Griswold v. Connecticut

Background of the case

The Connecticut law at issue in this case had been challenged in an earlier Supreme Court case, Poe v. Ullman (1961). In Poe, The Court dismissed the claim of a doctor and his patients that the Connecticut law denied their Fourteenth Amendment Due Process rights, on the ground that the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue because the law had not been enforced in many years. In that case, Justice John Marshall Harlan II wrote one of the most-cited dissenting opinions in Supreme Court history, arguing for a broad interpretation of the "liberty" protected by the Due Process Clause.

Related Topics:
Poe v. Ullman - Fourteenth Amendment - Due Process - John Marshall Harlan II

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A few months after the Poe decision came down, Estelle Griswold opened a birth control clinic to dispense contraceptives, in order to test Connecticut's law once again. She was arrested and convicted under the Connecticut law, and her appeal reached the Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case even though Griswold asserted the rights of her patients to possess contraceptives, as opposed to her own right to distribute them.

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