Supreme Court of the United States
Griswold v. Connecticut
Appeal from the Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut
No. 496 Argued: March 29-30, 1965 --- Decided: June 7, 1965
Appellants, the Executive Director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, and its medical director, a licensed physician, were convicted as accessories for giving married persons information and medical advice on how to prevent conception and, following examination, prescribing a contraceptive device or material for the wife's use. A Connecticut statute makes it a crime for any person to use any drug or article to prevent conception. Appellants claimed that the accessory statute, as applied, violated the Fourteenth Amendment. An intermediate appellate court and the State's highest court affirmed the judgment.
Held:
1. Appellants have standing to assert the constitutional rights of the married people. Tileston v. Ullman, 318 U.S. 44, distinguished. P. 481.
2. The Connecticut statute forbidding use of contraceptives violates the right of marital privacy which is within the penumbra of specific guarantees of the Bill of Rights. Pp. 481-486. [p480]
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work of the United States federal government (see 17 U.S.C. 105).
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