Family Law

Family Law Cases

Loving v. Virginia (1967)

In 1958, newlyweds Mildred and Richard Loving faced a choice: spend one year in jail, or face 25 years in exile from the state of Virginia. The couple married legally in Washington, D.C., but Judge Leone M. Bazile ruled their new marriage a crime against a Virginia state law that forbid miscegenation, or interracial marriage, because Mildred, then 17, was black and Native American, and Richard, 23, was white… Click to see more

Phillips v. Martin Marietta Corp. (1971)

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited employment discrimination by sex, but plenty of companies at the time loosely interpreted the law. Newspapers still listed separate want ads for men and women in 1970.

When Ida Phillips applied for a job as an aircraft assembler in 1966, the Martin Marietta Corp. said it would not consider her because she had preschool-age children. The Supreme Court ruled against Martin Marietta, but sent the case back for retrial to see if the company could find enough proof that women with young children were unable to perform in the position as well as men with young children.

In his decision, Justice Thurgood Marshall added, “I fear that in this case, where the issue is not squarely before us, the Court has fallen into the trap of assuming that the Act permits ancient canards about the proper role of women to be a basis for discrimination.”… Click to see more

Roe v. Wade (1973)

Jane Roe is a pseudonym for the woman who brought a class-action suit against Henry Wade, a district attorney in Texas in 1970. Roe was pregnant, unmarried and denied an abortion at the time. In 1973, the Supreme Court found that the right to privacy, as implied by the Bill of Rights, allowed a woman to legally seek an abortion without interference from the state. But the court gave states the right to regulate abortion after the first trimester, and the right to restrict abortions in some cases after viability, often deemed to be 20 to 23 weeks into the pregnancy… Click to see more

Georgia v. Randolph (2006)

The Fourth Amendment requires police to gain permission from a person before they search a home without a warrant. But in 2005 the Supreme Court faced the situation where one person at the home says yes, and another says no. Janet Randolph called police complaining that her estranged husband, Scott Randolph, had taken their son. After police arrived, Janet Randolph accused her husband of using cocaine and gave police permission to search their home. But Scott Randolph adamantly refused

The Supreme Court found in favor of Scott Randolph in 2006, ruling, “Thus a disputed invitation, without more, gives an officer no better claim to reasonableness in entering than the officer would have absent any consent.”… Click to see more

Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) : Same Sex Marriage

This recent case arose from multiple state laws banning same-sex marriage. Groups of same-sex couples sued state agencies in Kentucky, Michigan, Tennessee, and Ohio to challenge the state bans on gay marriage. In their arguments, the same-sex couples asserted the 14^th Amendment, and the Equal Protection Clause, along with some claims under the Civil Rights Act. As a result, the U.S. Supreme Court held in favor of the same-sex couples. It ruled that same-sex couples are guaranteed the fundamental right to marry under the U.S. Constitution… Click to see more

Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965)

A landmark decision of the US Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States protects the liberty of married couples to buy and use contraceptives without government restriction. The case involved a Connecticut “Comstock law” that prohibited any person from using “any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception”. The court held that the statute was unconstitutional, and that “the clear effect of [the Connecticut law …] is to deny disadvantaged citizens … access to medical assistance and up-to-date information in respect to proper methods of birth control.” By a vote of 7–2, the Supreme Court invalidated the law on the grounds that it violated the “right to marital privacy”, establishing the basis for the right to privacy with respect to intimate practices. This and other cases view the right to privacy as a right to “protect[ion] from governmental intrusion”… Click to see more