<Tr> <Th_colspan="2"> Laws applied </Th> </Tr> <Tr> <Td_colspan="2"> U.S. Const . amend . XIV </Td> </Tr> <P> United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515 (1996), is a landmark case in which the Supreme Court of the United States struck down the long - standing male - only admission policy of the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) in a 7 - 1 decision . (Justice Clarence Thomas, whose son was enrolled at VMI at the time, recused himself .) </P> <P> Writing for the majority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg stated that because VMI failed to show "exceedingly persuasive justification" for its sex - based admissions policy, it violated the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause . In an attempt to satisfy equal protection requirements, the state of Virginia had proposed a parallel program for women, called the Virginia Women's Institute for Leadership (VWIL), located at Mary Baldwin College, a private liberal arts women's college . </P>

N the case of united states v. virginia (1996) the supreme court ruled that