In the 1974 case Taylor v. Louisiana, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a state law excluding women from jury service unless they had previously filed a written declaration of their desire to serve was unconstitutional. The court held that this violated the defendant's Sixth Amendment right to an impartial jury drawn from a fair cross section of the community and also discriminated against women in violation of their Fourteenth Amendment rights. This decision overturned precedent established by Hoyt v Florida (1961), which upheld similar laws on grounds that woman’s domestic role justified her exclusion from juries.

In the dissenting opinion for Taylor v. Louisiana, Justice Rehnquist argued that the majority's decision to overturn precedent was not justified by changes in factual circumstances or legal understanding. He contended that there were still valid reasons why a state might want to exempt women from jury service, such as family responsibilities and societal attitudes towards women's roles. Furthermore, he believed that it was up to states rather than federal courts to decide how best to balance these considerations against the goal of achieving diverse juries. In his view, this case did not involve discrimination against a suspect class or infringement on fundamental rights but instead concerned permissible distinctions between men and women based on their different situations in life.