In applying increasingly exacting intermediate scrutiny, the courts have noted that illegitimate persons are a stigmatized minority, are vastly outnumbered politically, and are the target of long-standing and continuing invidious legal discrimination.

Like race or gender, the court has stressed that an illegitimate person's status of birth is a condition over which she has no control, and it has no bearing on her ability or willingness to contribute to society. Rationally, imposing legal burdens on an illegitimate person in order to express disapproval of the conduct of her parents is illogical, unjust, and contrary to the fundamental principle that legal burdens should have some relationship to individual wrongdoing. The courts have found such scrutiny necessary for a number of reasons. Restrictions based on illegitimacy are also subjected to intermediate scrutiny in the Equal Protection context. Brumby, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held that firing based on transgender status was a form of sex discrimination, and therefore subject to intermediate scrutiny. Virginia (concerning male-only admission to the Virginia Military Institute). Alabama (concerning specific strikes against male jurors during jury composition) and United States v. For example the court applied similar exacting intermediate scrutiny when ruling on sex-based classifications in both J.E.B. As such, the court applied intermediate scrutiny in a way that is closer to strict scrutiny and in recent decisions the Court has preferred the term 'exacting scrutiny' when referring to the intermediate level of Equal Protection analysis. Hogan in 1982, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the burden is on the proponent of the discrimination to establish an 'exceedingly persuasive justification' for sex-based classification to be valid. 190 (1976), which was the first case in the United States Supreme Court which determined that statutory or administrative sex-based classifications were subject to an intermediate standard of judicial review. In the context of sex-based classifications, intermediate scrutiny applies to constitutional challenges of equal protection and discrimination.ДЄn example of a court using intermediate scrutiny came in Craig v. Judicially crafted ( common law) rules are also valid only if they conform to the requirements of Equal Protection.

Equal Protection analysis also applies to both legislative and executive action regardless if the action is of a substantive or procedural nature. As the Fourteenth Amendment applies directly to the states, the incorporation process was unnecessary to hold this restriction against state and local governments. Although the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause applies only to state and local governments, the United States Supreme Court has implied an Equal Protection limitation on the federal government through a process known as ' reverse incorporation'. Laws subject to Equal Protection scrutiny Д¬onstitutional Equal Protection analysis applies not only to challenges against the federal government, but also to state and local governments. 1 Laws subject to Equal Protection scrutiny.

Rational scrutiny