Decision
The Court affirmed in part and reversed in part holding, among other things, that the law's provisions did not violate the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It also held that the burdened effect on opticians while sellers of ready-to-wear eyeglasses were exempted did not violate the Equal Protection clause.
Using rational basis review, the Court found that the Oklahoma State Legislature had a legitimate interest in requiring a prescription from a licensed optometrist or ophthalmologist. Although opticians were qualified to refit lenses without prescriptions, the Court reasoned that requiring prescriptions in every case would encourage more frequent eye examinations, which may enable early detection of more serious eye conditions. Consequently, if a legitimate governmental interest lies, as reasoned by the Court, the law can survive a Due Process challenge.
The Court further held that there was no Equal Protection violation because legislatures were permitted to deal with problems "one step at a time, addressing itself to the phase of the problem which seems most acute to the legislative mind." Thus, that opticians were so impacted while sellers of ready-to-wear glasses were exempted may have been a signal that the sellers did not represent a portion of the problem that loomed large in the legislature's mind.
Justice Douglas, writing for the Court, articulated the standard for determining whether the law survives a Due Process challenge: "the law need not be in every respect logically consistent with its aims to be constitutional. It is enough that there is an evil at hand for correction, and that it might be thought that the particular legislative measure was a rational way to correct it."
According to Justice Douglas, "The day is gone when this court uses the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to strike down state laws, regulatory of business and industrial conditions, because they may be unwise, improvident, or out of harmony with a particular school of thought."
The Court summarily addresses the Equal Protection issue in this case: "The prohibition of the Equal Protection Clause goes no further than invidious discrimination. We cannot say that this point has been reached here.”
The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. Often considered as one of the most consequential amendments, it addresses citizenship rights and equal protection under the law and was proposed in response to issues related to former slaves following the American Civil War. The amendment was bitterly contested, particularly by the states of the defeated Confederacy, which were forced to ratify it in order to regain representation in Congress. The amendment, particularly its first section, is one of the most litigated parts of the Constitution, forming the basis for landmark Supreme Court decisions such as Brown v. Board of Education (1954) regarding racial segregation, Roe v. Wade (1973) regarding abortion, Bush v. Gore (2000) regarding the 2000 presidential election, and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) regarding same-sex marriage. The amendment limits the actions of all state and local officials, and also those acting on behalf of such officials.
Optometry is a specialized health care profession that involves examining the eyes and related structures for defects or abnormalities. Optometrists are health care professionals who typically provide comprehensive primary eye care.
An optician, or dispensing optician, is a technical practitioner who designs, fits and dispenses lenses for the correction of a person's vision. Opticians determine the specifications of various ophthalmic appliances that will give the necessary correction to a person's eyesight. Some registered or licensed opticians also design and fit special appliances to correct cosmetic, traumatic or anatomical defects. These devices are called shells or artificial eyes. Other registered or licensed opticians manufacture lenses to their own specifications and design and manufacture spectacle frames and other devices.
Substantive due process is a principle in United States constitutional law that allows courts to establish and protect certain fundamental rights from government interference, even if only procedural protections are present or the rights 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. Justice Clarence Thomas has called on the Supreme Court to reconsider all of its rulings that were based on substantive due process.
In United States constitutional law, a Due Process Clause is found in both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, which prohibits arbitrary deprivation of "life, liberty, or property" by the government except as authorized by law.
Skinner v. State of Oklahoma, ex rel. Williamson, 316 U.S. 535 (1942), was 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, as well as the Due Process Clause. The relevant Oklahoma law applied to "habitual criminals", but the law excluded white-collar crimes from carrying sterilization penalties.
The Equal Protection Clause is part of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The clause, which took effect in 1868, provides "nor shall any State ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." It mandates that individuals in similar situations be treated equally by the law.
Craig v. Boren, 429 U.S. 190 (1976), was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court ruling that statutory or administrative sex classifications were subject to intermediate scrutiny under the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause.
Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections, 383 U.S. 663 (1966), was a case in which the U.S. Supreme Court found that Virginia's poll tax was unconstitutional under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, eleven southern states established poll taxes as part of their disenfranchisement of most blacks and many poor whites. The Twenty-fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution (1964) prohibited poll taxes in federal elections; five states continued to require poll taxes for voters in state elections. By this ruling, the Supreme Court banned the use of poll taxes in state elections.
An eye care professional (ECP) is an individual who provides a service related to the eyes or vision. It is any healthcare worker involved in eye care, from one with a small amount of post-secondary training to practitioners with a doctoral level of education.
Kimel v. Florida Board of Regents, 528 U.S. 62 (2000), was a US Supreme Court case that determined that the US Congress's enforcement powers under the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution did not extend to the abrogation of state sovereign immunity under the Eleventh Amendment over complaints of discrimination that is rationally based on age.
A lensmeter or lensometer , is an ophthalmic instrument. It is mainly used by optometrists and opticians to measure the back or front vertex power of a spectacle lens and verify the correct prescription in a pair of eyeglasses, to properly orient and mark uncut lenses, and to confirm the correct mounting of lenses in spectacle frames. Lensmeters can also verify the power of contact lenses, if a special lens support is used.
Sipuel v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma, 332 U.S. 631 (1948), is a per curiam United States Supreme Court decision involving racial segregation toward African Americans by the University of Oklahoma and the application of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
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.
Minnesota v. Clover Leaf Creamery Co., 449 U.S. 456 (1981), was a United States Supreme Court case which found no violation of the equal protection or commerce clauses in a Minnesota state statute banning retail sale of milk in plastic nonreturnable, nonrefillable containers, but permitting such sale in other nonreturnable, nonrefillable containers.
Williams v. Rhodes, 393 U.S. 23 (1968), is a decision by the United States Supreme Court which held that Ohio had violated the equal protection rights under the Fourteenth Amendment of two political parties by refusing to print their candidates' names on the ballot.
The Fairness to Contact Lens Consumers Act, also known as FCLCA, is a United States federal law that aims to improve consumer protection and ocular health for contact lens users.
United States v. Vaello Madero, 596 U.S. ___ (2022), was a United States Supreme Court case related to the constitutionality of the exclusion of United States citizens residing in Puerto Rico from the Supplemental Security Income program. In an 8–1 decision, the Court ruled that as Congress had been granted broad oversight of United States territories by Article Four of the United States Constitution, the exclusion of the territories by Congress from programs like Supplemental Security Income did not violate the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
Johnson v. Louisiana, 406 U. S. 356 (1972), was a court case in the U.S. Supreme Court involving the Due Process clause and Equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Louisiana law that allowed less-than unanimous jury verdicts to convict persons charged with a felony, does not violate the Due Process clause. This case was argued on a similar basis as Apodaca v. Oregon.
