Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965), is a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States protects the liberty of married couples to use contraceptives without government restriction. The case involved a Connecticut law that prohibited the use of "any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception". The court held that the statute was unconstitutional, and that its effect was "to deny disadvantaged citizens ... access to medical assistance and up-to-date information in respect to proper methods of birth control." By a vote of 7–2, the Supreme Court invalidated the law on the grounds that it violated the "right to marital privacy", establishing the basis for the right to privacy with respect to intimate practices. This and other cases view the right to privacy as "protected from governmental intrusion"..
Although the U.S. Bill of Rights does not explicitly mention "privacy", Justice William O. Douglas wrote for the majority, "Would we allow the police to search the sacred precincts of marital bedrooms for telltale signs of the use of contraceptives? The very idea is repulsive to the notions of privacy surrounding the marriage relationship." Justice Arthur Goldberg wrote a concurring opinion to clarify that the Ninth Amendment to the United States Constitution shows the framers' view that there are fundamental rights beyond those enumerated in the Constitution. Justice John Marshall Harlan II wrote a concurring opinion arguing that privacy is protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, while Justice Byron White argued that Connecticut's law failed the rational basis standard.
Background Griswold v. Connecticut originated as a prosecution under the General Statutes of Connecticut. Connecticut law made it illegal to use "any drug, medicinal article, or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception". Violators could be "fined not less than fifty dollars or imprisoned not less than sixty days nor more than one year or be both fined and imprisoned".
In the late 19th and early 20th century, physicians in the United States largely avoided the publication of any material related to birth control, even when they often recommended or at least gave advice regarding it to their married patients. Then in 1914, Margaret Sanger openly challenged the public consensus against contraception. She influenced the Connecticut Birth Control League (CBCL) and helped to develop the eventual concept of the Planned Parenthood clinics.
The first Planned Parenthood clinic in Connecticut opened in 1935 in Hartford. It provided services to women who had no access to a gynecologist, including information about artificial contraception and other methods to plan the growth of their families. Several clinics were opened in Connecticut over the following years, including the Waterbury clinic that led to the legal dispute. In 1939, this clinic was compelled to enforce the 1879 anti-contraception law. This caught the attention of the CBCL leaders, who remarked on the importance of birth control for cases in which the lives of the patients depended upon it.
During the 1940s, two cases arose from the provision of contraception by the Waterbury clinic, leading to legal challenges to the constitutionality of Connecticut statutes that banned the use of contraceptives, but these failed on technical grounds. In Tileston v. Ullman (1943), a doctor and mother challenged the law on the grounds that a ban on contraception could, in certain sexual situations, threaten the lives and well-being of patients. The U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the appeal on the grounds that the plaintiff lacked standing to sue on behalf of his patients. Yale School of Medicine gynecologist C. Lee Buxton and his patients brought a second challenge to the law in Poe v. Ullman (1961). The Supreme Court again dismissed the appeal, on the grounds that the case was not ripe: the plaintiffs had not been charged or threatened with prosecution, so there was no actual controversy for the Court to resolve.
The polemic around Poe led to the appeal in Griswold v. Connecticut, primarily based on the dissent of Justice John Marshall Harlan II in Poe, one of the most cited dissents in Supreme Court history.
He argued, foremost, that the Supreme Court should have heard the case rather than dismissing it. Thereafter, he indicated his support for a broad interpretation of the Due Process Clause. On the basis of this interpretation, Harlan concluded that the Connecticut statute violated the Constitution.
After Poe was handed down in June 1961, the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut (PPLC) decided to challenge the law again. Estelle Griswold served on the PPLC as executive director from 1954 to 1965. Struggling through legal battles against birth control restrictions in Connecticut, Griswold and PPLC made an initial effort to financially support women who wanted contraceptives to bus to cities in New York and Rhode Island. Griswold and Dr. Buxton (PPLC medical volunteer), opened a birth control clinic in New Haven, Connecticut, "thus directly challeng[ing] the state law". The clinic opened on November 1, 1961, and that same day received its first ten patients and dozens of appointment requests from married women who wanted birth control advice and prescriptions. Less than two days after the fact, police officers arrived, to which Griswold explained in detail both the operations of the clinic and openly admitted to breaking state law. A week later, the detectives arrived with arrest warrants. Griswold and Buxton were arrested, tried in a one-day bench trial, found guilty, and fined $100 each. The conviction was upheld by the Appellate Division of the Circuit Court, and by the Connecticut Supreme Court.
