Docket 496
Griswold v. Connecticut
DecidedJun 7, 1965
7-2decision
Source: CourtListener.
Court strikes down Connecticut's ban on married couples using contraceptives
Impact8/10
What it does
The ruling strikes down Connecticut's criminal ban on using contraceptives and on giving advice or assistance to married couples about birth control. It establishes that the Constitution protects a right of marital privacy even though no single clause names it explicitly, finding this right in the combined 'penumbras' (shadow zones) of several amendments.
Who benefits
Married couples in Connecticut who wish to use contraceptives, and doctors and counselors like the Planned Parenthood clinic staff who provide advice or medical assistance about birth control.
Who is affected
Connecticut state prosecutors and lawmakers, who lose the ability to criminally enforce this particular law against married couples and their medical advisors.
Practical impact
Connecticut and other states with similar contraceptive bans lost the ability to enforce them against married couples, and doctors and clinics could resume providing birth control advice and materials without fear of prosecution. The decision established a constitutional foundation for privacy-based rights that later rulings built upon regarding contraception access for unmarried people and other personal liberty questions.
Majority reasoning
Justice Douglas wrote that specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have 'penumbras'—implied zones of protection—formed by emanations that give those guarantees life and substance, citing examples like the First Amendment's protection of association even though association is not mentioned in its text. He identified privacy zones created by the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth Amendments and concluded that marriage falls within a zone of privacy older than the Bill of Rights itself. The Court reasoned that a law banning the use of contraceptives, rather than regulating their manufacture or sale, sweeps too broadly and has a 'maximum destructive impact' on the marital relationship, asking rhetorically whether the state could search marital bedrooms for evidence of contraceptive use. The Court also held that the clinic operators had standing to raise the constitutional rights of the married couples they served, since the criminal conviction directly threatened those rights.
Dissent reasoning
Justice Black, joined by Justice Stewart, argued there is no general constitutional 'right of privacy' written into the Constitution, and that treating the Fourth Amendment or any other provision as merely protecting 'privacy' gives it a narrower reading than it deserves. He rejected the due process and Ninth Amendment arguments together, contending both simply let judges strike down any law they personally find unwise, unreasonable, or offensive, without any textual basis. Black also warned that this approach revives the discredited 'natural law due process' reasoning of Lochner-era cases and represents a court usurping the legislature's role, since the proper way to change an unpopular law is through elected representatives, not judicial invalidation. Separately, Justice Stewart, joined by Justice Black, called the Connecticut law 'uncommonly silly' but found no provision in the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, or Fourteenth Amendments that this law actually violates, arguing the Ninth Amendment was designed to protect state and federal power balance, not to authorize courts to void state laws, and that the remedy for a bad law is repeal by the legislature, not a court ruling.
Constitutional question
Does a state law banning the use of contraceptives by married couples, and punishing anyone who helps them, violate rights protected by the Constitution?