Facts—Congress enacted the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to combat systematic discrimination against African American voters in a number of states. In certain areas, where voting had been suppressed, the law provided for the suspension of literacy tests, for the…
Facts—Section 4(E) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 provided that individuals who had successfully completed six or more grades in Puerto Rican schools where a language of instruction other than English was used could not be denied the right…
Facts: After the Court invalidated Nebraska’s regulation of “partial birth abortions,” in Stenberg v. Carhart, 530 U.S. 914 (2000), Congress adopted the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, which sought to limit dilation and extraction (D&X) abortion procedures, in which…
Facts—Responding to a report of a weapons disturbance, Houston police legally entered Lawrence’s apartment and discovered another man and him engaged in an intimate sexual act. Both were arrested and convicted by a justice of the peace under a Texas…
Facts—The state of Washington prohibited individuals from aiding suicides (the law does not prohibit the withholding of “life-sustaining treatment”). Physicians who sometimes treated terminally ill individuals challenged the law as an undue burden on the “liberty interest” protected by the…
Facts—Pennsylvania adopted restrictions on abortions. These required informed consent and a twenty-four-hour waiting period, either the consent of at least one parent or the exercise of a judicial bypass mechanism in cases where minors sought abortions, a requirement that a…
Facts—In August 1982 respondent was charged with violating a Georgia statute that had criminalized sodomy. He had committed this act with another male in the bedroom of his home, where they had been discovered by a police officer serving a…
Facts—Title XIX of the Social Security Act established the Medicaid program in 1965 to provide federal financial assistance to states that choose to reimburse certain costs of medical treatment for needy persons. Since 1976, versions of the so-called Hyde Amendment…
Facts—Redhail was a Wisconsin resident who, under a paternity statute, was unable to marry in Wisconsin or elsewhere as long as he maintained a Wisconsin residence. In January 1972, when Redhail was a minor and a high school student, he…
Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113; 93 S. Ct. 705; 35 L. Ed. 2d 147 (1973) Facts—Texas statutes prohibited abortions except by medical advice for the purpose of saving the life of the mother. A woman proceeding under the pseudonym…