Supreme Court of the United States

Estelle T. GRISWOLD et al. Appellants,

v.

STATE OF CONNECTICUT.

No. 496.

Argued March 29, 1965.

Decided June 7, 1965.

Defendants were convicted of violating the Connecticut birth control law. The Circuit Court in the Sixth Circuit, Connecticut, rendered judgments, and the defendants appealed. The Appellate Division of the Circuit Court affirmed, and defendants appealed. The Connecticut Supreme Court of Errors, 151 Conn. 544, 200 A.2d 479, affirmed, and the defendants appealed. The Supreme Court, Mr. Justice Douglas, held that the Connecticut law forbidding use of contraceptives unconstitutionally intrudes upon the right of marital privacy.
Reversed.
Mr. Justice Black and Mr. Justice Stewart dissented.

West Headnotes

[1] KeyCite Notes

92 Constitutional Law
  92II Construction, Operation, and Enforcement of Constitutional Provisions
    92k41 Persons Entitled to Raise Constitutional Questions
      92k42.1 Particular Statutes or Actions Attacked
        92k42.1(3) k. Crime and Punishment. Most Cited Cases
          (Formerly 92k42)

Planned Parenthood League's executive director and medical director who had been convicted as accessories for giving information, instruction, and medical advice to married persons as to means of preventing conception had standing to question constitutionally of Connecticut law forbidding use of contraceptives. C.G.S.A. §§ 53-32, 54-196; U.S.C.A.Const. art. 3, § 1 et seq.

[2] KeyCite Notes

92 Constitutional Law
  92III Distribution of Governmental Powers and Functions
    92III(B) Judicial Powers and Functions
      92k70 Encroachment on Legislature
        92k70.3 Inquiry Into Motive, Policy, Wisdom, or Justice of Legislation
          92k70.3(4) k. Wisdom. Most Cited Cases
            (Formerly 92k70(3))

The Supreme Court does not sit as a super-legislature to determine the wisdom, need, and propriety of laws that touch economic problems, business affairs, or social conditions.

[3] KeyCite Notes

92 Constitutional Law
  92V Personal, Civil and Political Rights
    92k90 Freedom of Speech and of the Press
      92k90(1) k. In General. Most Cited Cases
        (Formerly 92k90)

The state may not, consistently with the spirit of the First Amendment, contract the spectrum of available knowledge. U.S.C.A.Const. Amend. 1.

[4] KeyCite Notes

92 Constitutional Law
  92V Personal, Civil and Political Rights
    92k90 Freedom of Speech and of the Press
      92k90(2) k. "Press", "Speech" and "Freedom" Defined. Most Cited Cases
        (Formerly 92k90)

The right of freedom of speech and press includes not only right to utter or to print, but right to distribute, right to receive, right to read and freedom of inquiry, freedom of thought, and freedom to teach. U.S.C.A.Const. Amend. 1.

[5] KeyCite Notes

92 Constitutional Law
  92V Personal, Civil and Political Rights
    92k82 Constitutional Guaranties in General
      92k82(6) Particular Rights, Limitations, and Applications
        92k82(7) k. Privacy in General. Most Cited Cases
          (Formerly 92k82)

The First Amendment has a penumbra where privacy is protected from governmental intrusion. U.S.C.A.Const. Amend. 1.

[6] KeyCite Notes

92 Constitutional Law
  92V Personal, Civil and Political Rights
    92k91 k. Right of Assembly and Petition. Most Cited Cases

The right of assembly extends to all irrespective of their race or ideology. U.S.C.A.Const. Amend. 1.

 [7] KeyCite Notes

92 Constitutional Law
  92V Personal, Civil and Political Rights
    92k91 k. Right of Assembly and Petition. Most Cited Cases

The right of "association," like the right of "belief," is more than the right to attend a meeting; it includes the right to express one's attitudes or philosophies by membership in a group or by affiliation with it or by other lawful means; association in that context is a form of expression of opinion; and while it is not expressly included in the First Amendment its existence is necessary in making express guarantees fully meaningful. U.S.C.A.Const. Amend. 1.

[8] KeyCite Notes

92 Constitutional Law
  92V Personal, Civil and Political Rights
    92k82 Constitutional Guaranties in General
      92k82(6) Particular Rights, Limitations, and Applications
        92k82(7) k. Privacy in General. Most Cited Cases
          (Formerly 92k82)

Specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras; one of these penumbras is privacy. U.S.C.A.Const. Amends. 1, 3, 4, 5, 9, 14.

[9] KeyCite Notes

92 Constitutional Law
  92V Personal, Civil and Political Rights
    92k82 Constitutional Guaranties in General
      92k82(4) k. Vagueness and Overbreadth in Restriction. Most Cited Cases
        (Formerly 92k82)

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 area of protected freedom.

[10] KeyCite Notes

4 Abortion and Birth Control
  4k1.20 Constitutional and Statutory Provisions
    4k1.30 k. Validity of Statute. Most Cited Cases
      (Formerly 4k1)

92 Constitutional Law
  92XII Due Process of Law
    92k274 Deprivation of Personal Rights in General
      92k274(5) k. Privacy; Marriage, Family, and Sexual Matters. Most Cited Cases
        (Formerly 92k274(2), 92k274)

Connecticut law forbidding use of contraceptives unconstitutionally intrudes upon the right of marital privacy. C.G.S.A. § 53-32; U.S.C.A.Const. Amends. 1, 3, 4, 5, 9, 14.
**1679 *479 Thomas I. Emerson, New Haven, Conn., for appellants.
Joseph B. Clark, New Haven, Conn., for appellee.


*480 Mr. Justice DOUGLAS delivered the opinion of the Court.
Appellant Griswold is 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.
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.
The statutes whose constitutionality is involved in this appeal are ss 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.'
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. The Appellate Division of the Circuit Court affirmed. The Supreme Court of Errors affirmed that judgment. 151 Conn. 544, 200 A.2d 479. We noted probable jurisdiction. 379 U.S. 926, 85 S.Ct. 328, 13 L.Ed.2d 339.
*481 [1] We think that appellants have standing to raise the constitutional rights of the married people with whom they had a professional relationship. Tileston v. Ullman, 318 U.S. 44, 63 S.Ct. 493, 87 L.Ed. 603, is different, for there the plaintiff seeking to represent others asked for a declaratory judgment. In that situation we thought that the requirements of standing should be strict, lest the standards of 'case or controversy' in Article III of the Constitution become blurred. Here those doubts **1680 are removed by reason of a criminal conviction for serving married couples in violation of an aiding-and-abetting statute. Certainly the accessory should have standing to assert that the offense which he is charged with assisting is not, or cannot constitutionally be a crime.
This case is more akin to Truax v. Raich, 239 U.S. 33, 36 S.Ct. 7, 60 L.Ed. 131, where an employee was permitted to assert the rights of his employer; to Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510, 45 S.Ct. 571, 69 L.Ed. 1070, where the owners of private schools were entitled to assert the rights of potential pupils and their parents; and to Barrows v. Jackson, 346 U.S. 249, 73 S.Ct. 1031, 97 L.Ed. 1586, 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. And see Meyer v. State of Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390, 43 S.Ct. 625, 67 L.Ed. 1042; Adler v. Board of Education, 342 U.S. 485, 72 S.Ct. 380, 96 L.Ed. 517; NAACP v. State of Alabama, 357 U.S. 449, 78 S.Ct. 1163, 2 L.Ed.2d 1488; NAACP v. Button, 371 U.S. 415, 83 S.Ct. 328, 9 L.Ed.2d 405. 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.
[2]