Supreme Court Narrowly Saves Birthright Citizenship

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6 to 3 vote, upheld the right of those born in the United States to be automatically be citizens. Actually the vote was narrower than that. Brett Kavanaugh voted with the majority, but not because of the Constitution. Instead, he said Trump's executive order denying birthright citizenship was flawed because it violated a federal law (and said Congress had the right to pass a law denying birthright citizenship).

I am shocked as the narrowness of the victory. The 14th Amendment is written in clear English, and the vote should have been 9 to 0.

The justices supporting the Constitution were John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Kentaji Jackson Brown.

The arguments used by Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch are specious at best. They try to argue that the 14th Amendment was intended only to give citizenship to former slaves. But that argument was debated when Congress was writing the amendment. They could have easily included language making it exclusive to former slaves - but they didn't. They intentionally wrote it to apply tho everyone born in the U.S. (except those children of foreign diplomats who were not subject to our laws)>

They also try to argue that the parents were in the U.S. unlawfully. A silly argument. Whether documented or undocumented, all immigrants are subject to the laws of the state in which they reside and the United States. They can be fined or imprisoned for violating those laws just like any other person.

Also crazy is the fact that Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh are all "strict constructionists", who believe the Constitution should be followed exactly as it is written and not used to create new laws or rights. And yet, as soon as something offends their racism and zenophobia, they are perfectly willing to use their judgements to rewrite the Constitution.

I find it shocking and horrific that four justices can't understand the plain English of the Constitution's 14th Amendment.

Trump Thinks Free Speech Is For The Right - Others Must Be Punished For It

 

Right-wingers have been whining about censorship since Trump began his lies in his first campaign. They didn't like him being called out on his untruths. They claimed he was covered by the free speech provision of the Constitution's First Amendment. They were right. The hateful and untrue things Trump said were protected speech.

But it seems that their belief in free speech is limited only to those they agree with - those expounding right-wing ideas. 

Since Charlie Kirk's death, they have been trying to make him a martyr. And they are very upset that many on the left (and in the center) have been pointing out that Kirk was not really a good person. He supported racist, homophobic, and misogynistics views - and even said that the deaths of innocent citizens was OK to protect the right to own a gun. 

Trump, AG Bondi, and many others on the right now want to punish those who disparage the memory of Kirk (even though much of it is just using Kirk's own words). They call it hate speech. AG Bondi said anyone using hate speech (saying bad things about Kirk) would be "gone after" by the law.

"Hate speech" and offensive speech are protected by the Constitution. That's been decided by the Supreme Court. Even real hate groups (like the KKK) get to say whatever they want as long as they don't specifically instruct someone to commit a crime. And you don't get to ban or censor speech just because it offends you.

I am personally offended by many things right-wingers (including Trump and his cabinet) routinely say. But as wrong as their statements might be, and as offensive as I find it, I know it is protected speech. 

Free speech is essential to the survival of a democracy like ours. If you ban or censor speech that you don't like, you put a knife in the heart of democracy. You don't have to like the speech of others, and you have the right to vigorously oppose it - but you don't have the right to censor or punish it.

Censoring or punishing speech (no matter how offensive) is a giant step toward an authoritarian state. But sadly, it seems that is what the MAGA right wants.

Trump Is Upset That The Constitution Guarantees Everyone Due Process Rights

 

Donald Trump thought he could use am 18th century law to speed up his deportation of undocumented (and documented) immigrants, and even mused about using it to deport some citizens to a foreign prison. But he ran into a huge obstacle - the United States Constitution.

The Constitution gives everyone inside the borders of this country some rights - among those rights is the right to due process. That means the government cannot take a punitive action against anyone with giving them a chance to defend themselves in a hearing or a trial. And that right has been upheld by all nine Supreme Court justices!

Our Founding Fathers had experienced living under a King, where due process could be bypassed on a whim. They wanted to make sure the government they created could not do that - in their time or in the future. To make sure no future president could deny due process (or deny other rights), they created the Bill of Rights.

