J.E.B. v. Alabama ex rel. T.B. 1994

Petitioner: J.E.B.

Respondent: Alabama ex rel. T.B.

Petitioner's Claim: That by striking men from his jury, Alabama violated his constitutional rights.

Chief Lawyer for Petitioner: John F. Porter III

Chief Lawyer for Respondent: Lois B. Brasfield

Justices for the Court: Harry A. Blackmun, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Anthony M. Kennedy, Sandra Day O'Connor, David H. Souter, John Paul Stevens

Justices Dissenting: William H. Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas

Date of Decision: April 19, 1994

Decision: The Supreme Court sent J.E.B.'s case back to the trial court to determine whether Alabama had gender-neutral reasons for striking men from the jury.

Significance: With J.E.B., the Supreme Court said striking jurors because of their gender violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The American system of justice uses jury trials. A jury is a group of citizens, usually numbering twelve, that hears and decides a legal case. Juries are supposed to be impartial, which means fair, neutral, and open-minded. The use of impartial juries allows parties to be judged fairly by their peers from the community.

Selecting a jury for a case is a two-stage process. In the first stage, the court creates a large pool of people from the community to serve as jurors. This pool is called a venire. In the second stage, the court and lawyers select twelve people from the venire to be the jury for a specific case. During this stage the lawyers for both parties get to make jury challenges. A jury challenge allows the parties to exclude specific people from the jury.

There are two kinds of jury challenges. A challenge "for cause" happens when a party has a good reason to believe a juror might not be able to decide a case fairly. For example, if a juror is one litigant's brother, the other side can use a for cause challenge to strike the juror from the jury. There is no limit to the number of for cause challenges a party can make during jury selection.

The second kind of challenge is called a peremptory challenge. Each party gets a limited number of peremptory challenges. They allow the parties to exclude jurors who the lawyers feel will be against their cases. Traditionally, a lawyer could use peremptory challenges without giving a good reason. All he needed was a hunch that a potential juror would rule against his client. Peremptory challenges were one way for parties to make sure they got an impartial jury.

In Batson v. Kentucky (1986), the Supreme Court decided that lawyers are not allowed to use peremptory challenges to strike jurors just because of their race. For example, a lawyer who represents an African American cannot strike white jurors because he thinks white people will be against his client. That violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which prevents states from allowing discrimination based on race. In J.E.B. v. Alabama ex rel. T.B., the Supreme Court had to decide whether the Equal Protection Clause prevents lawyers from using peremptory challenges to strike jurors because of their gender.

Jury of His Female Peers

T.B. was the mother of a young child in Alabama. She believed that J.E.B. was the child's father. (The courts used the parents' initials to protect their privacy.) J.E.B. denied that he was the father, so Alabama sued J.E.B. for T.B. Alabama wanted to prove that J.E.B. was the father and then force him to pay child support, which is money to take care his child.

On 21 October 1991, the case went to trial and the parties began jury selection. They had to pick a jury of twelve from thirty-six people in the venire. Alabama believed women would be better for its case against J.E.B., so it used its peremptory challenges to strike nine male jurors. The resulting jury had no men on it.

J.E.B. believed Alabama violated the Equal Protection Clause by eliminating men from the jury. He urged the court to extend Batson, which prohibited race-based peremptory challenges, to gender-based challenges too. The trial court denied J.E.B.'s request and held the trial with the all-female jury. The jury decided J.E.B. was the father of T.B.'s child, and the court ordered J.E.B. to pay child support. J.E.B. appealed the decision, but the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals affirmed and the Supreme Court of Alabama refused to review the case. J.E.B. finally took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Equal Protection Includes Men and Women

With a 6–3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of J.E.B. Writing for the Court, Justice Harry A. Blackmun said gender-based peremptory challenges violate the Equal Protection Clause.

Although the case involved peremptory challenges against men, lawyers in other cases used challenges to strike women from juries. Blackmun said striking women reinforces the old-fashioned idea that women are less capable than men. In fact, it sends America back to the 1800s, when laws prevented women from serving on juries. Men made such laws because they thought trials were too ugly for ladies, who belonged at home taking care of their families.

The Supreme Court refused to support such "outdated misconceptions concerning the roles of females in the home rather than in the marketplace and world of ideas." Women, like African Americans, went too long in the United States without equal rights. Women were not allowed to vote until 1920, when the United States adopted the Nineteenth Amendment. Women were not allowed to serve on juries in some states until the 1960s.

In American history, then, women suffered discrimination just like African Americans. The United States adopted the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 to prevent discrimination against African Americans. Likewise, the Equal Protection Clause must protect women too. Gender-based peremptory challenges could not survive in a society that wanted to end illegal discrimination.

HESTER VAUGHAN TRIAL

H ester Vaughan was a housekeeper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the mid-1800s. When she became pregnant from being raped by a member of the household, Vaughan left to rent a small, unheated room where she waited for her child to be born. Because she had little money, Vaughan became malnourished. She gave birth around February 8, 1868.

Two days later, Vaughan asked a neighbor to give her a box in which to put her baby, who was dead. The neighbor reported this to the police, who arrested Vaughan and charged her with murder. At the time, women were not allowed to be jurors in Pennsylvania. Vaughan's all-male jury convicted her of murder and the court sentenced her to death.

Prominent women leaders stepped in to ask Pennsylvania Governor John W. Geary to pardon Vaughan, which means to forgive her and get rid of her death sentence. Dr. Susan A. Smith told Governor Geary that she believed Vaughan's baby died during childbirth. Women's rights leaders Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton objected to convicting Vaughan with a jury that contained no women. In the summer of 1869, Governor Geary pardoned Vaughan on the condition that she return to England, which she did.

Justice White said ending gender-based peremptory challenges would benefit litigants, jurors, and society. Litigants get impartial juries that contain a fair cross section of the community. Jurors get the right to participate in the justice system regardless of sex. Society gains confidence in a system that does not discriminate against men or women.

Suggestions for further reading

Frost-Knappman, Elizabeth, Edward W. Knappman, and Lisa Paddock, eds. Courtroom Drama: 120 of the World's Most Notable Trials. Detroit: Gale Research, 1998.

Guinther, John. The Jury in America. New York: Facts on File Publications, 1988.

Summer, Lila E. The American Heritage History of the Bill of Rights: The Seventh Amendment. New Jersey: Silver Burdett Press, Inc., 1991.

Wolf, Robert V. The Jury System. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 1999.

Zerman, Melvyn Bernard. Beyond a Reasonable Doubt: Inside the American Jury System. New York: Crowell, 1981.