Supreme Court of the United States

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Select decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court

inSupreme Court of the United States

Written by Brian P. Smentkowski

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Last Updated: Nov 22, 2024 • Article History

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Date:: 1789 - present

Areas Of Involvement:: U.S. Supreme Court

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The table provides a list of select decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Select Decisions of the United States Supreme Court
Decision	Year	Description

Chisolm v. Georgia	1793	Found in favor of a citizen of South Carolina in his suit against the state of Georgia, which had refused to appear on the grounds that the Supreme Court lacked authority to hear cases in which a state was a defendant, later invalidated by the Eleventh Amendment, which removed such cases from federal jurisdiction.
Marbury v. Madison	1803	Asserted the Supreme Court’s power of judicial review, by which it could invalidate laws passed by Congress by declaring them unconstitutional.
McCulloch v. Maryland	1819	Established that Congress possesses all “implied powers” appropriate to the exercise of the powers expressly granted to it in the U.S. Constitution.
Cohens v. Virginia	1821	Reaffirmed the Supreme Court’s right under the Judiciary Act of 1789 to review the decisions of state supreme courts on questions related to the U.S. Constitution or federal law.
Gibbons v. Ogden	1824	Held that, by the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution, the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce could not be infringed by contradictory state enactments.
Dred Scott v. John F.A. Sandford	1857	Declared that African Americans were not entitled to the rights of U.S. citizenship and struck down the Missouri Compromise, which had banned slavery in the western U.S. territories.
Ex parte Merryman	1861	Declared that only Congress, not the president, has the power to suspend the writ of habeas corpus.
Ex parte Milligan	1866	Established that U.S. civilians may not be tried in military courts except when civilian courts are not functioning.
Texas v. White	1869	Held that by joining the Confederacy the state of Texas had not surrendered its membership in the United States, which is an “indestructible union” from which no state may secede.
Slaughterhouse Cases	1873	Held that the privileges and immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) protects the civil rights conferred by U.S. citizenship but not the property rights traditionally controlled by the states.
Munn v. Illinois	1877	Established the power of state governments to regulate private industries.
Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan and Trust Company	1895	Declared the federal income tax to be unconstitutional, a decision later invalidated by passage of the Sixteenth Amendment.
United States v. E.C. Knight Company	1895	Held that the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 could not be applied to monopolies in manufacturing because such monopolies only indirectly affected interstate commerce, which Congress is empowered to regulate by the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution.
Plessy v. Ferguson	1896	Established the doctrine of “separate but equal,” according to which racial segregation of African Americans and whites in public accommodations does not violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as long as the accommodations for the two groups are reasonably equal.
Lochner v. New York	1905	Struck down a New York City law limiting bakery workers to 10 hours of labor per day, holding that it violated a right to freedom of contract guaranteed by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Adair v. United States	1908	Struck down a federal law prohibiting railroads from requiring their workers not to join labor unions, thereby upholding the constitutionality of yellow-dog contracts.
Muller v. State of Oregon	1908	Upheld the constitutionality of an Oregon law that prohibited women from working more than 10 hours a day on the grounds that it provided health protections necessary to women but not to men.
Hammer v. Dagenhart	1918	Struck down a federal law regulating child labor as an unconstitutional encroachment on state powers to determine local labor conditions.
Schenck v. United States	1919	Declared that speech that poses a “clear and present danger” to society is not protected by the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech.
Gitlow v. New York	1925	Held that the First Amendment’s prohibition of laws abridging freedom of speech applies to state governments.
Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States	1935	Invalidated Section III of the National Industrial Relations Act (1933) as an unconstitutional delegation of legislative powers to the president.
West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette	1943	Found that laws requiring public school students to salute the U.S. flag violated the First Amendment’s guarantees of freedom of speech and free exercise of religion.
Korematsu v. United States	1944	Upheld the conviction of a Nisei (second-generation Japanese) American citizen for failing to obey a military order to relocate to an internment camp for people of Japanese ancestry.
Dennis v. United States	1951	Upheld the constitutionality of the Smith Act of 1940, which prohibited advocating the violent overthrow of the government.
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka	1954	Declared racial segregation in public schools to be an inherent violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, thereby invalidating the “separate but equal” doctrine advanced by the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson.
Mapp v. Ohio	1961	Ruled that evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonalbe searches and seizures by law-enforcement officials, is inadmissible in state courts.
Baker v. Carr	1962	Held that state legislative apportionment was justiciable in federal courts and effectively established the principle of “one person, one vote” for assessing the constitutionality of state apportionment plans.
Engel v. Vitale	1962	Declared that voluntary prayer in public schools is unconstitutional under the First Amendment’s prohibition of laws “respecting an establishment of religion” (the establishment clause).
Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States	1964	Upheld the constitutionality of Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited racial segregation or discrimination in places of public accommodation.
Griswold v. State of Connecticut	1965	Declared that a Connecticut state law prohibiting the use of contraceptives violated a right of marital privacy implied by various specific guarantees within the Bill of Rights.
Miranda v. Arizona	1966	Required police to issue warnings (the Miranda warnings) to arrested persons to safeguard their privilege against self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment.
