Rules of Law: Rational Basis, Intermediate and Strict Scrutiny?

Question by Tai: Rules of Law: Rational Basis, Intermediate and Strict Scrutiny?
I’m not a law student, nor have I any knowledge of U.S. history or politics, but for a Management class I must understand Rational Basis, Intermediate and Strict Scrutiny. I’ve read the Wikipedia pages and still cannot grasp the concepts of these rules, please explain them as simply as possible (perhaps with examples) and I will thank you forever!

Best answer:

Answer by Emergency Fruit
Strict scrutiny is basically the idea that the government cannot pass a law that unfairly benefits or punishes one type of person over another unless there is a very, very good reason to do so (usually “there’s no other way to achieve an important goal except by this law”). It applies to anything involving race, gender, class, citizenship status, sex orientation, etc. Take affirmative action: the Supreme Court looks at it and asks whether there is a very good reason why the government should give benefits to minorities that it does not give to whites. If they find that the reason isn’t good enough, or that the program is too unfair regardless, they will strike down the law.

Intermediate scrutiny is similar, but basically instead of needing a very good reason to pass the law and favor one group over another, they just need a generally good reason. To stick with race, this would be, for instance, adoption laws that allow the government to prefer giving babies to parents of the same race as the baby. The effect on whites is much smaller here than it would be in affirmative action programs, so the court isn’t as concerned with making sure that the policy is fair or that it’s absolutely necessary to meet a certain goal.

Rational basis is a different analysis, and just looks at whether Congress *could have had* a good reason for passing the law, even if there’s evidence that they had only bad reasons. For instance, Congress passed the drug laws in the 1980s so that possession of crack got you a sentence eight times higher than if you were caught with just cocaine. At the time, it was basically because only blacks had crack, where whites were often richer and could afford cocaine instead. Even though the policy was (unspokenly) about race, because Congress could rationally decide that crack was more dangerous than cocaine, it passed rational basis review.

Most laws, unless they directly and explicitly require the government to favor one group over another, will fall under rational basis review. Hope this helps – message me if you need clarification on anything.

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