court." The court - fearing that if they allowed women to become lawyers, they would thereby allow women to hold any civil office - was not prepared to hold that women could be lawyers. Other opinions Although the majority opinion made virtually no reference to Bradwell's sex and did not decide the case on the basis of her being a woman, three justices found that fact to be critical. Justice Bradley's opinion concurring in the Court's judgment claimed, "The natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life.... The paramount destiny and mission of women are to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother. This is the law of the Creator" (83 U. S. 130, 142). That was at odds with Bradley's dissent in the Slaughterhouse Cases in which he had argued, with respect to men, that "the right of any citizen to follow whatever lawful employment he chooses to adopt (submitting himself to all lawful regulations) is one of his most valuable rights, and one which the legislature of a State cannot invade, whether restrained by its own constitution or not" (83 U.S. 36, 114). The sole dissenter, Chief Justice Chase, was unable to file an opinion because of deteriorating health. Aftermath Because the Supreme Court limited the application of the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Constitution to the privileges of noncitizens in foreign United States states and massively limited the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment in the Slaughterhouse Cases, parties alleging discrimination later turned to the Equal Protection Clause. In 1971, the Supreme Court would for the first time use the Equal Protection Clause to overturn a gender-based distinction in Reed v. Reed. It then applied only a rational basis review to strike down a decision giving males preference to females to administer estates. The Court later applied intermediate scrutiny in Craig v. Boren, an approach that is still applied. The same year that the opinion in this case was handed down, Bradwell was also denied appointment as notary public by the governor of Illinois. Bradwell's case in part prompted the Illinois Legislature to adopt a statute in 1872 forbidding sex discrimination in professional licensing. Toward the end of her life, the Illinois Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court admitted Bradwell to practice law nunc pro