That has Trump upset. He wants the power to deny due process to immigrants (and maybe even citizens who fail to declare fealty to him). He has said he would deport 1 million immigrants a year. But that would mean holding 1 million hearings a year - an impossibility with the current number of hearing officers.

Trump would like to have the powers of an absolute ruler. The Founding Fathers were determined to prevent any president from having such absolute power. That's why they divided the government into three separate branches, and then included a Bill of Rights in the Constitution.

The Founding Fathers were right - and its time for Americans to stand up for what they did.

Trump Administration Said They Were Violent Criminals - Where Is The Proof?

The Trump administration deported 238 immigrants to a maximum prison in El Salvador. A couple of days ago, they sent 10 more to that prison. Administration officials said they were violent criminals - the worst of the worst.

As President Bukele of El Salvador visited the White House, HHS Secretary Kristi Norm thanked him for taking these "worst" criminals that the U.S. didn't have room for. What a ridiculous statement!

The United States has more people in prison per capita than any other country in the entire world. I'm sure we could have found room for 248 more. The problem was not having enough room. It was violating both the Constitution and the rule of law.

These immigrants (and any other visitor to this country) have the same rights under our Constitution as citizens do. One of these important rights is "due process" - the right to a hearing or trial before the government takes punitive action against you.

If these deportees had been given a hearing (which was their right), the government would have had to prove they were undocumented. They could have done that probably, and then had the right to deport them to the country of their origin.

But they were not deported to the country of their origin (Venezuela). They were sent to El Salvador - and even worse, they were sent to a maximum security prison - possibly for the rest of their lives (or until the U.S. stopped paying El Salvador to incarcerate them).

That was a violation of the rule of law. The government of the United States cannot put anyone in prison with giving them a trial and providing proof that they have violated the law. No proof was offered and no trial was held. Mere statements by government officials are NOT proof!

The truth is that the government likely had no proof. At least 75% of these deportees had no criminal record - and the government offered no proof that any of them had violated U.S. law.

If these men were violent gang members and undocumented, then I would have no problem with their deportation. But it must be done correctly and within the law. When anyone is denied due process and imprisoned without proof in a trial, it puts everyone in danger - even citizens.

Rights must apply to everyone or they are assured for no one. 

Trump Is Trashing The Constitution With His Deportations

 

Donald Trump has been playing fast and loose with his deportations. He has deported 261 people he claimed were members of a Venezuelan gang called Teen de Aragua. They weren't sent back to their home country, but were sent to a prison in El Salvador.

Don't get me wrong. If there are undocumented members of a foreign criminal gang in the United States, I have no problem with them being deported. But I am bothered by how it was done. 

First, is there proof that they were really gang members? No proof has been offered. Trump has said they were, but after the many thousands of lies he has told I don't think we should take his word for it. Some doubt has been cast about some who were labeled as gang members and deported. One was a gay hairdresser. Does anyone really think a macho South American gang would have a gay hairdresser as a member? That's just not believable.

Second, there were not deported back to the country they came from, which has always been U.S. policy. Instead of being sent back to Venezuela, they were sent to El Salvador - a country they know nothing about.

Third, they were not just sent to El Salvador, but to a prison in El Salvador. When did the U.S. start putting people in prison without charges and a conviction at a trial?  Maybe some (or nearly all) of them were gang members who were breaking one or more laws. If so, they should have been charged with a crime, put on trial, and convicted after proof was offered. 

But most important, the arrest and deportation of these individuals violated the U.S. Constitution. You may be thinking that foreign gang members don't have the same rights as a citizen. But that is wrong.

The U.S. Constitution guarantees certain right to people - not citizens. Those rights, including due process rights, are guaranteed to everyone that is inside the borders of the United States - even undocumented immigrants who belong to a criminal gang. They should not have been deported without a due process hearing before an immigration judge or imprisoned without a due process trial before a state or federal judge.

