See also
- Capital punishment in the United States
- Participation of medical professionals in American executions
| List of cases by Court |
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| Complete list | ||
| By recent term | ||
| By subject matter | ||
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The U.S. Supreme Court has issued numerous rulings regarding mental health and how society treats and regards the ill. While some rulings applied very narrowly, perhaps to only one individual, other cases have had great influence over wide areas.
| Year | Case | Ruling | Right |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1999 | Albertsons Inc. v. Kirkingburg | Not all individuals who have some sort of physical difficulty are "disabled" under the ADA. Instead, those who believe they suffer from a disability must prove their claim on a case-by-case basis by showing that their alleged disability substantially impacts a major life activity. [1] | ??? |
| Year | Case | Ruling | Right |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1960 | Dusky v. United States | Affirming a criminal defendant's constitutional right to have a competency evaluation before proceeding to trial, and setting the standard for determination of such competence. | BOR, 14th |
| 1966 | Pate v. Robinson | A hearing about competency to stand trial is required under the due process clause of the Constitution of the United States. [2] | BOR, 14th |
| 1972 | Jackson v. Indiana | Criminal defendants who have been found incompetent to stand trial are not permitted to be held indefinitely. There must be some possibility of becoming competent in a reasonable amount of time | BOR, 14th |
| 1975 | Drope v. Missouri | When deciding whether to evaluate a criminal defendant's competency, the court must consider any evidence suggestive of mental illness, even one factor alone in some circumstances. Therefore, the threshold for obtaining a competency evaluation is low. When the issue is raised, the motion should be granted. The defendant must not bear all the burden for raising the issue. | BOR, 14th |
| 1985 | Ake v. Oklahoma | Indigent criminal defendants have a right to a competency evaluation | BOR, 14th |
| 1996 | Cooper v. Oklahoma | the burden for proving incompetency is only preponderance; due process would be violated if the burden is required to be carried by clear and convincing evidence. |
| Year | Case | Ruling | Right |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1976 | Profitt v. Florida | Permitted comparison of mitigating and aggravating factors to decide death penalty decisions. [3] See also Furman v. Georgia (1972), and Gregg v. Georgia (1976) | 1st |
| 1986 | Ford v. Wainwright | Preventing the execution [capital punishment] of the insane, requiring an evaluation of competency and an evidentiary hearing | 8th |
| 1989 | Penry v. Lynaugh | Executing persons with mental retardation is not a violation of the Eighth Amendment. (Overturned in Atkins v. Virginia (2002)) | 8th |
| 1993 | Godinez v. Moran | Competency to stand trial includes the abilities to plead guilty and to waive the right to counsel | 1st |
| 2002 | Atkins v. Virginia | The execution of mentally retarded defendants violates the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. | 8th |
| 2005 | Roper v. Simmons | In a ruling that followed Wainwright (in assessing the nature of cruel and unusual punishments), children may not be given the death penalty | 1st |
| 2010 | Graham v. Florida | Likewise, children may not be given life sentences (without possibility of parole) for offenses that do not include murder | 1st |
| Year | Case | Ruling | Right |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1978 | Lockett v. Ohio | Sentencing authorities must have the discretion to consider every possible mitigating factor, rather than being limited to a specific list of factors. | 1st |
| 2020 | Kahler v. Kansas | The due process clause of the United States Constitution does not require states to adopt a definition of the insanity defense that turns on whether the defendant knew that his or her actions were morally wrong. | 14th, 8th |
| Year | Case | Ruling | Right |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1981 | Estelle v. Smith | The same doctor that evaluated the criminal defendant for competency also testified at the penalty phase of the trial. That violated the defendant's right against self incrimination. | 5th, 6th |
| Year | Case | Ruling | Right |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1962 | Robinson v. California | A state cannot make a person's status as an addict a crime; only behaviors can be criminal. | 1st |
| 1968 | Powell v. Texas | Similarly to Robinson v. California , a state may not criminalize the status of alcoholism itself; the state may only prohibit behaviors. | 8th |
| Year | Case | Ruling | Right |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1976 | Estelle v. Gamble | Established that prisoners are entitled to a minimum level of treatment. | 8th |
