Also known as: paternalistic
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
A government's policy or practice of taking responsibility for the individual affairs of its citizens, especially by supplying their needs or regulating their conduct in a heavy-handed manner.
Paula Pierce, a solo practitioner, placed a newspaper notice listing her flat fee for uncontested divorces. State regulators ordered her to remove the notice, claiming the public needed protection from commercializing the profession. The court rejected the order because truthful price information is protected speech and the state cannot suppress it on paternalistic grounds about professional dignity.
Patricia Patel sought an abortion at a clinic without notifying her estranged husband. State law required spousal notice in nearly all cases. The court struck down the notice rule because it rested on an impermissible paternalistic assumption that husbands should control wives' reproductive decisions.
The Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act of 1982, as amended in 1988 and 1989, established several requirements governing the performance of abortions within the Commonwealth. The Act required a woman seeking an abortion to provide informed consent after receiving specific information from a physician or counselor at least twenty-four hours before the procedure. It mandated that a minor obtain the informed consent of one parent, subject to a judicial bypass option. It further required a married woman to sign a statement confirming that she had notified her husband of her planned abortion, unless certain exceptions applied. The Act also imposed reporting obligations on facilities providing abortion services and defined a medical emergency exception to the various requirements. Before any of these provisions took effect, the petitioners brought suit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The petitioners were five abortion clinics and one physician representing himself as well as a class of physicians who provide abortion services. They sought declaratory and injunctive relief and challenged each provision as unconstitutional on its face. The District Court entered a preliminary injunction. After conducting a three-day bench trial, the District Court held all the provisions unconstitutional and entered a permanent injunction against their enforcement by Pennsylvania. The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part. It adopted the District Court's factual findings and legal analysis except with respect to the spousal notification requirement. The Court of Appeals upheld the spousal notification requirement as constitutional and applied the undue burden standard in evaluating the provisions. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to consider the constitutionality of the challenged provisions of the Pennsylvania statute.
View casePavel Petrov, a bakery owner, was prosecuted for allowing employees to work more than sixty hours in a week. The state defended the limit as necessary to protect workers' health. The court invalidated the statute because it embodied a rejected paternalistic theory of economic regulation rather than a valid exercise of police power.
The New York legislature passed a labor law in 1897 that regulated bakeries and confectionery establishments. Section 110 of article 8 of that law stated that no employee shall be required or permitted to work more than sixty hours in any one week or more than ten hours in any one day. This applied unless for the purpose of making a shorter work day on the last day of the week. The plaintiff in error violated the one hundred and tenth section of article 8, chapter 415, of the Laws of 1897, known as the labor law of the State of New York, in that he wrongfully and unlawfully required and permitted an employe working for him to work more than sixty hours in one week. The charge arose from a voluntary contract rather than any use of physical force. The judgments of the County Court of Oneida County, the Supreme Court, and the Court of Appeals of New York upheld the conviction under the statute, although several judges dissented. The record indicated that the state courts had viewed the law as a measure relating to public health. The case came before the Supreme Court of the United States after argument on February 23 and 24, 1905. The Court rendered its decision on April 17, 1905.
View casePearl Porter could not pay the state's annual poll tax and was barred from voting. State officials argued the tax ensured only responsible citizens participated. The court rejected the tax because it rested on an impermissible paternalistic judgment about who deserves the franchise.
Virginia residents initiated suits seeking to have Virginia’s poll tax declared unconstitutional as a condition for voting in state elections. Section 173 of Virginia’s Constitution directs the General Assembly to levy an annual poll tax not exceeding $1.50 on every resident of the State 21 years of age and over. One dollar of the tax is allocated exclusively to public free schools. The remainder is returned to the counties for general purposes. Section 18 of the Constitution includes payment of poll taxes as a precondition for voting. Section 20 requires that a person must personally pay all state poll taxes for the three years preceding the year in which registration is sought. Section 21 mandates that the poll tax be paid at least six months prior to the election in which the voter seeks to participate. The poll tax is often assessed along with the personal property tax. Individuals who do not pay a personal property tax bear the responsibility to request assessment for the poll tax. Enforcement of the poll tax takes the form of disenfranchisement. Collection of delinquent taxes cannot be pursued through legal proceedings until three years after delinquency. A three-judge District Court dismissed the complaints, considering itself bound by the Supreme Court’s prior decision in Breedlove v. Suttles. The cases arrived at the Supreme Court on appeal, and the Court noted probable jurisdiction. At the time of the suits, only Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia conditioned the franchise on payment of a poll tax.
