This explains why the Goddess of Justice is blindfolded: she’s applying rational basis scrutiny:
With its holding in Dukes, the Supreme Court has made it clear that in a case such as this, we must apply the test of “minimum rationality”3 and that this test means little more than “anything goes.” I hope that my few words of concurrence are not animated by verjuice, but I feel that I must register my dismay at the prospect of being bound by Dukes.
3 Over the course of the past decade, equal protection review has become something of an opthamological exercise. For looking at challenged statutes, the Supreme Court has prescribed trifocals. In certain special cases, we are to use “strict scrutiny;” in others, “intermediate scrutiny,” and in cases such as this, we are limited to the test of “minimum rationality.” Of course the word “scrutiny” connotes a process whereby we make a careful examination to see if anything is wrong. In fact the standard of review called for in this case, minimum rationality, can hardly be termed scrutiny at all. Rather, it is a standard which invites us to cup our hands over our eyes and then imagine if there could be anything right with the statute.
Arceneaux v. Treen, 671 F.2d 128, 136 (5th Cir. 1982) (Goldberg, J., concurring).
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