| Litigants: | Poe v. Ullman |
| Arguedatea: | March 1 |
| Arguedateb: | 2 |
| Argueyear: | 1961 |
| Decidedate: | June 19 |
| Decideyear: | 1961 |
| Fullname: | Poe et al. v. Ullman, State's Attorney |
| Usvol: | 367 |
| Uspage: | 497 |
| Parallelcitations: | 81 S. Ct. 1752; 6 L. Ed. 2d 989 |
| Prior: | 147 Conn. 48, 156 A.2d 508 (1959); probable jurisdiction noted, . |
| Subsequent: | Rehearing denied, . |
| Holding: | Connecticut law barring possession of birth control not ripe for constitutional challenge because of lack of enforcement. |
| Plurality: | Frankfurter |
| Joinplurality: | Warren, Clark, Whitaker |
| Concurrence: | Brennan (in judgment) |
| Dissent: | Douglas |
| Dissent2: | Harlan |
| Dissent3: | Stewart |
| Dissent4: | Black |
Poe v. Ullman, 367 U.S. 497 (1961), was a United States Supreme Court case, seeking pre-enforcement review, that held in the majority that plaintiffs (because the law had never been enforced) lacked standing to challenge a Connecticut law that banned the use of contraceptives and banned doctors from advising their use. Therefore, any challenge to the law was deemed unripe because there was no actual threat of injury to anyone who disobeyed the law.[1] The same statute would be challenged again (this time successfully) just five years later in Griswold v. Connecticut.[2]
The Supreme Court cites the fact that the law prohibiting use of contraceptives had been on the books since 1879 and that during the near-century of its having been enacted, only one prosecution, in 1940, was ever initiated. Furthermore, the Court cites the fact that Connecticut drug stores openly sold contraceptives, and such an act invited enforcement far more than the private conduct being sued to allow, thus Connecticut is really not enforcing the law and the mere existence of the law does not give the Supreme Court cause to exercise its judicial review.
Plaintiffs appealed from the Connecticut Supreme Court of Errors (Buxton v. Ullman, 147 Conn. 48) which upheld that the use of contraceptive devices was prohibited and that furthermore doctor's could not provide medical advice in the use of contraceptive devices, even for married couples, and even if pregnancy could constitute a serious threat to the health or life of the female spouse. A doctor and patients sought review of the law under Fourteenth Amendment concerns, by suing the State's Attorney. The trial court held that the state legislature had authority to pass the law (Conn. Gen. Stat. §§53-23 and 54-196) under its state police power to affect the public health, safety, morals, or welfare. The trial court cited its responsibility to obey the legislature's will and not weaken its legislative powers.
Justice Harlan dissented and, reaching the merits, took a broad view of the "liberty" protected by the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause to include not merely state violations of one of the first eight amendments which had been held to be "incorporated" in the Fourteenth, but against any law which imposed on "liberty" unjustifiably. Harlan described the "liberty" protected by that clause as "a rational continuum which, broadly speaking, includes a freedom from all substantial arbitrary impositions and purposeless restraints."
Justice Harlan summarizes his view of the scope and content of substantive due process protection is this passage:
Justice Harlan also noted that laws regulating homosexuality, fornication, and adultery could be permitted under this analysis:
Justice Douglas's general view that the Bill of Rights' guarantees, broadly construed, overlapped to produce social spheres and Associations insulated from government interference separate from the core political purposes of the Bill of Rights became the majority opinion in Griswold v. Connecticut.
Douglas addressed the First Amendment rights of doctors.
Douglas next addressed the rights of married couples, contending that that the Connecticut's Law barring the use of contraceptives would be impossible to enforce without violating the First, Third, Fourth, or Fifth Amendments.
While Griswold v. Connecticut's conception of privacy was later characterized as establishing heightened scrutiny of bans upon contraception, Douglas rejected such an approach.
Douglas also emphasized that he believed all of the Bill of Rights applied to the States, consistent with Justice Black's dissent in Adamson v. California.
Justice Harlan's general view has had enormous influence on the modern Supreme Court; Justice David Souter endorsed the general reasoning behind Justice Harlan's test in his concurrence in 1997's Washington v. Glucksberg.[3] Souter wrote that Harlan's dissent used substantive due process, and recent cases demonstrated the "legitimacy of the modern justification" for that approach.
Justice Douglas's approach was adopted in Griswold v. Connecticut, and appeared in other cases such as Lombard v. Louisiana, Bell v. Maryland, and Doe v. Bolton. Privacy was likewise centered for Fourth Amendment purposes in Katz v. United States and Stanley v. Georgia. Following Douglas's retirement, the Supreme Court adopted a more restrained approach towards individual rights guarantees under the Burger Court and Rehnquist Court.
Douglas's preferred approach to incorporation - treating the dissent in Adamson v. California as definitive on the issue of the Bill of Rights - would largely be overlooked by the Supreme Court until Justice Thomas's opinion in McDonald v. City of Chicago.