Griswold v. Connecticut

Griswold v. Connecticut (381 U.S. 479) was a United States Supreme Court case involving the constitutionality of a Connecticut statute (law) prohibiting the use of contraception by any means other than the rhythm method or abstinence. Griswold is considered an important precedent in United States constitutional law as the foundation for the highly controversial Roe v. Wade line of decisions which declared state laws prohibiting abortion unconstitutional.

Appellant Griswold was the Executive Director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut. Appellant Buxton was 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. Both had been arrested for violating a Connecticut law which made it a crime punishable by a $50.00 fine and/or 60 days imprisonment to use "any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception" and which extended the same penalty to anyone "who assists, abets, counsels, causes, hires or commands another" to do so. Griswold and Buxton had been convicted of prescribing contraceptives to married couples in violation of the Connecticut law.

The opinion of the court was delivered by Justice Douglas, and, after finding that the appellants had standing to invoke the constitutional rights of the married people they had provided contraception to, went on to find that the Connecticut law violated the penumbra (shadow) emanating from the First Amendment, Third Amendment, Fourth Amendment and Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which created a "zone of privacy" around the married couples Griswold and Buxton had assisted. This reasoning explicitly relied in part on the Supreme Court's previous decision in Mapp v. Ohio (367 U.S. 643), a case involving search warrant issues, and Griswold is often considered by lawyers to be a legal progeny of Mapp, in the same way that Roe is a progeny of Griswold.

Justices Black and Stewart dissented.

References

All information from the official reports of Griswold v. Connecticut (381 U.S. 479) and Mapp v. Ohio (367 U.S. 643).