Connecticut had a statute making it a crime to use contraceptives and another statute making it a crime to assist, abet, or counsel their use. Estelle Griswold, executive director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, and Dr. C. Lee Buxton, a licensed physician and Yale professor, opened a birth-control clinic in New Haven to provide information, instruction, and medical advice to married couples. They were arrested, convicted as accessories for giving married persons information and medical advice about contraception, and fined. They challenged the convictions as violating the Constitution.
Does the Constitution protect the right of married couples to use contraception, making Connecticut's ban on the use of contraceptives unconstitutional?
The Constitution protects certain privacy rights not expressly listed in a single provision but found in the penumbras formed by specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights. A law that broadly forbids married couples from using contraceptives unconstitutionally intrudes on the marital relationship and the zone of privacy surrounding it.
Yes. The Court held that the Connecticut statute forbidding the use of contraceptives violated the constitutional right of marital privacy and was therefore unconstitutional.
Justice Douglas reasoned that specific guarantees in the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth Amendments create penumbras that establish zones of privacy. Marriage is an association lying within such a protected zone, and the Connecticut law directly reached into the marital bedroom by forbidding the use of contraceptives rather than merely regulating sale or distribution. Because the statute's sweep was intolerably broad and destructive of marital privacy, it could not stand. Concurring opinions grounded the result more specifically in the Ninth Amendment and in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of liberty.
Justice Black, joined by Justice Stewart, argued that although the law was offensive and unwise, no general right of privacy appears in the Constitution that would authorize the Court to invalidate it. Justice Stewart separately described the statute as an "uncommonly silly law" but maintained it was nevertheless constitutionally permissible.
Griswold is a foundational substantive-due-process and privacy decision. It recognized a constitutional privacy interest in marriage and became a major precedent for later reproductive-autonomy and intimate-association cases, including Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438 (1972), Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), Carey v. Population Services International, 431 U.S. 678 (1977), and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992). Its broader privacy reasoning also influenced cases such as Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003).
Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438 (1972) |
Abstain |
Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973) |
Abstain |
Carey v. Population Services International, 431 U.S. 678 (1977) |
Abstain |
Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992) |
Abstain |
Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003) |
Abstain |
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