GRISWOLD V. CONNECTICUT (1965) (amicus)

In November 1961, Estelle Griswold, executive director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, and Dr. C. Lee Buxton, a gynecologist at the Yale School of Medicine, opened a birth control clinic in New Haven, Connecticut. Within ten days, the state closed the clinic and arrested the pair under a Connecticut law enacted in 1879 that forbade the use of “any drug, medicinal article, or instrument for the purpose of preventing contraception.” They were found guilty of prescribing contraceptives and fined one hundred dollars each.

The pair appealed their conviction, and in 1965 the Supreme Court heard their case. The ACLU filed a friend of the court brief on behalf of Griswold and Buxton, arguing that the contraceptive law violated a constitutional right to privacy. The Supreme Court agreed with the ACLU’s argument, and held, for the first time, that the Constitution guarantees people a marital right to privacy, and declared the Connecticut law unconstitutional as it applied to married couples.

The landmark right to privacy established in Griswold would be cited in a number of other important cases concerning the right to control one’s personal life, including Roe v. Wade (1973), Lawrence v. Texas (2003), and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015).