It may be easy to violate the constitutional rights of these foreign gang members, because they are not popular. But it shouldn't be. Constitutional rights don't just apply to the people we (or the government) likes. It applies to everyone! 

If the rights of unpopular people can be violated with impunity, it just makes it easier for the authorities to violate the rights of others - maybe even citizens they don't like. Protecting the rights of "bad people" protects the rights of everyone else.

It's sad and scary that Trump and his cronies don't understand that. 

The Right To Assembly And To Free Speech Applies To Everyone In The U.S.

 

The trump administration has arrested a legal immigrant student for taking part in a demonstration against the Israeli action in Gaza. They want to revoke his right to be in this country and deport him.

They have also arrested a female doctoral student for writing a pro-Hamas editorial for her student newspaper. They want to revoke her right to stay in this country and deport her.

The Trump administration would like you to think that because these were not citizens, they don't have the same rights as citizens do under the Constitution. That is simply not true.

Anyone inside the borders of the United States have the rights guaranteed in the Constitution - including the right to assemble for a redress of grievances, free speech, and due process. Even Justice Scalia, a hero of the conservative right, agreed with this.

The Trump administration said these two had supported Hamas, and their actions were antisemitic. That may or may not be true. It doesn't matter, because the Constitution protects even offensive speech. It protects racist, homophobic, and misogynistic speech - and it protects anti semitic speech.

Any citizen or organization can respond to offensive hate speech, and even take legal action against it. BUT THE GOVERNMENT CAN NOT! The government cannot act against a person for exercising speech or assembly rights - even if it is offensive. 

Trump has claimed he wants to protect free speech, but in reality, the only speech he wants to protect is the speech that he agrees with. As president, he cannot take any action to curtail free speech or assembly, no matter how offensive he finds it to be.

The Constitution is very clear on that!

Can Trump's Lawless And Unconstitutional Actions Be Stopped?

Last week, Trump instructed Pete Hegseth to fire the military Judge Advocate Generals. This is on top of Trump firing 17 Inspector Generals of important federal agencies. Why would he do that? These people, in both cases, are not political hires. They operate on a bipartisan basis no matter which party occupies the White House. So why would they be fired?

Their purpose:

An agency inspector general (IG) acts as an independent watchdog within a government agency, primarily tasked with conducting audits, investigations, and inspections to identify and prevent fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement within the agency's operations.

So these are the people who police the agencies - the ones who make sure the agencies obey the law and carry out their function as Congress intended. The only reason for the mass firing on these individuals is to prevent them from doing their jobs.

Trump claims to be trying to get rid of waste and fraud. If that was true, it would make no sense to fire the people trying to root out that waste and fraud. The only thing that makes sense is that in his effort to seize more power, Trump doesn't want these Inspector Generals calling attention to laws he is breaking (or instructing agencies to break).

It is doubtful that Trump really had the authority to fire the Inspector Generals. It is just another example of his lawless actions since returning to office. But it does clear the way for other future lawless actions. 

We probably should have expected that a convicted criminal, once getting into public office, would continue his criminal behavior - and get rid of any officials who could possibly stop him. Sadly, too many voters were not smart enough to see that.

Who can stop Trump's lawless rampage? It won't be Congress. Both houses are controlled by the Republican Party. Many are card-carrying members of Trump's cult, and the rest are too scared of being voted out of their cushy job in a party primary.

It won't be voters. Even though voters are starting to wake up and turn against what Trump is doing, we are a year and a half from the next election. Trump can do a lot of damage in a year and a half.

That leaves the Supreme Court. They have the power to stop Trump, but will they?

One would think that a true conservative majority on the Court would act to save the Constitution and its separation of powers. After all, they claim to be "originalists", who believe in the Constitution as written by the Founding Fathers.

