381 U.S. 479 (1965)
Estelle Griswold served as Executive Director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut.1 Dr. C. Lee Buxton served as the League's Medical Director and was a professor at Yale Medical School.2 Together they opened and operated a center in New Haven that was open from November 1 to November 10, 1961.3
At the center they gave information, instruction, and medical advice to married persons as to the means of preventing conception.4 They examined the wife and prescribed the best contraceptive device or material for her use.5 Fees were usually charged, although some couples were serviced free.6
The statutes involved were sections 53-32 and 54-196 of the General Statutes of Connecticut (1958 rev.).7 Section 53-32 made it a crime to use any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception.8 Section 54-196 punished accessories as principals.9 The appellants were found guilty as accessories and fined $100 each.10
The Appellate Division of the Circuit Court affirmed the convictions.11 The Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut affirmed that judgment in State v. Griswold, 151 Conn. 544, 200 A. 2d 479.12 The United States Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction.13
The appellants asserted standing to raise the constitutional rights of the married persons with whom they had a professional relationship.14 A criminal conviction for serving married couples removes doubts about case or controversy.15 The rights of husband and wife would be diluted unless considered in a suit involving those who have this kind of confidential relation to them.16
Whether the appellants have standing to assert the constitutional rights of the married persons with whom they had a professional relationship?17
Appellants have standing to raise the constitutional rights of the married people with whom they had a professional relationship.18 A criminal conviction for serving married couples in violation of an aiding-and-abetting statute removes doubts about case or controversy.19 The rights of husband and wife 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.20
Yes. The appellants Griswold and Buxton were convicted as accessories under sections 53-32 and 54-196 for giving advice to married persons at their New Haven center. Their professional relationship with the married couples means that the rights of husband and wife would be diluted unless asserted here.21 Similar cases permitted employees or school owners to assert rights of others.22
The appellants have standing to raise the constitutional rights of the married persons they served.23
Whether Connecticut General Statutes sections 53-32 and 54-196, as applied to the provision of contraceptive advice and materials to married couples, violate the Fourteenth Amendment?24
The Constitution does not explicitly mention a right of privacy.25 The First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth Amendments create zones of privacy.26 The right of marital privacy is protected within the penumbras of these guarantees.27 The Connecticut statute as applied to married couples violates the right of marital privacy and is therefore unconstitutional.28
Yes. The present case concerns a relationship lying within the zone of privacy created by several fundamental constitutional guarantees.29 The law operates directly on an intimate relation of husband and wife and their physician's role in one aspect of that relation.30 The statute forbidding the use of contraceptives rather than regulating their manufacture or sale seeks to achieve its goals by means having a maximum destructive impact upon that relationship.31
The very idea of allowing police to search the sacred precincts of marital bedrooms for telltale signs of the use of contraceptives is repulsive to the notions of privacy surrounding the marriage relationship.32
The statute as applied violates the Fourteenth Amendment and the convictions must be reversed.33
Related opinions on this issue
Joined by Warren, C. J., And Brennan, J.
Justice Goldberg concurred that the right of marital privacy is a fundamental personal right retained by the people within the meaning of the Ninth Amendment.34 He agreed that the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause is not limited to rights specifically mentioned in the first eight amendments.35 The Ninth Amendment lends strong support to the view that liberty is not restricted to those rights.36
Goldberg stressed that the statute infringes the fundamental right of marital privacy without any showing of a compelling subordinating state interest that is necessary to the accomplishment of a permissible state policy.37
Justice Harlan concurred in the judgment but wrote separately to emphasize that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment stands on its own bottom and is not dependent upon the provisions of the Bill of Rights.38 He believed the Connecticut statute violates basic values implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.39 The proper constitutional inquiry is whether the statute infringes the Due Process Clause because it violates those basic values, and for reasons stated in his prior dissenting opinion in Poe v. Ullman he concluded that it does.40
Justice White concurred in the judgment but rested the decision on the ground that the statute fails to satisfy the strict scrutiny test applicable to infringements of fundamental rights.41 The statute as applied to married couples is an arbitrary and unreasonable interference with the right of marital privacy.42 The state offered only one justification, the policy against promiscuous or illicit sexual relationships, but the ban on use by married persons in no way reinforces that policy and sweeps too broadly.43
Joined by Stewart, J.
Justice Black dissented, arguing that there is no general right of privacy explicitly or implicitly protected by the Constitution.44 He rejected the substantive due process approach used during the Lochner era to invalidate legislation the Court considers arbitrary or unreasonable.45 Although the law was offensive to him personally, Black could find nothing in the Bill of Rights or elsewhere in the Constitution that prohibits a State from enacting such a law, and the Court should not sit as a super-legislature.46
Joined by Black, J.
Justice Stewart dissented, agreeing with Justice Black that the law is an uncommonly silly law but that the Court is not asked to say whether the law is wise or foolish.47 He could find no prohibition in the Constitution against the Connecticut statute.48 The Court is simply using the Due Process Clause to impose its own notions of liberty upon the States.49
The people of Connecticut are free to persuade their fellow citizens that the law is unwise.50