Privacy+Cases

=__**Privacy cases: //The phrase "right to privacy" isn't anywhere in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, yet Court decisions have established it//**__ =

// Griswold v Connecticut // > > > In a 7:2 decision, Griswold won favor with the court. The court ruled that the while the Constitution doesn’t guarantee privacy, provisions in the Bill of Rights create zones that establish a right to privacy. Since the Connecticut statute conflicts with this entitled marital privacy, it is null and void. > > > The Court guaranteed individuals’ rights to privacy regarding marital decisions. This decision reinforces the protection of individuals liberty for freedom from an oppressive government. The final decision tied in the first, third, fourth and ninth amendments to create this new constitutional right of marital privacy. > > // Hardwick v Georgia // > > In a 5:4 decision, the Court ruled that the act of sodomy was unconstitutional. Justice Byron White argued that the act of Sodomy was neither “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty” or “deeply routed in the Nation’s history”. > > Hardwick v. Bowers limited the liberties protected to man under the Equal Rights Act. > > // Lawrence v Texas // > > In a 6:3 decision in favor of Lawrence, Kennedy’s Court ruled that the “Homosexual Conduct” law was unconstitutional because it violated the Due Process Clause. Justices Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas all filed dissents for the ruling because the ruling did not follow the ruling of Hardwick v. Georgia. > > Lawrence v. Texas entitled homosexuals to the legal liberty of privacy in regards to intimate affairs. It provided a section of personal life that the government had no power to intervene in, protecting against the intrusion of personal and privates lives of individual citizens. >  Roe v Wade  **Jane Roe was a Texan citizen, single, and pregnant, in 1970. According to the Laws of Texas, it was a felony to abort a fetus, “unless life threatening conditions are bestowed upon the mother”. **
 * Griswold, the executive director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, and Buxton, the League’s Medical Director, sued the State of Connecticut for conviction under a Connecticut law criminalizing advocating contraceptives to married persons. The appellants felt the Constitution protected the right for couples to be educated by counselors on contraception.
 * Michael Hardwick sued the Municipal Court of Atlanta for convicting him for engaging in the act of sodomy with an adult of the same gender. Hardwick wanted the law that criminalized sodomy to to ruled as unconstitutional under the 14th amendment.
 * After being fined for $200 for engaging in homosexual conduct against a Connecticut law that criminalized sexual intimacy between two people of the same gender, John Geddes Lawrence and Tyron Garner appealed their case to the Supreme Court. Lawrence and Garner argued that the Fourteenth Amendment protected them by guaranteeing equal protection by laws.

**Roe files a suit against Wade, who was the District Attorney of Dallas Country, on the grounds that there was a violation on the statute of personal liberty, as well as a violation of the right to own privacy. She further went to say that these Rights are granted in the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendment. **

**The Ruling of the Case stood as follows: **
 * The Supreme Court held that women had the right to an abortion, because it fell under the right to privacy, according to the recognition in the case Griswold v. Connecticut, as well as the guarantee of the Right in the 14th amendment. Rehnquist dissented on the Court’s ruling, explaining in his post conviction essay. **

**The impact this case had was that currently, the laws of 46/50 states now legalize abortion, based on the Court’s ruling. Furthermore, interpretation of privacy have broadened, as well as this case establishing the most controversial topic in government(it is also the most popular choice for a Litmus Test). This case broadened the definition of the right to own privacy--not the liberty to the pursuit of life. ** <span style="color: #008080; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">// Romer v Evans // > > <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #008080; font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 17px; vertical-align: baseline;">In a 6:3 decision, the Court decided that Amendment 2 of the Colorado State Constitution was in violation of the the equal protection clause. Amendment 2 would single out the LGBT community, limiting them from legal protections against discrimination. Justices Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas dissented the Court’s ruling. > > <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #008080; font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 17px; vertical-align: baseline;">Romer v. Evans entitled those facing sexual orientation discrimination to be protected under the Constitution from oppression. The decision also promoted a stop to a period of anti-gay initiatives and also set the standards for more gay rights decisions. >
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #008080; font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 17px; vertical-align: baseline;">Colorado voters adopted Amendment 2 into their State Constitution, forbidding protections of the LGBT community against sexual orientation discrimination. Evans argued that Amendment 2 was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

<span style="color: #008080; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">// Webster v Reproductive Health Services // **<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #008080; font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 17px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">To begin with, the trial started with the State of Missouri, after the state passed a law which made clear the “fact” that the life of each human being begins at conception. The law further stated that “unborn children have protected interests in life, health, and well being. **


 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #008080; font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 17px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Characteristics of the statute are as follows: **
 * 1) <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #008080; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #008080; font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 17px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Required all Missouri state laws interpretation in order to provide <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #008080; font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 17px; vertical-align: baseline;">__unborn children(controversy is the definition)__ <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #008080; font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 17px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> with rights equal to those given to other persons, as well as subjected to limitations imposed by the federal constitution and court rulings
 * 2) <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #008080; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #008080; font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 17px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Prohibited <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #008080; font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 17px; vertical-align: baseline;">__government-employed__ <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #008080; font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 17px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> doctors from aborting a <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #008080; font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 17px; vertical-align: baseline;">__fetus(is a fetus an unborn child?)__ <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #008080; font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 17px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> they believed to be viable, or in a state where the mother’s life is not in danger/
 * 3) <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #008080; font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 17px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Prohibited state employees or facilities the ability to assist in abortions, except when the mother's life was in danger
 * 4) <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #008080; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #008080; font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 17px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Prohibited the spending public funds, employees, or facilities to "encourage" a woman to have an abortion, except where her life wa <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #008080; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">s in danger (nothing about rape as seen in Roe v. Wade).


 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #008080; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Webster, state attorney, was the person who filed for an appeal! **


 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #008080; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Though abortion is a controversy, the Court found no violations or challenged provisions that the Missouri legislation committed--their provisions were deemed constitutional. There were three reasoning The Court Found: **


 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #008080; font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 17px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">1) The Court held that the preamble of the state laws had not been applied, nor violated, in any (concrete) manner for the purposes of restricting abortions, and thus did not present a constitutional question. Rather they saw that abortions could be provided so long as medical care is involved. **


 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #008080; font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 17px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">2) The Court held that the Due Process Clause did not require states to enter into business of abortion. It also did not create affirmative rights to the government to provide aid in the pursuit of (establishing) constitutional rights. **


 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #008080; font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 17px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">3) The Court found no case or controversy existed in relation to the counseling provisions of the law. Finally, the Court upheld the viability testing requirements, arguing that the State's interest in protecting potential life could come into existence before the point of viability. The Court emphasized that it was not revisiting the essential portions of the holding in Roe v. Wade, meaning they would not conduct acts to revisit the case, seeing as--though the topic/controversy is similar--the “violations” and issues were different. **


 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #008080; font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 17px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This case impacted not only more controversy of abortion, but also the controversy on the definition of fetus(when is it “okay” to abort?) as well as a new idea that, though it is unconstitutional to deny a woman the right to privacy and to abort a fetus, states can regulate the terms as to what is a “proper” abortion. **