But they are also the ones who gave Trump immunity in official actions. Will they follow their flawed immunity policy, or will they uphold the powers enumerated in the Constitution? I hope it will be the latter, but who can know right now.

They are our last and best hope to save our constitutional form of government. If they bow down to Trump, as Congress has, then our democracy is doomed.

The ERA Has Been Ratified By Enough States To Be In The Constitution

 

Trump Wants To Eliminate Birthright Citizenship - Can He Do It?

 The following is part of a post at PolitiFact.com by Louis Jacobson:

During his first major interview since winning the 2024 presidential race, Donald Trump reiterated a promise he’s made multiple times: He will try to eliminate birthright citizenship, the longstanding practice of conferring citizenship on anyone born in the United States, even when the parents are noncitizens. 

Birthright citizenship’s legal underpinnings

The notion of birthright citizenship can be traced to 1608 with Calvin’s Case, a British decision that became part of the common law adopted in the U.S. legal system’s early days. Calvin’s Case granted subjectship — a British concept that has since evolved into citizenship — to all children born in Scotland except those of diplomats and enemy troops in hostile occupation.

Three key pieces of legal precedent underpin birthright citizenship, scholars say.

First, there’s the 14th Amendment, which says that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside."

This amendment, ratified in 1868, "was unquestionably intended to cover the children of unauthorized migrants, namely the children of enslaved persons brought here by criminals after the prohibition of the slave trade," said Gabriel (Jack) Chin, a University of California, Davis, law professor.

Second, there’s the 1898 Supreme Court decision known as the Wong Kim Ark case. Wong Kim Ark, a laborer, was born in 1873 in San Francisco. His parents were Chinese and lived legally in the United States. 

Around age 17, Wong left to visit China and returned to the United States without incident. Then, around age 21, he left again to visit China, but at the end of that trip, he was denied reentry to the United States because the collector of customs argued he was not a U.S. citizen. (This was no small distinction — it was the era of anti-Asian strictures known as the Chinese Exclusion Act.)

In its 6-2 majority decision, the Supreme Court’s justices ruled that Wong — and others born on United States soil, with a few clear exceptions — qualified for citizenship under the 14th Amendment.

"The Fourteenth Amendment affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory, in the allegiance and under the protection of the country, including all children here born of resident aliens. … The Amendment, in clear words and in manifest intent, includes the children born, within the territory of the United States, of all other persons, of whatever race or color, domiciled within the United States," the court’s majority wrote in its decision.

Third, there’s a 1952 statute (8 U.S. Code § 1401) that echoes the 14th Amendment’s language . "The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth: (a) a person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof," the statute partly reads.

Peter J. Spiro, a Temple University Law School professor, said a strong argument for continuing birthright citizenship is that "that's how we've done it for more than a century now. The historical practice is well entrenched: The children of undocumented parents have always been extended birth citizenship. The practice has been uniform and, until recently, uncontested."

Birthright citizenship also includes people born abroad to U.S. citizens, but Trump has not indicated he would target that provision.

Could birthright citizenship be overturned by executive order?

The notion that an executive order could overturn birthright citizenship is dubious, legal experts said.

"If it's mandated by the Constitution, it can only be undone by a constitutional amendment," Spiro said. "If it's mandated by statute, it can only be undone by a subsequent statute. It's only if it's mandated by neither that (a president) could do it by executive order."

The most Trump could do on his own is sign an executive order with the expectation that opponents would sue to block its implementation, University of Pennsylvania law professor Kermit Roosevelt said. Then, birthright citizenship’s fate would be in the courts’ hands, potentially all the way up to the Supreme Court.

The president would effectively be "offering his interpretation" in an executive order, and this "tees up the lawsuit that will get the Supreme Court to rule, once and for all, what it means," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that generally supports tighter immigration.

