Substantive due process is a principle in United States constitutional law that allows courts to establish and protect substantive laws and certain fundamental rights from government interference, even if they are unenumerated elsewhere in the U.S. Constitution. Courts have asserted that such protections come from the due process clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibit the federal and state governments, respectively, from depriving any person of "life, liberty, or property, without due process of law". Substantive due process demarks the line between those acts that courts hold to be subject to government regulation or legislation and those that courts place beyond the reach of governmental interference. Whether the Fifth or Fourteenth Amendments were intended to serve that function continues to be a matter of scholarly as well as judicial discussion and dissent. In 2022, Justice Clarence Thomas called on the Supreme Court to reconsider all of its rulings that were based on substantive due process.
Skinner v. State of Oklahoma, ex rel. Williamson, 316 U.S. 535 (1942), is a unanimous United States Supreme Court ruling that held that laws permitting the compulsory sterilization of criminals are unconstitutional as it violates a person's rights given under the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution, specifically the Equal Protection Clause and the Due Process Clause. The relevant Oklahoma law applied to "habitual criminals" but excluded white-collar crimes from carrying sterilization penalties.
Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123 (1908), is a United States Supreme Court case that allows suits in federal courts for injunctions against officials acting on behalf of states of the union to proceed despite the State's sovereign immunity, when the State acted contrary to any federal law or contrary to the Constitution.
Robinson v. California, 370 U.S. 660 (1962), is the first landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court in which the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution was interpreted to prohibit criminalization of particular acts or conduct, as contrasted with prohibiting the use of a particular form of punishment for a crime. In Robinson, the Court struck down a California law that criminalized being addicted to narcotics.
Granholm v. Heald, 544 U.S. 460 (2005), was a court case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States in a 5–4 decision that ruled that laws in New York and Michigan that permitted in-state wineries to ship wine directly to consumers but prohibited out-of-state wineries from doing the same were unconstitutional. The case was unusual because the arguments centered on the rarely-invoked Twenty-First Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1933, which ended Prohibition in the United States.
Stromberg v. California, 283 U.S. 359 (1931), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court held, 7–2, that a California statute banning red flags was unconstitutional because it violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. In the case, Yetta Stromberg was convicted for displaying a red flag daily in the youth camp for children at which she worked, and was charged in accordance with California law. Chief Justice Charles Hughes wrote for the seven-justice majority that the California statute was unconstitutional, and therefore Stromberg's conviction could not stand.
Perez v. Sharp, also known as Perez v. Lippold or Perez v. Moroney, is a 1948 case decided by the Supreme Court of California in which the court held by a 4–3 majority that the state's ban on interracial marriage violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Sáenz v. Roe, 526 U.S. 489 (1999), was a landmark case in which the Supreme Court of the United States discussed whether there is a constitutional right to travel from one state to another. The case was a reaffirmation of the principle that citizens select states and not the other way round.
Braunfeld v. Brown, 366 U.S. 599 (1961), was a landmark case on the issue of religious and economic liberty decided by the United States Supreme Court. In a 6–3 decision, the Court held that a Pennsylvania blue law forbidding the sale of various retail products on Sunday was not an unconstitutional interference with religion as described in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Nevada Department of Human Resources v. Hibbs, 538 U.S. 721 (2003), was a United States Supreme Court case which held that the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 was "narrowly targeted" at "sex-based overgeneralization" and was thus a "valid exercise of [congressional] power under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment."
Smith v. Turner; Norris v. Boston, 48 U.S. 283 (1849), were two similar cases, argued together before the United States Supreme Court, which decided 5–4 that states do not have the right to impose a tax that is determined by the number of passengers of a designated category on board a ship and/or disembarking into the State. The cases are sometimes called the Passenger Case or Passenger Cases.
Department of Agriculture v. Moreno, 413 U.S. 528 (1973), was a United States Supreme Court case that declared a provision of the Food Stamp Act denying food stamps to households of "unrelated persons" to be a violation of the U.S. Constitution. The Court held that provision to be irrelevant to the stated purpose of the statute and in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
Boddie v. Connecticut, 401 U.S. 371 (1971), was a case before the United States Supreme Court.
American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression v. Strickland, 560 F.3d 443, is a decision of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals involving a constitutional challenge—both facially and as-applied to internet communications—to an Ohio statute prohibiting the dissemination or display to juveniles of certain sexually-explicit materials or performances. The Sixth Circuit panel declined to resolve the constitutional issue but, instead, certified two questions to the Ohio Supreme Court regarding the interpretation of the statute. The Ohio Supreme Court answered both questions affirmatively and placed a narrowing construction on the statute. Since the Ohio Supreme Court's decision, the Sixth Circuit has not reheard the case.
Hunter v. Underwood, 471 U.S. 222 (1985), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously invalidated the criminal disenfranchisement provision of § 182 of the Alabama Constitution as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
United States v. Munoz-Flores, 495 U.S. 385 (1990), was a United States Supreme Court case that interpreted the Origination Clause of the United States Constitution. The Court was asked to rule on whether a statute that imposed mandatory monetary penalties on persons convicted of federal misdemeanors was enacted in violation of that clause, as the lower court had held.
Perez v. Campbell, 402 U.S. 637 (1971), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that Arizona's law suspending a driver's license was unconstitutional due to its conflict with the federal Bankruptcy Act under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.
Comptroller of the Treasury of Maryland v. Wynne, 575 U.S. 542 (2015), is a 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision that applied the Dormant Commerce Clause doctrine to Maryland's personal income tax scheme and found that the failure to provide a full credit for income taxes paid to other states was unconstitutional.
Department of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam, 591 U.S. ___ (2020), was a United States Supreme Court case involving whether the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, which limits habeas corpus judicial review of the decisions of immigration officers, violates the Suspension Clause of Article One of the U.S. Constitution. In the 7–2 opinion, the Court ruled that the law does not violate the Suspension Clause.