| Year | Case | Ruling | Right |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1978 | Rennie v. Klein | An involuntarily committed, legally competent patient who refused medication had a right to professional medical review of the treating psychiatrist's decision. The Court left the decision-making process to medical professionals. | 14th |
| 1990 | Washington v. Harper | Prisoners have only a very limited right to refuse psychotropic medications in prison. The needs of the institution take precedence over the prisoners' rights. However, there must be a formal institutional hearing, the prisoner must be found to be dangerous to himself or others, the prisoner must be diagnosed with a serious mental illness, and the mental health care professional must state that the medication prescribed is in the prisoner's best interest. | 14th |
| 1992 | Riggins v. Nevada | In a ruling very similar to Harper, the Court found that the State may force administration of psychotropic medications to a pre-trial detainee, if it establishes a medical need for the drug, and a need for the detainee's safety and that of others. To the Harper requirements, they added "less restrictive alternative" language, which requires the State to document that there are no behavioral, environmental, or other measures available that will be equally effective. | 6th, 14th |
| Year | Case | Ruling | Right |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1972 | Jackson v. Indiana | Due process requires that the nature and duration of commitment bear some reasonable relation to the purpose for which the individual is committed." Reasoning that if commitment is for treatment and betterment of individuals, it must be accompanied by adequate treatment, several lower courts recognized a due process right | 14th |
| 1979 | Addington v. Texas | Raised the burden of proof requirement, in order to civilly commit a person, from preponderance, to clear and convincing. Also, permitted the courts to defer judgment regarding a person's need for commitment, to the doctor(s) | 14th |
| 1979 | Parham v. J.R. | The Court ruled that minors may be civilly committed to mental health facilities without an adversary hearing; in essence, parents do have the right to commit their children. | 14th |
| 1982 | Youngberg v. Romeo | Each individual has a due process protected interest in freedom from confinement and personal restraint; an interest in reducing the degree of confinement continues even for those individuals who are properly committed. freedom from undue physical restraint and from unsafe conditions of confinement | 14th |
| 1975 | O'Connor v. Donaldson | A finding of mental illness alone is not sufficient grounds for confining a person against their will. They must be found to be a danger to others or incapable of surviving safely without institutional care. | 14th |
| 1993 | Heller v. Doe | The Court found that mentally retarded persons are not a 'suspect' class of persons (requiring the same level of protection as racial minorities); thus, governments are free to enact almost any legislation or rule to civilly commit them, and the courts will not intervene, short of illegal or ridiculous actions (called 'rational' scrutiny). [4] | 14th |
| 2000 | Seling v. Young | Washington State's Community Protection Act of 1990 authorizes the civil commitment of "sexually violent predators," or persons who suffer from a mental abnormality or personality disorder that makes them likely to engage in predatory acts of sexual violence. After his imprisonment for committing six rapes, Andre Brigham Young was scheduled to be released from prison in 1990. Prior to his release, the state successfully filed a petition to commit Young as a sexually violent predator. Ultimately, Young instituted a federal habeas action. The court determined that the Community Protection Act was civil and, therefore, it could not violate the double jeopardy and ex post facto guarantees. On appeal, the Court of Appeals reasoned that the case turned on whether the Act was punitive "as applied" to Young. [5] | 5th |
Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health, 497 U.S. 261 (1990), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States involving a young adult incompetent. The first "right to die" case ever heard by the Court, Cruzan was argued on December 6, 1989, and decided on June 25, 1990. In a 5–4 decision, the Court affirmed the earlier ruling of the Supreme Court of Missouri and ruled in favor of the State of Missouri, finding it was acceptable to require "clear and convincing evidence" of a patient's wishes for removal of life support. A significant outcome of the case was the creation of advance health directives.
Randall v. Sorrell, 548 U.S. 230 (2006), is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States involving a Vermont law which placed a cap on financial donations made to politicians. The court ruled that Vermont's law, the strictest in the nation, unconstitutionally hindered the citizens' First Amendment right to free speech. A key issue in the case was the 1976 case Buckley v. Valeo, which many justices felt needed to be revisited.
