14th Amendment

Slaughterhouse

A group of butchers challenged a state-created slaughterhouse monopoly, arguing that it violated the 13th Amendment and the Privileges or Immunities, Due Process, and Equal Protection Clauses of the 14th Amendment. The Court held those clauses protect only a narrow set of national rights, not state-defined civil rights, marking the beginning of the near-total gutting of the Privileges or Immunities Clause.

Bradwell

A fully qualified woman who sought admission to the state bar argued that the Privileges or Immunities Clause protected her right to practice law. The Court held that the right to practice a profession was not a national privilege of citizenship, and the concurrence rooted its denial explicitly in gender-based “separate spheres” ideology.

Minor

A woman denied voter registration argued that voting was a privilege of national citizenship under the 14th Amendment. The Court rejected this, holding that citizenship does not inherently include the right to vote and leaving suffrage regulation entirely to the states.

Civil Rights

African American plaintiffs challenged segregation in privately owned hotels, theaters, and railroads under the 1875 Civil Rights Act. The Court struck the Act down, holding that the 14th Amendment targets only state action—not private discrimination—crippling federal civil rights enforcement for nearly a century.

Plessy

A man classified as Black under Louisiana law intentionally sat in a whites-only railway car to challenge segregation statutes. The Court upheld “separate but equal,” calling racial separation a reasonable exercise of state police power and rejecting the idea that segregation imposed a badge of inferiority.

Brown I

Black schoolchildren challenged mandatory racial segregation in public schools even where facilities were physically equal. The Court held that segregated education is inherently unequal because of the psychological and social harms it inflicts, overruling Plessy in the school context.

Brown II

Following the declaration that school segregation was unconstitutional, the Court addressed the remedy. It ordered desegregation to proceed “with all deliberate speed,” delegating supervision to district courts and enabling widespread local resistance.

Carolene Products

A federal ban on “filled milk” was upheld under rational basis review as a health regulation. But the famous Footnote 4 suggested that laws targeting discrete and insular minorities, distorting the political process, or burdening specific constitutional rights may require heightened scrutiny—laying conceptual groundwork for modern strict scrutiny.

Korematsu

During WWII, a U.S. citizen of Japanese ancestry challenged his exclusion from the West Coast under a military order. The Court announced that racial classifications are “inherently suspect” but nonetheless upheld the exclusion order as a “pressing public necessity,” making it one of the most infamous applications of strict scrutiny in name but not in substance.

Loving

An interracial couple convicted under a state’s anti-miscegenation statute argued that the law violated both equal protection and due process. The Court struck down the ban, holding that racial classifications designed to maintain White supremacy fail strict scrutiny and that the freedom to marry is a fundamental right.

Bakke

A white applicant challenged a medical school’s admissions program that reserved seats exclusively for minority applicants. The Court held that strict racial quotas violate equal protection but said race may be considered as one factor among many to achieve educational diversity.

Grutter

A white applicant challenged a law school’s holistic admissions policy that used race as a “plus factor” in individualized review. The Court upheld the policy, finding that narrowly tailored consideration of race to achieve the compelling interest of educational diversity satisfies strict scrutiny, unlike quota-like systems.

Parents Involved

A school district used race as a tie-breaker to assign students to oversubscribed public schools in order to maintain racial balance. The Court struck the plans down, holding that racial balancing for its own sake is not a compelling interest and that the policies failed strict scrutiny because they were not narrowly tailored.

SFFA

A group of Asian American applicants challenged university admissions programs that considered race as a plus factor. The Court held that such race-conscious admissions violate equal protection because their goals were insufficiently measurable, their use of race was not narrowly tailored, and they effectively created unconstitutional racial stereotypes.

Reed

A state law preferring men over women as estate administrators was challenged by a female applicant. The Court struck down the law under rational basis review with bite, holding that arbitrary sex-based classifications violate equal protection.

Frontiero

A woman in the military challenged a benefits scheme that automatically granted benefits to wives but required husbands to prove dependency. A plurality applied strict scrutiny to sex classifications and invalidated the policy, emphasizing sex discrimination’s historical role, though no majority agreed on the level of scrutiny.

