Note also that while "protected class" is often treated in discussion as if it was a consistent list across all of the law (at least, within, e.g., federal law), this is not the case: protected classes for particular anti-discrimination laws can be different, and may be different from the Constitutional-law set of suspect and quasi-suspect classes (a concept often conflated with that of "protected classes") that are relevant to equal protection analysis under the 14th Amendment (and, though the list of classes within those categories may be different, under similar state constitutional provisions.)