While the Court has historically given gender less protection than race in the area of discrimination law, I have long believed that the Court would continue to move in the direction of equating gender with race.  On May 27, 2003, the Court issued an interesting opinion, which push in this direction.  The Court wrote:

Congress responded to this history of discrimination by abrogating States' sovereign immunity in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 78 Stat. 255, 42 U. S. C. §2000e-2(a), and we sustained this abrogation in Fitzpatrick, supra. But state gender discrimination did not cease. "[I]t can hardly be doubted that ... women still face pervasive, although at times more subtle, discrimination ... in the job market." Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U. S. 677, 686 (1973). According to evidence that was before Congress when it enacted the FMLA, States continue to rely on invalid gender stereotypes in the employment context, specifically in the administration of leave benefits. Reliance on such stereotypes cannot justify the States' gender discrimination in this area. Virginia, supra, at 533. The long and extensive history of sex discrimination prompted us to hold that measures that differentiate on the basis of gender warrant heightened scrutiny; here, as in Fitzpatrick, the persistence of such unconstitutional discrimination by the States justifies Congress' passage of prophylactic §5 legislation.

The Court set forth the legal test relating to gender discrimination as follows:

For a gender-based classification to withstand such scrutiny, it must "serv[e] important governmental objectives," and "the discriminatory means employed [must be] substantially related to the achievement of those objectives." United States v. Virginia, 518 U. S. 515, 533 (1996) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). The State's justification for such a classification "must not rely on overbroad generalizations about the different talents, capacities, or preferences of males and females."

If you are interested in reading the opinion, it can be found on Findlaw at:  http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=US&navby=case&vol=000&invol=01-1368