AP Gov Supreme Court Cases - MSHS

Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States

Congress did not unconstitutionally exceed its powers under the Commerce Clause by enacting Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibited racial discrimination in public accommodations. Northern District of Georgia affirmed.

McConnell v. Federal Election Commission

Not all political speech is protected by the First Amendment from government infringement.

Miller v. California

Obscene materials are defined as those that the average person, applying contemporary community standards, find, taken as a whole, appeal to the prurient interest; that depict or describe, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable state law; and that, taken as a whole, lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

Wallace v. Jaffree

State endorsement of prayer activities in schools is prohibited by the First Amendment.

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission

A provision of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act prohibiting unions, corporations and not-for-profit organizations from broadcasting electioneering communications within 60 days of a general election or 30 days of a primary election violates the free speech clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. United States District Court for the District of Columbia reversed.

Texas v. Johnson

A statute that criminalizes the desecration of the American flag violates the First Amendment. Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed.

Adkins v. Children's Hospital

Adkins v. Children's Hospital, 261 U.S. 525 (1923), is a United States Supreme Court opinion holding that federal minimum wage legislation for women was an unconstitutional infringement of liberty of contract, as protected by the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment.

Clinton v. City of New York

Clinton v. City of New York, 524 U.S. 417 (1998), is a legal case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the line-item veto as granted in the Line Item Veto Act of 1996 violated the Presentment Clause of the United States Constitution because it impermissibly gave the President of the United States the power to unilaterally amend or repeal parts of statutes that had been duly passed by the United States Congress. The decision of the Court, in a six-to-three majority, was delivered by Justice John Paul Stevens.

McCulloch v. Maryland

Congress chartered The Second Bank of the United States. State of Maryland passed legislation to impose taxes on the bank. The Court held that Congress had the power to incorporate the bank and that Maryland could not tax instruments of the national government employed in the execution of constitutional powers. (State Taxes/National Supremacy Clause)

Griswold v. Connecticut

Does the Constitution protect the right to marital privacy against state restrictions when dealing with couples that seek counseling on contraceptives? Yes; under "prenumbras" or zones of the Bill of Rights (1,3,4,9).

Dred Scott v. Sandford

Dred Scott was a slave. From 1833 to 1843, he resided in Illinois (a free state) and in an area of the Louisiana Territory, where slavery was forbidden by the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Claimed that his residence in free territory made him a free man. Under Articles III and IV, argued Taney, no one but a citizen of the United States could be a citizen of a state, and that only Congress could confer national citizenship. Dred Scott was a slave. (Slavery/Due Process/Mississippi Compromise)

Schenck v. United States

During WWI, Schenck mailed flyers to draftees. The flyers labeled the draft was a horrible thing brought about by the government. The flyers asked people to petition to repeal the Conscription Act. Schenck was charged with conspiracy and in violation of the Espionage Act. The Supreme Court held that things able to be said in peacetime may not necessarily be protected by 1ST AMENDMENT during times of war.

Escobedo v. Illinois

Escobedo was taken for questioning, but prevented from seeing his lawyer. Was he denied the right to counsel? Yes, and he wasn't warned about self-incrimination under the 5th amendment.

Ex parte Endo

Ex parte Endo, or Ex parte Mitsuye Endo, 323 U.S. 283 (1944), was a United States Supreme Court decision, handed down on December 18, 1944, the same day as their decision in Korematsu v. United States. In their decision, the Supreme Court ruled that, regardless of whether the United States Government had a right to exclude people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast during World War II, they could not continue to detain a citizen that the government itself conceded was loyal to the United States. This decision helped lead to the re-opening of the West Coast for resettlement by Japanese-American citizens following their internment in camps across the United States during World War II.

Boumediene v. Bush

Foreign terrorism suspects held at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba have constitutional rights to challenge their detention in United States courts. 476 F.3d 981, reversed and remanded.

Korematsu v. United States

In WWII, the military could exclude citizens of Japanese ancestry from areas deemed critical to national defense. Does this go beyond reason? No, national defense is more critical. (Japanese Internment/Equal Protection)

Civil Rights Cases 1883

In five separate cases, a black person was denied the same accommodations as a white person in violation of the 1875 Act. 10th Amendment of the Constitution which reserves all powers not granted to the national government to the states or to the people. Private acts of racial discrimination were simply private wrongs that the national government was powerless to correct.