Nebraska Press Association v. Stuart, 427 U.S. 539 (1976), was a landmark Supreme Court of the United States decision in which the Court held unconstitutional prior restraints on media coverage during criminal trials.
Redrup v. New York, 386 U.S. 767 (1967), was a May 8, 1967 ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States, widely regarded as the end of American censorship of written fiction. Robert Redrup was a Times Square newsstand clerk who sold two of William Hamling's Greenleaf Classics paperback pulp sex novels, Lust Pool and Shame Agent, to a plainclothes police officer. He was tried and convicted in 1965.
Exxon Corp. v. Governor of Maryland, 437 U.S. 117 (1978), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States upheld a Maryland law prohibiting oil producers and refiners from operating service stations within its borders. The challengers, including Exxon, claimed that the law violated the Dormant Commerce Clause. Justice Stevens wrote for the majority, which disagreed with Exxon et al.: "Since Maryland's entire gasoline supply flows in interstate commerce and since there are no local producers or refiners, such claims of disparate treatment between interstate and local commerce would be meritless." Exxon challenged the Maryland statute in Circuit Court which ruled the statute invalid. The Maryland Court of Appeals reversed the ruling.
Healy v. James, 408 U.S. 169 (1972), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that Central Connecticut State College's refusal to recognize a campus chapter of Students for a Democratic Society was unconstitutional. The denial of official recognition was found to violate the First Amendment.
Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460 (2012), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that mandatory sentences of life without the possibility of parole are unconstitutional for juvenile offenders. The ruling applied even to those persons who had committed murder as a juvenile, extending beyond Graham v. Florida (2010), which had ruled juvenile life without parole sentences unconstitutional for crimes excluding murder.
Agency for International Development v. Alliance for Open Society International, Inc., 570 U.S. 205 (2013), also known as Alliance for Open Society I, was a United States Supreme Court decision in which the court ruled that conditions imposed on recipients of certain federal grants amounted to a restriction of freedom of speech and violated the First Amendment.
Johanns v. Livestock Marketing Association, 544 U.S. 550 (2005), is a First Amendment case of the Supreme Court of the United States. At issue was whether a beef producer could be compelled to contribute to beef industry advertising.
Texas v. New Mexico and Colorado, 583 U.S. ___ (2018), was a Supreme Court case argued and decided during the 2017 term of the Supreme Court of the United States. The case involved an interstate dispute regarding New Mexico's compliance with the Rio Grande Compact of 1938, an agreement which established a plan for equitable apportionment of the water in the Rio Grande Basin among the states of Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas. The Court considered the question of whether the U.S. federal government had a legal right to join litigation against New Mexico; the Court ruled that the federal government was within its rights when it did so.
Garza v. Idaho, 586 U.S. ___, 139 S. Ct. 738 (2019), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court held that the presumption of prejudice for Sixth Amendment purposes applies regardless of whether a defendant has waived the right to appeal.
Ramos v. Louisiana, 590 U.S. ___ (2020), was a U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires that guilty verdicts be unanimous in trials for serious crimes. Only cases in Oregon and Louisiana were affected by the ruling because every other state already had this requirement. The decision incorporated the Sixth Amendment requirement for unanimous jury criminal convictions against the states, and thereby overturned the Court's previous decision from the 1972 cases Apodaca v. Oregon and Johnson v. Louisiana.
Opati v. Republic of Sudan, 590 U.S. ___ (2020), was a United States Supreme Court case involving the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act with its 2008 amendments, whether plaintiffs in federal lawsuits against foreign countries may seek punitive damages for cause of actions prior to enactment of the amended law, with the specific case dealing with victims and their families from the 1998 United States embassy bombings. The Court ruled unanimously in May 2020 that punitive damages can be sought from foreign nations in such cases for preenactment conduct.
