SC cases Flashcards
Griswold v Connecticut
1965; inferred a right to privacy from the 1st, 3rd, 4th and 9th Amendments.
US v Texas
2016; Supreme Court upheld a Texas order effectively stalling DAPA.
Plessy v Ferguson
1896; held that the doctrine of “separate but equal” was constitutional.
Brown v Board of Education of Topeka
1954; outlawed segregation in schools
Marbury v Madison
1803; established the Supreme Court’s ability to carry out judicial review
Regents of the University of California v Bakke
1978: the university could not use explicit quotas when admitting students from racial minorities, but could “take race into account”.
Gratz v Bollinger
2003: the court struck down the Uni of Michigan’s affirmative action-based admissions programme for being too “mechanistic” - all black, Hispanic and Native American applicants were automatically awarded 20 of the 150 points needed for admission.
Grutter v Bollinger
2003: the court upheld the Uni of Michigan Law School’s affirmative action-based admissions programme because it was “individualised.” Sandra Day O’Connor wrote that the court expected that AA would no longer be needed in such cases in 25 years’ time.
Adarand Constructors v Pena
1995: Sandra Day O’Connor said that affirmative action plans should be “narrowly tailored.”
Fisher v Texas
2016: the white Abigail Fisher was rejected by the Uni of Texas and claimed she had been the victim of discrimination because minority race students with less impressive qualifications had got in. She lost, though the court was split 4-3 (Scalia not yet replaced, Kagan recused herself). Obama wrote an amicus brief supporting the university.
Parents Involved v Seattle School District
2007: Roberts - “the way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
Roe v Wade
1973; affirmed a woman’s right to abortion.
Trump v Hawaii
2018: court upheld the Muslim travel ban.
Husted v A Philip Randolph Institute
2018: court upheld an Ohio law which allowed voters to be purged from registration rolls according to rules which had been found to disproportionately affect people of colour.
Abbot v Perez
2018: Texas was free to use redistricting maps that a lower court had said were drawn to disenfranchise Hispanic and Af-Am voters.
Carpenter v US
2018: court ruled that police need a search warrant to access phone records - seen as a landmark for privacy rights in the digital age.
Shelby County v Holder
2013: s4 of the Voting Rights Act 1965, which required states with a history of discrimination to obtain federal approval before changing their electoral law, was unconstitutional.
DC v Heller
2008: overturned a Washington DC ban on handguns in the home, and a requirement that shotguns be kept unloaded, disassembled or with a trigger lock.
Citizens Utd v FEC
2010: overturned congressional restrictions on company spending in federal elections on First Amendment grounds, effectively leading to Super PACs.
NFIB v Sibelius
2012: upheld Obamacare, save for the provision to forcibly extend Medicare.
Obergefell v Hodges
2015: state bans on same sex marriage violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
McCutcheon v FEC
2014: aggregate contribution limits to election campaigns violate the First Amendment.
Whole Women’s Health v Hellerstedt
2016: Texas’ requirements on abortion providers - e.g. that they had to meet standards of medical centres performing more complex operations - did not offer benefits sufficient to justify the difficulties they placed on access to abortion. They were therefore struck down.
US v Windsor
2013: the 1996 Defence of Marriage Act was unconstitutional because it denied federal benefits to same-sex couples that were available to married couples.
Zelman v Simmons Harris
2002: court upheld an Ohio programme giving financial aid to parents allowing them to send children to religious schools (1st Amendment, religion)
Town of Greece v Galloway
2014: town and city councils can begin meetings with prayer, even if it clearly favoured one religion (1st Amendment, religion)
McConnell v FEC
2004: upheld the section of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold) that banned soft money.
Ring v Arizona
2002: death penalties imposed by judges, not juries, violate the 6th Amendment because they infringe the right to trial by jury
Roper v Simmons
2005: unconstitutional to sentence anyone to death for a crime committed before they were 18
Baze v Rees
2008: lethal injection is not a cruel and an unusual punishment and so does not violate the 8th Amendment. Confirmed in 2015 by Glossip v Gross.
Lawrence v Texas
2003: overturned Bowers v Hardwick 1986, which upheld Georgia’s anti-sodomy laws. (Example of courts going against stare decisis.)
Snyder v Phelps
2011: Westboro Baptist Church’s protests at the funerals of US soldiers (placards saying “God killed your sons” and “Pray for more dead soldiers) were protected by the First Amendment. (Example of upholding rights even when unpopular to do so.)
Elonis v US
2015: Elonis’ conviction for posting rap lyrics threatening his ex-wife was overturned: the jury was wrong to base its decision on whether a “reasonable person” would have taken the threats seriously, and instead should have considered whether Elonis meant them seriously. (Example of upholding rights even when unpopular to do so.)
Kyollo v US
2001: under the 4th Amendment the police do need a warrant to search a house using thermal imaging. (Example of SC challenging authority.)
Boumedienne v Bush
2008: foreign suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have the constitutional right to challenge their detention. (Example of SC challenging authority.)
NLRB v Noel Canning
2014: Obama had acted unconstitutionally when making appointments to the National Labour Relations Board during a recess. (Example of SC challenging authority.)
