Also known as: processes of law · due process · due process of law
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
A constitutional command requiring that government action depriving a person of life, liberty, or property be accompanied by fair procedures and substantive limits on arbitrary power.
Philip Powell loses his state-issued professional license after an ex parte proceeding. The state provides no notice or opportunity to contest the revocation. The court holds the action unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause.
Pilar Pena and Pedro Pacheco seek to marry in a state that prohibits interracial unions. The state enforces the ban against them. The court strikes down the statute as violating fundamental liberty interests.
Philip Powell loses his state-issued professional license after an ex parte proceeding. The state provides no notice or opportunity to contest the revocation. The court holds the action unconstitutional.
Penelope Price, convicted of a minor offense, faces mandatory sterilization under state law. The statute singles out certain offenders without regard to individual circumstances. The court invalidates the program as an unconstitutional infringement on procreative liberty.
Patricia Patel lives with her nonmarital child as part of a family unit. Upon the mother's death the state removes the child without any hearing. The court requires procedural protections before severing the parental relationship.
Phoenix Technologies employees seek state recognition of their out-of-state same-sex marriages. The state refuses on statutory grounds. The court holds that the fundamental right to marry extends to same-sex couples under substantive due process.
The petitioners were fourteen same-sex couples and two men whose same-sex partners were deceased. They lived in Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee. Those states defined marriage as a union between one man and one woman under their constitutions and statutes. The petitioners filed suits in federal district courts in their home states. They sought marriage licenses or recognition of marriages lawfully performed elsewhere. James Obergefell and John Arthur traveled from Ohio to Maryland to marry aboard a medical transport plane because Arthur suffered from ALS; Obergefell later sought to be listed as surviving spouse on Arthur's death certificate. April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse, Michigan nurses, adopted three children but could not both serve as legal parents under state adoption rules. Army Reserve Sergeant Ijpe DeKoe and Thomas Kostura married in New York before DeKoe's deployment to Afghanistan and later settled in Tennessee. Each district court ruled in the petitioners' favor. The respondents appealed. The Sixth Circuit consolidated the cases and reversed the district court judgments. The petitioners sought certiorari, which the Supreme Court granted. Same-sex couples had begun establishing families after substantial cultural and political developments in the late twentieth century. Earlier litigation had addressed the legal status of gays and lesbians, including challenges that reached the Supreme Court in Bowers v. Hardwick and Lawrence v. Texas.
View caseThe Fifth Amendment applies the phrase to the federal government. The Fourteenth Amendment applies an identical phrase to the states.
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No. It also imposes substantive limits that bar arbitrary deprivations of fundamental liberties such as marriage and procreation.
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A state must provide notice and an opportunity to be heard before depriving an individual of a protected liberty or property interest, such as parental custody or a professional license.
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…found in the Bill of Rights. But that liberty is not guaranteed absolutely against deprivation, only against deprivation without due process of law. The test traditionally applied in the area of social and economic legislation is whether or not a law such as that challenged has a rational relation to a valid state objective.…