Griswold vs Connecticut 381 U.S.

479

Group 4

Facts
Appellant Griswold is the Executive Director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut. Appellant Buxton is a licensed physician and a professor at the Yale Medical School who served as Medical Director for the League at its Center in New Haven - a center open and operating from November 1 to November 10, 1961, when appellants were arrested.

Information for the arrest

They gave information, instruction, and medical advice to married persons as to the means of preventing conception. They examined the wife and prescribed the best contraceptive device or material for her use. Fees were usually charged, although some couples were serviced free.

Connecticut Statute
The statutes whose constitutionality is involved in this appeal are 53-32 and 54-196 of the General Statutes of Connecticut (1958 rev.). The former provides: "Any person who uses any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception shall 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."

Connecticut Statute
Section 54-196 provides: "Any person who assists, abets, counsels, causes, hires or commands another to commit any offense may be prosecuted and punished as if he were the principal offender. The appellants were found guilty as accessories and fined $100 each, against the claim that the accessory statute as so applied violated the Fourteenth Amendment...

Lower courts decisions

Federal appeals court Connecticut state Supreme Court(Supreme Court of Errors) Both upheld the conviction and fine Therefore, they appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court which heard and decided the case in 1965. On both cases the issue of constitutionality was raised that the accessory statute as so applied violated the Fourteenth Amendment.

Issues raised in the Supreme Court

WON, Buxton and Griswold have legal standing to raise the constitutional rights of a married couple. The Connecticut statute forbidding use of contraceptives violates the right of marital privacy which is within the penumbra of specific guarantees of the Bill of Rights WON, police power of the state negates individual freedom or rights. (*)

Legal Standing (U.S.)

We think that appellants have standing to raise the constitutional rights of the married people with whom they had a professional relationship.

Basis
This case is more akin to Truax v. Raich, 239 U.S. 33 , where an employee was permitted to assert the rights of his employer; Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510 , where the owners of private schools were entitled to assert the rights of potential pupils and their parents; Barrows v. Jackson, 346 U.S. 249 , where a white defendant, party to a racially restrictive covenant, who was being sued for damages by the covenantors because she had conveyed her property to Negroes, was allowed to raise the issue that enforcement of the covenant violated the rights of prospective Negro purchasers to equal protection, although no Negro was a party to the suit.

Decision on Legal Standing

The rights of husband and wife, pressed here, are likely to be diluted or adversely affected unless those rights are considered in a suit involving those who have this kind of confidential relation to them.

Second Issue
WON, the Connecticut Statute is constitutional based on the Bill of Rights.

 The foregoing cases suggest that specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance. See Poe v. Ullman, 367 U.S. 497, 516 -522 (dissenting opinion). Various guarantees create zones of privacy. The right of association contained in the penumbra of the First Amendment is one, as we have seen. The Third Amendment in its prohibition against the quartering of soldiers "in any house" in time of peace without the consent of the owner is another facet of that privacy. The Fourth Amendment explicitly affirms the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." The Fifth Amendment in its SelfIncrimination Clause enables the citizen to create a zone of privacy which government may not force him to surrender to his detriment. The Ninth Amendment provides: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

 The present case, then, concerns a relationship lying within the zone of privacy created by several fundamental constitutional guarantees. And it concerns a law which, in forbidding the use of contraceptives rather than regulating their manufacture or sale, seeks to achieve its goals by means having a maximum destructive impact upon that relationship. Such a law cannot stand in light of the familiar principle, so often applied by this Court, that a "governmental purpose to control or prevent activities constitutionally subject to state regulation may not be achieved by means which sweep unnecessarily broadly and thereby invade the area of protected freedoms." NAACP v. Alabama, 377 U.S. 288, 307 . Would we allow the police to search the sacred precincts of marital bedrooms for telltale signs of the use of contraceptives? The [381 U.S. 479, 486] very idea is repulsive to the notions of privacy surrounding the marriage relationship.

