Claim of Passante v. Walden Printing Co.

Section 16 of the Workmen’s Compensation Law grants death benefits to any surviving wife of a deceased male employee, but restricts the availability of such benefits only to those surviving husbands who demonstrate dependency upon deceased female employees. We are called upon to determine the constitutionality of this sex-based classification under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. We conclude that the dependency requirement works a denial of equal protection in a number of respects and therefore must be invalidated.

The standards for review and applicable guidelines for…