adjudication by the Circuit Court of Cook County supplies a reliable and efficient means of proving Gordon's paternity that does not compromise the state's interest in accurate disposition of property at death.13 The total exclusion of Deta Mona therefore fails to satisfy the requirement that the statute be carefully tuned rather than broadly discriminatory.14
Section 12 of the Illinois Probate Act violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by invidiously discriminating on the basis of illegitimacy.15
Related opinions on this issue
Justice Rehnquist dissented on the ground that the Equal Protection Clause does not authorize the Court to function as a council of revision that second-guesses legislative judgments in areas of traditional state responsibility.16 He maintained that the Court's method of identifying a supposed legislative purpose and then measuring the statutory means against that purpose improperly expands judicial review beyond the Clause's text and history.17 In his view, the distinction drawn by section 12 is not mindless or patently irrational because difficulties of proving paternity justify different treatment for illegitimate children claiming through their fathers' estates.18
Rehnquist concluded that the case was constitutionally indistinguishable from Labine v. Vincent and would have affirmed the judgment of the Illinois Supreme Court.19