Moore v. City of East Cleveland (Troxell v. Grandville)
Holding: The choice of relatives in this degree of kinship to live together may not lightly be denied by the state. The constitutional protection of the sanctity of the family extended to family choice in case in which son and grandsons were living with grandmother, and is not confined within an arbitrary boundary drawn at the limits of the “nuclear family,” consisting of a couple and its dependent children.
Rule:Appropriate limits on substantive due process come not from drawing arbitrary lines but from careful respect for the teachings of history and solid recognition of the basic values that underlie our society.
Griswold v. Connecticut
Holding: Yes. The right to privacy, although not explicitly stated in the Bill of Rights, is a penumbra, formed by certain other explicit guarantees. As such, it is protected against state regulation which sweeps unnecessarily broad. The various guarantees which create penumbras, or zones, of privacy include the 1st ammendment’s right of association, the 3rd ammendment’s prohibition against the peacetime quartering of soldiers, the 4th amendment prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures, the 5th ammendment’s self-incrimination clause, and the 9th amendment reservation to the people of enumerated.
Rationale: The decision to have children or not have children is protected. Cannot interfere with decision with married people to do this.
Eisenstadt v. Baird
Holding: the state statute violated the Equal Protection Clause of U.S. Const. amend. XIV. There was no rational reason for the different treatment of married and unmarried people. The right of privacy to be free of unwanted intrusions into the fundamental decision of whether to have children was the same for married and unmarried alike. The Court rejected appellee’s argument that the distinction was health related, noting that unmarried persons had as great an interest in avoiding the spread of harmful diseases.
Rule: whatever the rights of the individual to access contraceptives may be, the rights must be the same for the unmarried and the married alike.
The equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does not deny to states the power to treat different classes of persons in different ways; it does, however, deny to states the power to legislate that different treatment be accorded to persons placed by statute into different classes on basis of criteria wholly unrelated to the object of that statute.
Lawrence v. Texas (2003)
Holding: Yes, the TX statute is unconstitutional and in violation of substantive due process. Liberty protects a person from unwarranted government intrusions into a dwelling or other private place. The statute seeks to control a personal relationship that, whether or not entitled to formal recognition in the law, is within the liberty of persons to choose without being punished as criminals.
Rationale: This case overruled Bowers. Homosexual consensual activity is protected under liberty interest protected as a fundamental right of 14th Amendment, saying that State cannot interfere. If not protected, State can do what they want under rational-basis review. Court does not characterize it as Equal protection (ie: how are homosexuals different than heterosexuals).
Statue said- persons of the same sex cannot engage in intimate sexual conduct.
Rule: Legislation which makes consensual sodomy btw adults in their own dwelling criminal, violates due process.
Practicing Contemporary Family Law
Barret v. Virginia Stat
arry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause.
Rule: The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.
Zablocki v. Redhail
Holding: No. It is not constitutional. With regard to safeguarding the welfare of the out-of-custody children, appellant’s brief does not make clear the connection between the State’s interest and the statute’s requirements. At argument, appellant’s counsel suggested that, since permission to marry cannot be granted unless the applicant shows that he has satisfied his court-determined support obligations to the prior children and that those children will not become public charges, the statute provides incentive for the applicant to make support payments to his children. Tr. of Oral Arg. 17-20. This “collection device” rationale cannot justify the statute’s broad infringement on the right to marry.
Rule:When a statutory classification significantly interferes with the exercise of a fundamental right, it cannot be upheld unless it is supported by sufficiently important state interests and is closely tailored to effectuate only those interests.
If it discriminates…then you have to apply strict scrutiny.
Turner v. Safely
Facts: inmates wanted to get married state said they weren’t allowed.
Held: Court says inmates don’t lose all const. rights.