Craig

A state imposed different drinking ages for men and women based on traffic-safety statistics. The Court created and applied intermediate scrutiny, holding that sex classifications must be substantially related to important governmental interests and invalidating the law as relying on weak generalizations.

Geduldig

A state disability program excluded pregnancy from covered conditions. The Court upheld the exclusion, holding that pregnancy classifications are not sex classifications unless they facially discriminate, cementing a major limit on sex-equality claims.

Feeney

A veterans-preference hiring law disproportionately disadvantaged women. The Court upheld the law, holding that disparate impact is insufficient for equal protection liability without proof of discriminatory purpose.

Davis

Black police applicants challenged a written test that disproportionately excluded them. The Court held that disparate impact alone does not trigger strict scrutiny; plaintiffs must show intentional discrimination for equal protection violations.

Williams

A defendant argued that extending imprisonment beyond the statutory maximum solely because of inability to pay fines was unconstitutional. The Court held that such extension violates equal protection because wealth-based imprisonment is impermissible.

Michael M

A male juvenile challenged a statutory-rape law that criminalized only male offenders. The Court upheld the law under intermediate scrutiny, reasoning that the sexes are not similarly situated regarding pregnancy risk and the law was substantially related to preventing teen pregnancy.

Rostker

Men challenged the male-only draft registration requirement. The Court upheld the law, deferring to Congress’s military judgments and noting that women were not eligible for combat roles, making the differential treatment constitutionally permissible.

Vorcheimer I

A girl challenged Philadelphia’s practice of assigning boys to one prestigious high school and girls to another. The court upheld the system, holding that sex separation did not violate equal protection absent proof of inferior opportunities.

Vorcheimer II

The Supreme Court summarily affirmed without opinion. The affirmance left the lower court’s holding in place, meaning gender-separated but “equivalent” schools were not unconstitutional.

Hogan

A male nurse was denied admission to a women-only nursing program. The Court struck the exclusion under intermediate scrutiny, holding that single-sex education justified by “compensatory” aims cannot rely on stereotypes or perpetuate historic gender roles.

Virginia

A male-only military college excluded women and offered no genuinely equal alternative. The Court held the exclusion unconstitutional and clarified that sex classifications must have “an exceedingly persuasive justification” and cannot rest on overbroad generalizations.

Bernal

A naturalized U.S. citizen was denied eligibility to serve as a notary public due to a citizenship requirement. The Court struck the rule, holding that alienage classifications require strict scrutiny unless tied to core governmental functions, which notaries are not.

Rodriguez

Mexican American parents challenged a funding system based on local property taxes, claiming wealth discrimination in education. The Court held that poverty is not a suspect class and education is not a fundamental right, so only rational basis applied—and the funding scheme was upheld.

Murgia

A police officer challenged mandatory retirement at age 50. The Court held that age is not a suspect classification and applied rational basis, upholding the policy as connected to physical fitness concerns.

Cleburne

A group home for people with intellectual disabilities was denied a zoning permit. The Court purported to apply rational basis but struck the ordinance for being rooted in animus, creating “rational basis with bite.”

Romer

Colorado prohibited local antidiscrimination protections for gay and lesbian residents. The Court struck the amendment under rational basis with bite, holding that laws motivated by animus toward a group cannot survive even minimal review.

Skrmetti

Parents challenged Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming medical care for minors. The court upheld the law, rejecting heightened scrutiny for transgender classifications and applying rational basis, setting up the conflict now before the Supreme Court.

Strauss

Same-sex couples challenged California’s constitutional amendment limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples. The state’s supreme court upheld Prop 8 as a permissible amendment while preserving existing marriages, sharply limiting—but not overruling—recognized equality rights.

Lochner

A bakery owner challenged maximum-hours legislation under the liberty of contract. The Court struck the law, holding that economic regulations interfering with contract freedom must meet heightened judicial skepticism—a doctrine later abandoned.

Muller

A laundry owner challenged a law limiting women’s working hours. The Court upheld the law, distinguishing Lochner and relying on gender paternalism and the state’s interest in protecting women’s health.

Nebbia

A grocer challenged price controls on milk as violating due process. The Court upheld the regulation, holding that states may regulate the economy as long as laws have a reasonable relation to a legitimate public purpose, signaling the end of Lochner-era scrutiny.