 We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights - older than our political parties, older than our school system. Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred. It is an association that promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects. Yet it is an association for as noble a purpose as any involved in our prior decisions. Reversed.

First Amendment
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Fourteenth Amendment (1)

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Amendment 4 - Search and Seizure

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Philippinization of the case

Francisco, Jr. vs House of Representatives, G.R. No. 160261, November 10, 2003, and as clearly stated in Angara vs Electoral Commission. the court summarized the essential requisites for judicial review

4 Requisitesof JR
1. Actual case or controversy calling for the exercise of judicial power. 2. The person challenging the act must have standing to challenge(legal standing) he must have a personal and substantial interest in the case he has sustained or will sustain direct injury as a result of its enforcement. 3. Question of constitutionality must be raised at the earliest possible oppurtunity. 4. The issue of constitutionality must be the very lis mota (crux) of the case.

White Light Corporation vs City of Manila, G.R. No. 122846, January 20, 2009 We must address the threshold issue of petitioners standing. Petitioners allege that as owners of establishments offering "wash-up" rates, their business is being unlawfully interfered with by the Ordinance. However, petitioners also allege that the equal protection rights of their clients are also being interfered with. Thus, the crux of the matter is whether or not these establishments have the requisite standing to plead for protection of their patrons' equal protection rights. Standing or locus standi is the ability of a party to demonstrate to the court sufficient connection to and harm from the law or action challenged to support that party's participation in the case. More importantly, the doctrine of standing is built on the principle of separation of powers,26 sparing as it does unnecessary interference or invalidation by the judicial branch of the actions rendered by its co-equal branches of government. The requirement of standing is a core component of the judicial system derived directly from the Constitution. 27The constitutional component of standing doctrine incorporates concepts which concededly are not susceptible of precise definition. 28 In this jurisdiction, the extancy of "a direct and personal interest" presents the most obvious cause, as well as the standard test for a petitioner's standing. 29 In a similar vein, the United States Supreme Court reviewed and elaborated on the meaning of the three constitutional standing requirements of injury, causation, and redressability in Allen v. Wright.30 Nonetheless, the general rules on standing admit of several exceptions such as the overbreadth doctrine, taxpayer suits, third party standing and, especially in the Philippines, the doctrine of transcendental importance. 31 For this particular set of facts, the concept of third party standing as an exception and the overbreadth doctrine are appropriate. In Powers v. Ohio,32 the United States Supreme Court wrote that: "We have recognized the right of litigants to bring actions on behalf of third parties, provided three important criteria are satisfied: the litigant must have suffered an injury-in-fact, thus giving him or her a "sufficiently concrete interest" in the outcome of the issue in dispute; the litigant must have a close relation to the third party; and there must exist some hindrance to the third party's ability to protect his or her own interests."33 Herein, it is clear that the business interests of the petitioners are likewise injured by the Ordinance. They rely on the patronage of their customers for their continued viability which appears to be threatened by the enforcement of the Ordinance. The relative silence in constitutional litigation of such special interest groups in our nation such as the American Civil Liberties Union in the United States may also be construed as a hindrance for customers to bring suit.34 American jurisprudence is replete with examples where parties-in-interest were allowed standing to advocate or invoke the fundamental due process or equal protection claims of other persons or classes of persons injured by state action. In Griswold v. Connecticut,35 the United States Supreme Court held that physicians had standing to challenge a reproductive health statute that would penalize them as accessories as well as to plead the constitutional protections available to their patients. The Court held that: "The rights of husband and wife, pressed here, are likely to be diluted or adversely affected unless those rights are considered in a suit involving those who have this kind of confidential relation to them."36 An even more analogous example may be found in Craig v. Boren,37 wherein the United States Supreme Court held that a licensed beverage vendor has standing to raise the equal protection claim of a male customer challenging a statutory scheme prohibiting the sale of beer to males under the age of 21 and to females under the age of 18. The United States High Court explained that the vendors had standing "by acting as advocates of the rights of third parties who seek access to their market or function."38