That is one of the problems with the 14th. Somehow, I feel that the court's aggressive use of the equal protection clause has been to enforce the doctrine that: some animals are more equal than others.
It's such a travesty, that they even have that clause to use, in the first place.
Casey Martin, if you didn't know, sued because he can't walk long distances and must use a golf cart to complete 18 hole tournaments. The PGA had long since said in their written rules, that no player would be allowed a golf cart. The Supreme Court changed the PGA rules, so that Casey can now ride a golf cart. The PGA is not even a State or a state funded agency. States, are supposed to be the only entities restricted by the equal protection clause. Now judges are breaking out of even the broad boundaries of the 14th Amendment. There ought to be a law that says no unelected judge can rule on a 14th Amendment case. Legislators ought to be elected.
In that sense, it was different than a lot of the 14th Amendment cases in which the judiciary finds that a state statute is unconstitutional. In Martin, the court was just applying a statute that was passed by Congress. For its part, Congress claimed it was acting under the constitutional authority granted to it by both the Fourteenth Amendment and the commerce clause.