Barr v. American Assn. of Political Consultants, Inc., 591 U.S. ___ (2020), was a United States Supreme Court case involving the use of robocalls made to cell phones, a practice that had been banned by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA), but which exemptions had been made by a 2015 amendment for government debt collection. The case was brought by the American Association of Political Consultants, an industry trade group, and others that desired to use robocalls to make political ads, challenging the exemption unconstitutionally favored debt collection speech over political speech. The Supreme Court, in a complex plurality decision, ruled on July 6, 2020, that the 2015 amendment to the TCPA did unconstitutionally favor debt collection speech over political speech and violated the First Amendment.
Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru, 591 U.S. ___ (2020), was a United States Supreme Court case involving the ministerial exception of federal employment discrimination laws. The case extends from the Supreme Court's prior decision in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission which created the ministerial exception based on the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses of the United States Constitution, asserting that federal discrimination laws cannot be applied to leaders of religious organizations. The case, along with the consolidated St. James School v. Biel, both arose from rulings in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that found that federal discrimination laws do apply to others within a religious organization that serve an important religious function but lack the title or training to be considered a religious leader under Hosanna-Tabor. The religious organization challenged that ruling on the basis of Hosanna-Tabor. The Supreme Court ruled in a 7–2 decision on July 8, 2020 that reversed the Ninth Circuit's ruling, affirming that the principles of Hosanna-Tabor, that a person can be serving an important religious function even if not holding the title or training of a religious leader, satisfied the ministerial exception in employment discrimination.
Trump v. New York, 592 U.S. ___ (2020), was a United States Supreme Court case dealing with the 2020 United States Census. It centered on the validity of a July 2020 executive memorandum from President Donald Trump to the Department of Commerce, which conducts and reports the Census. The memo ordered the Department to exclude the estimated counts of illegal immigrants from the results of the Census. The memo was challenged by a coalition of U.S. states led by New York along with several cities and other organizations suing to block action on the memo. The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York found for the states and blocked enforcement of the memo, leading Trump to seek emergency relief asking the Supreme Court to rule on the matter before the results of the Census were due on December 31, 2020. The Court issued a per curiam decision on December 18, 2020, vacating the District Court's ruling and dismissing the case because lack of standing and ripeness made the case premature. The same decision was reached by the court on December 18, 2020, for the similar "Trump v. Useche" case.
Jones v. Mississippi, 593 U.S. ___ (2021), was a United States Supreme Court case regarding the imposition of life sentences for juveniles. The Supreme Court had previously ruled in Miller v. Alabama in 2012 that mandatory life sentences without parole for juvenile offenders was considered cruel and unusual punishment outside of extreme cases of permanent incorrigibility, and made this decision retroactive in Montgomery v. Louisiana in 2016. In Jones, a juvenile offender who was 15 at the time of his offense, challenged his life sentence following Montgomery but was denied by the state. In a 6–3 decision with all six conservative justices upholding the life sentence without parole for Jones, the Court ruled that the states have discretionary ability to hold juvenile offenders to life sentences without parole without having to make a separate assessment of their incorrigibility.
Edwards v. Vannoy, 593 U.S. ___ (2021), was a United States Supreme Court case involving the Court's prior decision in Ramos v. Louisiana, 590 U.S. ___ (2020), which had ruled that jury verdicts in criminal trials must be unanimous under the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Supreme Court ruled 6–3 that Ramos did not apply retroactively to earlier cases prior to their verdict in Ramos.
Uzuegbunam v. Preczewski, 592 U.S. ___ (2021), is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States, dealing with nominal damages to be awarded to individuals whose right to freedom of speech has been suppressed by an entity but subsequently rendered moot due to intervening circumstances. In an 8–1 decision, the Court held that such nominal damages satisfy the Article Three requirement of redressability, when awarded for a past violation of a legal rights.
Moore v. Harper is an ongoing United States Supreme Court case related to the independent state legislature theory (ISL), arising from the redistricting of North Carolina's districts by the North Carolina legislature following the 2020 census, which the state courts found to be too artificial and partisan, and an extreme case of gerrymandering in favor of the Republican Party.
| List of cases by Court |
| |
|---|---|---|
| Complete list | ||
| By recent term | ||
| By subject matter | ||
| Other lists | ||