Stephen Yale-Loehr, a Cornell Law School professor specializing in immigration law, said that while the Supreme Court generally defers to presidents on immigration matters because they involve sovereignty and foreign affairs, "I don’t see how even this Supreme Court would allow a president to revoke a constitutional amendment through an executive order. Such a ruling would endanger all constitutional amendments."

Louisiana GOP Tries To Force Religion On School Children

Dan Rather comments on the Louisiana GOP's mandate to put the Ten Commandments in every school classroom:

Just when you think the audacity meter has reached its zenith, along comes the Republican-dominated Louisiana state legislature. This week it passed — and the state’s far-right governor signed — a law requiring all public classrooms to display the Ten Commandments. 

 

Governor Jeff Landry argued that the Commandments are not simply religious treatise but “foundational documents of our state and national government,” perhaps trying to circumvent the inevitable hue and cry from just about everyone.

I’ll get to the hue and cry in a moment. First, if one wants to talk about foundational documents of our government, I think the Constitution is a better place to start. The First Amendment guarantees the separation of church and state. Full stop. Requiring the displaying of the Ten Commandments violates the constitutional principle of religious neutrality. 

Honoring Supreme Court precedent is another foundational tenet of our democracy. Yes, this has happened before. In 1980’s Stone v. Graham, the Supreme Court struck down a Kentucky law that also required the display of the Ten Commandments in schools. The court found that the law violated the First Amendment’s establishment clause. In its opinion, the court wrote that the Ten Commandments are “undeniably a sacred text in the Jewish and Christian faiths” and displaying them “serves no ... educational function.”

One could argue that Louisiana should be more concerned with the quality of the education in those classrooms than what is on their walls. The state ranks near the bottom nationally for education and 50th for overall quality of life. Perhaps instead of this political stunt, Louisiana lawmakers should think about raising teacher pay, among the lowest in the nation. Or maybe try to keep kids in school? The state ranks 48th in graduation rate. 

Putting an 11-by-14-inch poster “in a large easy to read font” in every classroom from kindergarten through graduate school will cost money. Don’t worry — it will be paid for by private donations. But who will pay for the inevitable and orchestrated legal fight to come? Louisiana taxpayers. 

After eight years of a Democratic governor, the Republican- controlled state legislature is making up for what it sees as lost time. It recently turned down federal aid for summer food assistance, claiming it wants Louisiana families to be self-sufficient. Those same families suffer from a higher rate of food insecurity than most of the country. And Louisiana is the first state to advance a measure designating abortion pills as dangerous controlled substances. 

 

Now to the hue and cry. It was loud and it was immediate, coming from, among others, the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Southern Poverty Law Center, which jointly stated that the law “violates students’ and families’ fundamental right to religious freedom.”

So why would Louisiana bother with what seems to be a cut-and-dried case of unconstitutionality?  

“I can’t wait to be sued,” Governor Landry said at a Republican fundraiser in Nashville, according to The Tennessean. Good thing, because the ACLU has already filed suit.

All this is part of a larger national plan by a minority of  Christians to inject expressions of their faith into everyday life, whether we like it or not. With a highly politicized and far-right majority on the Supreme Court at the ready, these groups believe they will get a friendlier reception from the court and could ultimately be successful. 

 

They have reason to be hopeful. In 2022, the court sided with a high school football coach who argued he had the right to pray on the 50-yard line after games. The increasingly porous boundary between church and state seems to be eroding faster than a snowball in July. Even so, legal experts think this one is a real stretch.

Charles C. Haynes, an expert in religious liberty and civil discourse, told The New York Times that he believes the state is “overreaching,” adding that “even this court will have a hard time justifying” what Louisiana lawmakers came up with. 

But perhaps most interesting is how do parents and lawmakers square the behavior of their revered MAGA leader with the Ten Commandments? 

 

Democratic strategist David Axelrod on X had this recommendation: “Here’s a suggested quiz for the schoolchildren of Louisiana: ‘Look at the poster on the wall of the Ten Commandments and write down the total number Donald Trump has broken.’”

