The Court determined that alterations to old-age benefit payments, as presented in the case, were not constitutionally protected.

Congress had the authority to substitute one constitutional calculation method with another, and it was permissible for the new formula to only apply to future cases.

The application of Section 415, with its prospective effect, did not infringe upon the Fifth Amendment rights of the retired male worker.

(1) the sex distinction of 215 permitting old age insurance benefits obtained by women reaching the age of 62 before 1975 to be greater than those obtained by men of the same age with the same earnings record did not violate Fifth Amendment equal protection, since the more favorable treatment of female wage earners was not the result of archaic and overbroad generalizations about women, or of the role-typing society had long imposed upon women, but rather served the permissible purpose of redressing society's longstanding disparate treatment of women, operating directly to compensate women for past economic discrimination, and (2) the age distinction of 215 whereby a man reaching the age of 62 in 1975 or later receives the same benefits as a similarly situated woman, while an older man continues to receive less benefits than a woman of the same age with the same earnings record, did not violate Fifth Amendment equal protection, since old age benefit payments were not constitutionally immunized against alterations such as that made by the 1972 amendment of 215, Congress had expressly reserved the right to alter, amend, or repeal any provision of the Social Security Act, and the Fifth Amendment did not forbid statutory changes to have a beginning and thus discriminate between the rights of an earlier and later time.

The statutory scheme itself, and the legislative history of former § 215(b)(3), demonstrate that the statute was deliberately enacted to "[redress] our society's long-standing disparate treatment of women," Califano v. Goldfarb, ante, at 209 n. 8, and was not "the accidental by-product of a traditional way of thinking about females."

Burger, joined by Stewart, Blackmun, and Rehnquist, concurred in the judgment on the ground that the challenged classification was rationally justifiable on the basis of administrative convenience.