HIGH COURT REJECTS MALE-ONLY STATUS : WOMEN EXPECTED TO ENTER VMI, THE CITADEL.

Byline: Aaron Epstein Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

Women broke through the last bastion of all-male public education Wednesday when the Supreme Court overwhelmingly declared that they cannot be excluded from the Virginia Military Institute - nor relegated to a ``pale imitation'' of it.

The 7-1 ruling is expected to open both VMI and The Citadel in South Carolina to women. Those venerable, strict military-style institutions, renowned for training men to be leaders, are the only remaining state colleges that limit classes to one sex.

``The constitutional violation in this case is the categorical exclusion of women from an extraordinary educational opportunity afforded men,'' declared Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who as a civil rights lawyer a generation ago argued in the Supreme Court for equality for women.

``What has been rejected is what Virginia attempted to create - one high-quality institution for men and one substandard institution for women,'' said Attorney General Janet Reno, whose Justice Department led the legal fight against VMI's gender discrimination.

Because the court did not decide the constitutionality of separate - but equal - state schools for men and women, Virginia theoretically could set up a women's program identical to VMI's.

However, experts said that would be a practical impossibility, and Deval Patrick, head of the Justice Department's civil rights division, said, ``admitting women to VMI is the only remedy that fits the Constitution.''

George Allen, Virginia's Republican governor, said, ``the nation's highest court has spoken, and we need to bring Virginia into compliance.'' He said he would consult with state officials and VMI ``to determine an appropriate course of action.''

Officials at The Citadel declined to comment. But the speaker of the South Carolina House, Rep. David Wilkins, said, ``it appears to me there's no other option'' than to admit women to The Citadel.

VMI, founded 157 years ago in Lexington, Va., is the oldest military institution in the nation. It operates unusually rigorous, regimented, Spartan and stressful programs designed to produce ``citizen-soldiers.''

Confederate Gen. Thomas ``Stonewall'' Jackson taught there and Gen. George C. Marshall, World War II and postwar soldier and diplomat, is its most illustrious alumnus. The loyalty of its graduates has produced the largest per-student endowment of U.S. undergraduate schools.

The Justice Department, prompted by a complaint from a female high school student eager to attend VMI, filed suit in 1990 to open the school to women.

Virginia sought to preserve VMI's all-male heritage by arguing that its deliberately hostile, high-pressure, physically rigorous military environment would be inappropriate for educating most women, who were said to prefer cooperative methods.

But Ginsburg, announcing the decision from the bench in slow, firm tones, said generalizations and stereotypes about the ``typical'' man or woman ``will not suffice to deny opportunity to women whose talent and capacity place them outside the average description.''

Some women would want to attend VMI, can meet its requirements and would flourish there, she said. To afford them equal protection of the laws, as required by the Constitution's 14th Amendment, they ``cannot be offered anything less,'' Ginsburg observed.

Yet Virginia did offer women something much less, she said. It created ``a pale shadow of VMI in . . . the range of curricular choices and faculty stature, funding, prestige, alumni support and influence.''

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PHOTO Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Opposed separate academies