We could quibble about the total number, but let no one be mistaken: This new Louisiana law is a dangerous development for our country. Donald Trump champions a national movement to eliminate the separation between church and state.   

Louisiana GOP Violates The Constitution With New Mandate

 From Dan Rather:

Just when you think the audacity meter has reached its zenith, along comes the Republican-dominated Louisiana state legislature. This week it passed — and the state’s far-right governor signed — a law requiring all public classrooms to display the Ten Commandments. 

 

Governor Jeff Landry argued that the Commandments are not simply religious treatise but “foundational documents of our state and national government,” perhaps trying to circumvent the inevitable hue and cry from just about everyone.

I’ll get to the hue and cry in a moment. First, if one wants to talk about foundational documents of our government, I think the Constitution is a better place to start. The First Amendment guarantees the separation of church and state. Full stop. Requiring the displaying of the Ten Commandments violates the constitutional principle of religious neutrality. 

Honoring Supreme Court precedent is another foundational tenet of our democracy. Yes, this has happened before. In 1980’s Stone v. Graham, the Supreme Court struck down a Kentucky law that also required the display of the Ten Commandments in schools. The court found that the law violated the First Amendment’s establishment clause. In its opinion, the court wrote that the Ten Commandments are “undeniably a sacred text in the Jewish and Christian faiths” and displaying them “serves no ... educational function.”

One could argue that Louisiana should be more concerned with the quality of the education in those classrooms than what is on their walls. The state ranks near the bottom nationally for education and 50th for overall quality of life. Perhaps instead of this political stunt, Louisiana lawmakers should think about raising teacher pay, among the lowest in the nation. Or maybe try to keep kids in school? The state ranks 48th in graduation rate.

 

Putting an 11-by-14-inch poster “in a large easy to read font” in every classroom from kindergarten through graduate school will cost money. Don’t worry — it will be paid for by private donations. But who will pay for the inevitable and orchestrated legal fight to come? Louisiana taxpayers. 

After eight years of a Democratic governor, the Republican- controlled state legislature is making up for what it sees as lost time. It recently turned down federal aid for summer food assistance, claiming it wants Louisiana families to be self-sufficient. Those same families suffer from a higher rate of food insecurity than most of the country. And Louisiana is the first state to advance a measure designating abortion pills as dangerous controlled substances.

  

Now to the hue and cry. It was loud and it was immediate, coming from, among others, the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Southern Poverty Law Center, which jointly stated that the law “violates students’ and families’ fundamental right to religious freedom.”

So why would Louisiana bother with what seems to be a cut-and-dried case of unconstitutionality?  

“I can’t wait to be sued,” Governor Landry said at a Republican fundraiser in Nashville, according to The Tennessean. Good thing, because the ACLU has already filed suit.

All this is part of a larger national plan by a minority of  Christians to inject expressions of their faith into everyday life, whether we like it or not. With a highly politicized and far-right majority on the Supreme Court at the ready, these groups believe they will get a friendlier reception from the court and could ultimately be successful.  

They have reason to be hopeful. In 2022, the court sided with a high school football coach who argued he had the right to pray on the 50-yard line after games. The increasingly porous boundary between church and state seems to be eroding faster than a snowball in July. Even so, legal experts think this one is a real stretch.

Charles C. Haynes, an expert in religious liberty and civil discourse, told The New York Times that he believes the state is “overreaching,” adding that “even this court will have a hard time justifying” what Louisiana lawmakers came up with. 

But perhaps most interesting is how do parents and lawmakers square the behavior of their revered MAGA leader with the Ten Commandments? 

 

Democratic strategist David Axelrod on X had this recommendation: “Here’s a suggested quiz for the schoolchildren of Louisiana: ‘Look at the poster on the wall of the Ten Commandments and write down the total number Donald Trump has broken.’”

