Eisenstadt v. Baird

Argued: November 17–18, 1971
Decided: March 22, 1972
Full case name: Thomas S. Eisenstadt, Sheriff of Suffolk County, Massachusetts v. William F. Baird
Holding: A Massachusetts law criminalizing the distribution of contraceptives to unmarried persons for the purpose of preventing pregnancy violated the right to equal protection. Judgment of the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed.

Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438 (1972), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that established the right of unmarried people to possess contraception on the same basis as married couples.

The Court struck down a Massachusetts law prohibiting the distribution of contraceptives to unmarried people for the purpose of preventing pregnancy, ruling that it violated the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The decision effectively legalized (heterosexual) premarital sex in the United States.

Background

William Baird was charged with a felony for distributing contraceptive foams after lectures on birth control and population control at Boston University. The prearranged violation of the law occurred on April 6, 1967, when Baird handed a condom and a package of contraceptive foam to a 19-year-old woman. Under Massachusetts law on "crimes against chastity" (Chapter 272, section 21A), contraceptives could be distributed only by registered doctors or pharmacists, and only to married persons.

After Baird was convicted, an appeal resulted in partial overturn by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which concluded that the lectures were covered by First Amendment protections. However, the court affirmed the conviction under contraceptive distribution laws. Baird filed a petition for a federal writ of habeas corpus, which was refused by the federal district court. Upon appeal, The Court of Appeals for the First Circuit vacated the dismissal and remanded the action with directions to grant the writ, and dismiss the charge, reasoning that the Massachusetts law infringed on fundamental human rights of unmarried couples as guaranteed by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This ruling was then appealed to the United States Supreme Court, by Sheriff Eisenstadt, who had prosecuted the case, on the ground that Baird lacked standing to appeal, being neither an authorized distributor under the statute nor a single person.

Supreme Court decision

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Chief Justice Burger dissented alone, arguing that there were no conclusive findings available to the Court on the health risks of vaginal foam since that issue had not been presented to the lower courts, and thus no basis for the Court's finding that the Massachusetts statute served no public health interest. Burger also held that the Massachusetts statute independently advanced the state's interest in ensuring couples receive informed medical advice on contraceptives.

Significance

Later cases have interpreted the ruling's most famous sentence—"If the right of privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child."—as recognizing the right of single people to engage in sexual activity. Carey v. Population Services International, decided in 1977, struck down a New York law forbidding distribution of contraceptives to those under 16 but failed to produce a majority opinion and thus is not widely cited. Bowers v. Hardwick in 1986 rejected the claim of homosexuals to a fundamental right to engage in sodomy. In dissent, John Paul Stevens argued that Eisenstadt (and Carey) protected premarital heterosexual relations, and that the state had no rationale for distinguishing between heterosexuals and homosexuals. Lawrence v. Texas overruled Bowers in 2003, citing Eisenstadt in support of this ruling, and recognized that consenting adults had a right to engage in private, consensual non-commercial sexual intercourse.

Roy Lucas, a prominent abortion rights lawyer, assessed Eisenstadt as "among the most influential in the United States during the entire [20th] century by any manner or means of measurement." Eisenstadt v. Baird is mentioned in over 52 Supreme Court cases from 1972 through 2002. Each of the eleven U.S. Court of Appeals Circuit, as well as the Federal Circuit, has cited Eisenstadt v. Baird as authority. The highest courts of all 50 States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico have cited Eisenstadt v. Baird. Eisenstadt v. Baird has been described as "among the most influential in the United States during the entire century by any manner or means of measurement".

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