View casePablo Perez, a prosecutor, used peremptory challenges to remove all male jurors from a paternity case. He claimed men would be biased against the mother. The court held the strikes unconstitutional because they rested on paternalistic stereotypes about how men and women think.
The State of Alabama filed a complaint for paternity and child support against J. E. B. on behalf of T. B., the mother of a minor child, in the District Court of Jackson County, Alabama. On October 21, 1991, the matter was called for trial and jury selection began with a panel of 36 potential jurors, 12 males and 24 females. After the court excused three jurors for cause, only 10 of the remaining 33 jurors were male. The State then used 9 of its 10 peremptory strikes to remove male jurors, while petitioner used all but one of his strikes to remove female jurors, resulting in an all-female jury. Before the jury was empaneled, petitioner objected to the State's peremptory challenges on the ground that they were exercised against male jurors solely on the basis of gender. The court rejected the objection and empaneled the all-female jury, which found petitioner to be the father of the child and ordered him to pay child support. On postjudgment motion, the court reaffirmed its ruling. The Alabama Court of Civil Appeals affirmed the judgment at 606 So. 2d 156 (1992), and the Supreme Court of Alabama denied certiorari. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari at 508 U. S. 905 (1993) to resolve the question of whether the Equal Protection Clause forbids peremptory challenges on the basis of gender.
View casePierce Patterson, a married man, sought to purchase condoms at a local store. State law prohibited sales of contraceptives except by prescription. The court invalidated the restriction because it reflected an impermissible paternalistic desire to control private marital decisions about procreation.
In 1961 two appeals reached the Supreme Court from judgments of the Connecticut Supreme Court of Errors sustaining demurrers and dismissing actions brought by Dr. C. Lee Buxton, a Yale professor of obstetrics and gynecology who also served as medical director of the Planned Parenthood Center in New Haven, together with married patients Paul and Pauline Poe and Jane Doe. The complaints sought declaratory and injunctive relief against enforcement of Conn. Gen. Stat. §§ 53-32 and 54-196. The women had consulted Dr. Buxton, who advised that contraceptive methods were medically indicated because of prior pregnancies that had resulted in stillbirths or critical illness. The statutes prevented them from obtaining or following such advice. The complaints further alleged that the New Haven County State's Attorney had made public statements threatening to prosecute violators of the statutes. The Connecticut Supreme Court of Errors held that the allegations failed to show any specific threat of prosecution against these plaintiffs. It also held that the plaintiffs had not committed or were about to commit acts subjecting them to liability. Therefore, the court dismissed the actions for lack of a justiciable controversy. The cases came to the United States Supreme Court on appeal. The Court noted probable jurisdiction. The challenged statutes had been on the books since 1879. In the more than eighty years since enactment, the only recorded prosecution was a 1940 test case against two doctors and a nurse at a birth-control clinic. That case ended when the State moved to dismiss the information after the state supreme court upheld the statutes. Contraceptives were commonly and openly sold in Connecticut drug stores. Yet no prosecutions for sale or use were recorded.
View caseNo. Such a statute rests on an archaic stereotype that husbands should control family economic decisions. Equal protection requires intermediate scrutiny, and a paternalistic allocation of rights within marriage fails that standard because it is not substantially related to an important governmental objective.
No. A flat ban on sales to persons under sixteen, combined with limits on adult access, unduly burdens the fundamental privacy right to decide about contraception. Generalized paternalistic concerns about minors or health do not satisfy strict scrutiny when less restrictive alternatives exist.
No. The rule directly targets intimate marital decisions about procreation. Marital privacy doctrine forbids the state from injecting itself into those choices through paternalistic measures aimed at promoting marital stability.
…provide ample support for refusing to recognize an open-ended constitutional right to commit suicide. Much more than the State's paternalistic interest in protecting the individual from the irrevocable consequences of an ill-advised decision motivated by temporary concerns is at stake. There is truth in John Donne's observation…