What is the equal protection clause? What three tests are associated with discrimination in law?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The equal protection clause is part of the Fourteenth Amendment, which reads in part that no state shall "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." This clause has been used by the courts to protect minority and disadvantaged groups from discrimination. The tests associated with legal discrimination are the reasonable-basis test and the strict-scrutiny test. The first test stipulates that some inequalities (such as unequal tax rates for people of different income levels) are acceptable as long as they are related to legitimate government interests. The second test is premised on the belief that race- and ethnicity-based classifications are "suspect classifications" assumed to have discrimination as their purpose. There is a third form of judgment-an "intermediate" category, which has been used with regard to sex classifications and is less rigid than the strict-scrutiny test but more rigid than the reasonable-basis test. For example, the exclusion of women from the military draft has been judged by the courts to be constitutional, whereas most other forms of gender discrimination in law have been judged unconstitutional.