West Coast Hotel

A chambermaid challenged a minimum-wage statute for women. The Court upheld the law and overruled Lochner’s heightened economic-liberty regime, establishing that due process does not protect freedom of contract against reasonable regulation.

Lee Optical

Opticians challenged a law requiring prescriptions for lens replacements even when unnecessary. The Court upheld the law under extremely deferential rational basis review, emphasizing that legislatures may act even with poor reasoning or imperfect evidence.

Meyer

A teacher was convicted for teaching German to a young child in violation of a statute restricting foreign-language instruction. The Court struck down the law, recognizing a substantive due process right of parents to control their children’s education.

Pierce

A statute requiring all children to attend public school was challenged by private-school operators and parents. The Court struck it down, reaffirming parental liberty to direct children’s education and holding that states cannot eliminate private schooling.

Griswold

A married couple was prosecuted for using contraception under a ban on contraceptives. The Court recognized a constitutional right to privacy within marriage, grounded in the penumbras of the Bill of Rights, and struck the ban.

Zablocki

A man owing child support was barred from marrying without court permission. The Court held the law unconstitutional because it directly burdened the fundamental right to marry and failed heightened review.

Michael H

A biological father sought parental rights over a child born to a married woman. The Court rejected his claim, applying a narrow tradition-based test for substantive due process rights and limiting the recognition of novel liberty interests.

Bowers

A man convicted under a sodomy law challenged the statute as violating privacy rights. The Court upheld the law, holding that there is no fundamental right to engage in homosexual sodomy—later explicitly overruled.

Lawrence

Two men convicted under a same-sex sodomy statute challenged the law. The Court struck it down, overruling Bowers and holding that adults have a protected liberty interest in private intimate conduct.

Windsor

A widow denied federal spousal benefits under DOMA challenged the definition of marriage as opposite-sex only. The Court invalidated DOMA’s federal definition, holding that it violated equal protection principles by stigmatizing lawful same-sex marriages.

Obergefell

Same-sex couples challenged state bans on marriage and nonrecognition of lawful marriages from other states. The Court held that marriage is a fundamental right belonging equally to same-sex couples under both due process and equal protection.

Roe v. Wade

A pregnant woman challenged criminal abortion restrictions. The Court recognized a fundamental right to abortion grounded in privacy and created the trimester framework, limiting state regulation.

Casey

Abortion providers challenged state restrictions under Roe. The Court reaffirmed Roe’s core holding but replaced the trimester framework with the undue-burden standard while upholding most of the challenged regulations.

Dobbs

A clinic challenged Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban. The Court overturned Roe and Casey, holding that abortion is not a fundamental right under the Constitution and returning full regulatory authority to the states.

Boerne

A church challenged a historic-preservation ordinance under RFRA. The Court held RFRA unconstitutional as applied to the states because Congress exceeded its §5 enforcement power by redefining—not enforcing—constitutional rights.

Morrison

A sexual-assault victim sued under the federal civil remedy of VAWA. The Court struck the provision, holding that neither the Commerce Clause nor §5 of the 14th Amendment authorized Congress to regulate private violence.

Hibbs

A state employee sought FMLA leave and sued when denied. The Court upheld Congress’s power under §5 to impose family-care leave requirements on states because the law was congruent and proportional to remedying sex discrimination.

Coleman

A state employee sued the state for damages for denial of self-care medical leave under FMLA. The Court held that Congress lacked §5 authority to subject states to damages suits for the self-care provision because it was not tied to a pattern of sex discrimination.

Heller

A resident challenged a handgun ban and requirement that firearms be kept inoperable in the home. The Court held that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess firearms for self-defense, invalidating the ban.

McDonald

A challenge to Chicago’s handgun ban asked whether the Second Amendment applies to the states. The Court held that the right recognized in Heller is incorporated through the Fourteenth Amendment.

Rahimi

A defendant subject to a domestic-violence restraining order challenged the federal prohibition on firearm possession. The Court upheld the statute under the Bruen history-and-tradition test, holding that disarming dangerous individuals fits within the nation’s historical regulatory tradition.