Sally Reed and Reed versus Reed
Near Boise, Idaho
A marker here notes that Sally Reed lived in this neighborhood, and her name belongs in the history of American law. Sally Reed was a Boise mother, separated from her husband, whose teenage son died. Under Idaho law at the time, when a man and a woman were equally entitled to administer an estate, the man was to be chosen automatically.
Sally Reed challenged that rule, and her case climbed all the way to the United States Supreme Court. In nineteen seventy-one, in Reed versus Reed, the Court ruled unanimously in her favor. It was the first time in history that the justices used the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to strike down a law for discriminating against women.
The decision opened the door to a generation of women's rights cases. It began with an ordinary Boise woman who refused to accept that the law could prefer a man simply for being a man.