We could quibble about the total number, but let no one be mistaken: This new Louisiana law is a dangerous development for our country. Donald Trump champions a national movement to eliminate the separation between church and state.  

Do U.S. Citizens Have A Right To Privacy? (Yes, But It's Tenuous)

I think most Americans think they have a constitutional right to privacy. But it's not guaranteed. There is no provision or amendment in the U.S. Constitution that guarantees a right to privacy. That right, as it currently exists, has been created by liberal Supreme Court justices out of other rights explicitly granted in the Constitution.

The Court then used this created right to guarantee married couples the right to purchase contraception (Griswold), the right of unmarried people to purchase contraception (Eisenstadt), the right to an abortion (Roe), and the right of same-sex couples to have sex (Lawrence).

Unfortunately, the right to privacy is not recognized by all Supreme Court justices. The right-wingers on the current Court denied that right in Dobbs (which overturned the right to an abortion). And some justices have said they would like to revisit the decisions in Griswold, Eisenstadt, and Lawrence. In other words, they want to effectively gut the right to privacy in the United States.

The following post is a discussion of the right to privacy by the Cornell Law School:

There is a long and evolving history regarding the right to privacy in the United States. In the context of American jurisprudence, the Supreme Court first recognized the “right to privacy” in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965). Before Griswold, however, Louis Brandeis (prior to becoming a Supreme Court Justice) co-authored a Harvard Law Review article titled "The Right to Privacy," in which he advocated for the "right to be let alone."

​In Griswold, the Supreme Court found a right to privacy, derived from penumbras of other explicitly stated constitutional protections. The Court used the personal protections expressly stated in the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth Amendments to find that there is an implied right to privacy in the Constitution. The Court found that when one takes the penumbras together, the Constitution creates a “zone of privacy.” The right to privacy established in Griswold was then narrowly used to find a right to privacy for married couples, regarding the right to purchase contraceptives. 

Additionally, it is important to note Justice Harlan's concurring opinion in Griswold, which found a right to privacy derived from the Fourteenth Amendment. In his concurrence, he relies upon the rationale in his dissentingopinion in Poe v. Ullman (1961). In that opinion, he wrote, "I consider that this Connecticut legislation, as construed to apply to these appellants, violates the Fourteenth Amendment. I believe that a statute making it a criminal offense for married couples to use contraceptives is an intolerable and unjustifiable invasion of privacy in the conduct of the most intimate concerns of an individual's personal life." 

In privacy cases post-Griswold, the Supreme Court typically has chosen to rely upon Justice Harlan's concurrence rather than Justice Douglas's majority opinion. Eisenstadt v Baird (1971), and Lawrence v. Texas (2003) are two of the most prolific cases in which the Court extended the right to privacy. In each of these cases, the Court relied upon the Fourteenth Amendment, not penumbras. 

In Eisenstadt, the Supreme Court decided to extend the right to purchase contraceptives to unmarried couples. More importantly, however, the Court found that "the constitutionally protected right of privacy inheres in the individual, not the marital couple." 

In Lawrence, the Supreme Court used the Fourteenth Amendment to extend the right to privacy to "persons of the same sex [who choose to] engage in . . . sexual conduct." Relying upon the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of due process, the Court held: "The petitioners are entitled to respect for their private lives. The State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime. Their right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government."

When the Supreme Court first decided Roe v. Wade, the Court used the right to privacy, as derived from the Fourteenth Amendment, and extended the right to encompass an individual’s right to have an abortion: "This right of privacy . . . founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action . . . is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy." However, after the Dobbs decision, the Court overturned both Roe and Casey. Consequently, the right to abortion no longer falls under the broader right to privacy. Additionally, the Dobbs opinion mentioned potentially examining Griswold and Eisenstadt in the future. While it is unclear to what extent that may have on the right to privacy in the current time; it is likely that the case law around this right will continue to evolve with more recent Supreme Court decisions.