In Clark v. Jeter, the U.S. Supreme Court examined a Pennsylvania law that imposed a six-year statute of limitations on paternity suits for child support claims. The plaintiff argued this limitation violated her Equal Protection rights under the Fourteenth Amendment as it discriminated against illegitimate children by providing them less time to establish paternity than legitimate children had to prove inheritance rights. The court applied an intermediate level of scrutiny in its review, which requires that discriminatory laws must serve important governmental objectives and be substantially related to achievement of those objectives. In a unanimous decision, the court found that while there were valid state interests such as preventing fraudulent claims and avoiding litigation over stale evidence, these did not justify treating different classes of children unequally when it came to establishing paternal relationships for support purposes versus inheritance purposes. Therefore, they concluded the statute was unconstitutional because it failed to meet intermediate scrutiny standards.

In the dissenting opinion for Clark v. Jeter, Justice Scalia disagreed with the majority's application of intermediate scrutiny to Pennsylvania's six-year limitation on paternity suits. He argued that this case did not involve gender discrimination but rather a difference in treatment based on legitimacy status, which should be subjected to rational basis review instead. According to him, the state had legitimate interests in preventing fraudulent claims and preserving finite resources; hence its statute was constitutional under rational basis review. Furthermore, he criticized the Court’s use of legislative history as an interpretive tool and expressed concern about courts assuming a role similar to legislatures when determining constitutionality.