Supreme Court decision On June 7, 1965, the Supreme Court issued a 7–2 decision in favor of Griswold that struck down Connecticut's state law against contraceptives.
Opinion of the Court
Seven justices formed the majority and joined an opinion written by Justice William O. Douglas. The Court held that the U.S. Constitution protects "marital privacy" as a fundamental constitutional right, but it rejected the notion it needed to identify only a singular source for the right in the Constitution's text. The Court rejected the Due Process Clause of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution as the source of the marital privacy right, because at the time the Court still formally rejected the doctrine of substantive due process due to its association with the 1905 decision Lochner v. New York, and with economic problems, business affairs and social conditions rather than the intimate relationships of married persons and their physicians.
Instead of trying to justify the right to marital privacy under substantive due process, the Court said that the marital relationship is one "lying within the zone of privacy governed by several fundamental constitutional guarantees" and the opinion discusses various landmark cases where specific parts of the bill of rights have been held to cover areas that are not necessary included in the text of their own specific provisions within the Bill of Rights, such as how the right of association is deemed covered by the First, and other examples noted involved the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments. It referenced earlier cases where the Court had found personal liberties that were constitutionally protected despite not being specifically enumerated in the Constitution, such as the constitutional right to parental control over childrearing found in the early 20th century cases Meyer v. Nebraska (1923) and Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925). The Court viewed marital privacy right's implicit nature to be similar, and in a now well-known line Douglas used the metaphor of shined light and its shadows to describe it.
Reasoning that the provisions of the Bill of Rights created "emanations" of protection that created "penumbras" within which rights could still be covered even if not explicitly enumerated in the Constitution, Douglas wrote that the right to marital privacy fell within this protection. The Court concluded that Connecticut's anti-contraception law violated this right to privacy, and therefore was unconstitutional. Douglas reasoned that the right to marital privacy was "older than the Bill of Rights", and ended the opinion with an impassioned appeal to the sanctity of marriage in the Anglo-American culture and common law tradition.
Concurrences Justice Arthur Goldberg concurred with the Court and wrote a separate opinion to emphasize his view that the Ninth Amendmentwhich states that if the Constitution enumerates certain rights but does not enumerate others it does not mean that the other rights do not existwas sufficient authority on its own to support the Court's finding of a fundamental constitutional right to marital privacy. Justice John Marshall Harlan II also concurred with the Court, and wrote a concurring opinion arguing that the right to privacy should be protected under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Justice Byron White concurred only in the judgment, and wrote an opinion describing how he thought Connecticut's law failed rational basis scrutiny, saying: "I wholly fail to see how the ban on the use of contraceptives by married couples in any way reinforces the State's ban on illicit sexual relationships."Griswold, 381 U.S. at 505 (White, J., concurring in the judgment), quoted in .
Dissents Justices Hugo Black and Potter Stewart dissented from the Court's decision. Both justices' dissents argued that because the U.S. Constitution does not expressly mention privacy in any of its provisions, the Court had no basis to strike down Connecticut's anti-contraception law. Black's dissent concluded: "I get nowhere in this case by talk about a constitutional 'right of privacy' as an emanation from one or more constitutional provisions. I like my privacy as well as the next one, but I am nevertheless compelled to admit that government has a right to invade it unless prohibited by some specific constitutional provision."Griswold, 381 U.S. at 508 (Black, J., dissenting), quoted in .
Precedent for later cases Later decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court extended the principles of Griswold beyond its particular facts.
Right to birth control for unmarried couples, 1972 Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972) extended Griswold's holding to unmarried couples. The argument in Eisenstadt was that it was a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to deny unmarried couples the right to use contraception when married couples did have that right (under Griswold). Writing for the majority, Justice Brennan wrote that Massachusetts could not enforce the law against married couples because of Griswold v. Connecticut, so the law worked "irrational discrimination" if not extended to unmarried couples as well.
Right to abortion for any woman, 1973