Bush v. Gore

In the circumstances of this case, any manual recount of votes seeking to meet the December 12 "safe harbor" deadline would be unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Florida Supreme Court reversed and remanded.

Marbury v. Madison

Is Marbury entitled to his appointment as a justice of the peace in the District of Columbia (midnight appointments of Adams)? Establishes the Supreme Court's power of judicial review.(Federalism)

In re Gault

Juveniles tried for crimes in delinquency proceedings should have the right of due process protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, including the right to confront witnesses and the right to counsel guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment.

Lemon v. Kurtzman

Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971),[1] was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that Pennsylvania's 1968 Nonpublic Elementary and Secondary Education Act (represented through David Kurtzman), which allowed the state Superintendent of Public Instruction to reimburse nonpublic schools (most of which were Catholic) for the salaries of teachers who taught secular material in these nonpublic schools, secular textbooks and secular instructional materials, violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The decision also upheld a decision of the First Circuit, which had struck down the Rhode Island Salary Supplement Act providing state funds to supplement salaries at nonpublic elementary schools by 15%. As in Pennsylvania, most of these funds were spent on Catholic schools.

Lochner v. New York

Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case that held that "liberty of contract" was implicit in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The case involved a New York law that limited the number of hours that a baker could work each day to ten, and limited the number of hours that a baker could work each week to 60. By a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court rejected the argument that the law was necessary to protect the health of bakers, deciding it was a labor law attempting to regulate the terms of employment, and calling it an "unreasonable, unnecessary and arbitrary interference with the right and liberty of the individual to contract."

Miller v. Johnson

Miller v. Johnson, 515 U.S. 900 (1995), was a United States Supreme Court case concerning "affirmative gerrymandering/racial gerrymandering", where racial minority-majority electoral districts are created during redistricting to increase minority Congressional representation.

Ex Parte Milligan

Milligan was sentenced to death by a military commission in Indiana during the Civil War. Trials of civilians by presidentially created military commissions are unconstitutional.

Miranda v. Arizona

Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court which passed 5-4. The Court held that both inculpatory and exculpatory statements made in response to interrogation by a defendant in police custody will be admissible at trial only if the prosecution can show that the defendant was informed of the right to consult with an attorney before and during questioning and of the right against self-incrimination prior to questioning by police, and that the defendant not only understood these rights, but voluntarily waived them.

Muller v. Oregon

Muller v. Oregon, 208 U.S. 412 (1908), was a landmark decision in United States Supreme Court history, as it justifies both sex discrimination and usage of labor laws during the time period. The case upheld Oregon state restrictions on the working hours of women as justified by the special state interest in protecting women's health. The ruling had important implications for protective labor legislation.[1] The case was decided a mere three years after Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905), in which a New York law restricting the weekly working hours of bakers was invalidated.

Gibbons v. Ogden

New York state law gave two individuals the exclusive right to operate steamboats on waters within state jurisdiction. Regulation of interstate commerce? Can New York have power? The New York law was invalid by virtue of the Supremacy Clause. (States Rights/Commerce Clause)

United States v. Lopez

Possession of a gun near school is not an economic activity that has a substantial effect on interstate commerce. A law prohibiting guns near schools is a criminal statute that does not relate to commerce or any sort of economic activity. the first United States Supreme Court case since the New Deal to set limits to Congress's power under the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution.

Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union

Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U.S. 844 (1997), is a United States Supreme Court case in which all nine Justices of the Court voted to strike down anti-indecency provisions of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), because they violated the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech. Two Justices concurred in part and dissented in part to the decision. This was the first major Supreme Court ruling on the regulation of materials distributed via the Internet.

Gideon v. Wainwright

Reversed Betts v. Brady, about lawyers appointed for people who can't hire them. Determined that lawyers are necessary, not merely helpful. (Right to counsel/Due Process)

Roe v. Wade

Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), is a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court on the issue of abortion. Decided simultaneously with a companion case, Doe v. Bolton, the Court ruled 7-2 that a right to privacy under the due process clause of the 14th Amendment extended to a woman's decision to have an abortion, but that right must be balanced against the state's two legitimate interests in regulating abortions: protecting prenatal life and protecting women's health. Arguing that these state interests became stronger over the course of a pregnancy, the Court resolved this balancing test by tying state regulation of abortion to the trimester of pregnancy.

