Opinion of the Court
was meant "to endure through a long lapse of ages," Martin v. Hunter's Lessee, 1 Wheat. 304, 326 (1816) (opinion of Story, J.)—we place a high value on having the matter "settled right." In addition, when one of our constitutional decisions goes astray, the country is usually stuck with the bad decision unless we correct our own mistake. An erroneous constitutional decision can be fixed by amending the Constitution, but our Constitution is notoriously hard to amend. See U. S. Const., art. V; Kimble, 576 U. S., at 456. Therefore, in appropriate circumstances we must be willing to reconsider and if necessary overrule constitutional decisions.
Some of our most important constitutional decisions have overruled prior precedents. We mention three. In Brown v. Board of Education, the Court repudiated the "separate but equal" doctrine, which had allowed States to maintain racially segregated schools and other facilities. 347 U. S. 483, 488 (1954). In so doing, the Court overruled the infamous decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537 (1896), along with six other Supreme Court precedents that had applied the separate-but-equal rule. See Brown, 347 U. S., at 491.
In West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, 300 U. S. 379 (1937), the Court overruled Adkins v. Children's Hospital of D. C., 261 U. S. 525 (1923), which had held that a law setting minimum wages for women violated the "liberty" protected by the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause. Id., at 545. West Coast Hotel signaled the demise of an entire line of important precedents that had protected an individual liberty right against state and federal health and welfare legislation. See Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905) (holding invalid a law setting maximum working hours); Coppage v. Kansas, 236 U.S. 1 (1915) (holding invalid a law banning contracts forbidding employees to join union); Jay Burns Baking Co. v. Bryan, 264 U.S. 504 (1924) (holding invalid laws fixing the weight of loaves of bread).