Brown v. Board of Education

Segregation in public schools. Equal protection clause? Violated because even though equal buildings and teachers and the like, segregation makes the black people feel inferior, which has detrimental effects. (School Segregation/Equal Protection)

Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc.

The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act's restriction on issue ads in the months preceding elections is unconstitutional.

Printz v. United States

The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act's interim provision commanding the "chief law enforcement officer" (CLEO) of each local jurisdiction to conduct background checks, is unconstitutional.

Cherokee Nation v. Georgia

The Cherokee Nation sought a federal injunction against laws passed by the state of Georgia depriving them of rights within its boundaries, but the Supreme Court did not hear the case on its merits. It ruled that it had no original jurisdiction in the matter, as the Cherokee was a dependent nation, with a relationship to the United States like that of a ward to its guardian.

Clinton v. Jones

The Constitution does not protect the President from civil litigation involving actions committed before he entered office.

Webster v. Reproductive Health Services

The Court approved a Missouri law that imposed restrictions on the use of state funds, facilities and employees in performing, assisting with, or counseling on abortions. The Supreme Court thus allowed for states to legislate in an area that had previously been thought to be forbidden under Roe, reversing the Eighth Circuit.

Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier

The Court held that speech that can be reasonably viewed to have the school's imprimatur can be regulated by the school if the school has a legitimate pedagogical concern in regulating the speech.

Regents of the University of California v. Bakke

The Court held that while affirmative action systems are constitutional, a quota system based on race is unconstitutional.

New York Times Co. v. Sullivan

The First Amendment, as applied through the Fourteenth, protected a newspaper from being sued for libel in state court for making false defamatory statements about the official conduct of a public official, because the statements were not made with knowing or reckless disregard for the truth. Supreme Court of Alabama reversed and remanded.

Mapp v. Ohio

The Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures, as applied to the states through the Fourteenth, excludes unconstitutionally obtained evidence from use in criminal prosecutions. Ohio Supreme Court reversed.

West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette

The Free Speech clause of the First Amendment prohibits public schools from forcing students to salute the American flag and say the Pledge of Allegiance. District Court affirmed.

District of Columbia v. Heller

The Second Amendment guarantees an individual's right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home. United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit affirmed.

Crawford v. Marion County Election Board

The Supreme Court of the United States held that an Indiana law requiring voters to show a Picture ID is constitutional

Furman v. Georgia

The arbitrary and inconsistent imposition of the death penalty violates the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, and constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

Kelo v. City of New London

The governmental taking of property from one private owner to give to another in furtherance of economic development constitutes a permissible "public use" under the Fifth Amendment. Supreme Court of Connecticut decision affirmed.

Plessy v. Ferguson

The state of Louisiana enacted a law that required separate railway cars for blacks and whites. Does this infringe on the fourteenth amendment? Decision no, based on "separate but equal" implying that so long as the cars were the same, it was legal. (Separate but equal/Equal protection)

Tinker v. Des Moines

Tinker (15) and two others wore black armbands to school in protest of the Vietnam War. They were suspended when they refused to remove them. Does this violate the First? Yes; the armbands were "pure speech" and although the school had restrictions on free expression, the principals failed to justify their objections to the armbands before suspension.

United States v. E. C. Knight Co.

United States v. E. C. Knight Co., 156 U.S. 1 (1895), also known as the "Sugar Trust Case," was a United States Supreme Court case that limited the government's power to control monopolies. The case, which was the first heard by the Supreme Court concerning the Sherman Antitrust Act, was argued on October 24, 1894 and the decision was issued on January 21, 1895.

United States v. Nixon

United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683 (1974), was a landmark United States Supreme Court decision. It was a unanimous 8-0 ruling falling against President Richard Nixon and was important to the late stages of the Watergate scandal. It is considered a crucial precedent limiting the power of any U.S. president.

Davis v. Federal Election Commission

§319(a) and (b) of the BCRA are unconstitutional as a violation of the First Amendment right to spend one's own money to advocate one's own election