Lemon v. Kurtzman	1971	Established the “Lemon test,” according to which a law is consistent with the establishment clause of the First Amendment only if it has a secular purpose, does not inhibit or advance a particular religion, and does not foster excessive government entanglement with religion.
Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education	1971	Upheld the constitutionality of busing programs to achieve racial integration in public schools.
Roe v. Wade	1973	Established a constitutional right to abortion on the basis of the court’s recognition of a right of privacy implicit in the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Abood v. Detroit Board of Education	1977	Prohibited public-sector unions from compelling nonunion employees to fund political or ideological activities to which they object but permitted the requirement that nonunion employees fund collective bargaining activities.
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke	1978	Prohibited the use of strict racial quotas in the admissions policies of institutions of higher education but allowed that race could be considered as a factor in admissions decisions.
Chevron USA, Inc. v. National Resources Defense Council	1984	Established a longstanding principle known as Chevron deference, ruling that, in cases involving challenges to a federal agency’s application of an ambiguous or unclear provision of a federal statute in issuing or enforcing business regulations, judges must defer to the agency’s interpretation of the provision, provided that a correct interpretation is not explicitly indicated elsewhere in the statute and the agency’s interpretation is reasonable.
Bowers v. Hardwick	1986	Upheld a Georgia state law prohibiting sodomy.
Texas v. Johnson	1989	Held that a law prohibiting the desecration of the U.S. flag violated the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech.
Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey	1992	Established that laws that place an “undue burden” on a woman seeking an abortion before her fetus is viable are unconstitutional.
Bush v. Gore	2000	Halted a legally mandated recount of presidential ballots in Florida, effectively awarding an Electoral College victory and thereby the presidency to Republican candidate George W. Bush.
Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition	2002	Struck down as an infringement of freedom of speech a law prohibiting images that appeared to be, or that conveyed the impression of being, depictions of minors engaged in sexual activity.
Bollinger decisions	2003	A pair of cases, Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger, in which the Court held that consideration of race in the admissions decisions of institutions of higher education is permissible only if it is “narrowly tailored” to serve a compelling state interest.
Rasul v. Bush	2004	Declared that foreign nationals held at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp on the island of Cuba were entitled to file habeas corpus petitions in federal courts.
Boumediene v. Bush	2008	Struck down the Military Commissions Act (2006), which had prohibited foreign nationals held by the United States as “enemy combatants” from challenging their detentions in federal courts.
District of Columbia v. Heller	2008	Held that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to possess firearms independent of service in a state militia and to use firearms for traditionally lawful purposes, including self-defense within the home.
Ricci v. DeStefano	2009	Found that a New Haven, Connecticut, fire department violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by discarding the results of a promotion test on which whites performed better than African Americans.
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission	2010	Struck down a provision of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 that prohibited corporate and union expenditures in connection with political elections and a provision of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 that banned direct corporate or union funding of “electioneering communications” (i.e., political advertisements).
United States v. Stevens	2010	Held that a federal law banning the creation, sale, or possession of depictions of animal cruelty violated the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech.
McDonald v. City of Chicago	2010	Extended the scope of the Court’s earlier decision in District of Columbia v. Heller by holding that the Second Amendment applies to state and local governments as well as to the federal government.
Affordable Care Act cases	2012	A set of three cases—Florida v. Department of Health and Human Services, National Federation of Independent Business v. Kathleen Sebelius, and Department of Health and Human Services v. Florida—in which the Court upheld most provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (2010), finding in part that the law’s requirement that almost all Americans obtain health insurance by 2014 or pay a penalty is constitutional under Congress’s taxation power.
Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin	2013	Vacated and remanded a lower court’s decision upholding the partly race-based admissions policy of the University of Texas at Austin, which had been modeled on a policy approved by the Court in the Bollinger decisions.
Hollingsworth v. Perry	2013	Held that supporters of a California referendum defining marriage as a legal union between one man and one woman did not have standing to appeal a lower court’s ruling that the referendum was unconstitutional.
Shelby County v. Holder	2013	Struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which required jurisdictions with a history of voter discrimination and low voter turnout (including nine Southern states) to seek federal or judicial approval of changes to their voting laws.
United States v. Windsor	2013	Declared unconstitutional a provision of the federal Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 that had defined marriage as a legal union between one man and one woman.
Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.	2014	Held that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 permits some for-profit corporations to refuse on religious grounds to pay for legally mandated coverage of contraceptive drugs and devices in their employees’ health insurance plans.
McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission	2014	Struck down provisions of the amended Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 that had imposed aggregate limits on monetary contributions by individuals to multiple federal candidates, political party committees, and noncandidate political action committees (PACs).
Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt	2016	Found that provisions of a Texas law requiring that physicians who perform abortions have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital and that facilities at abortion clinics be equivalent to ambulatory surgical centers amounted to an “undue burden” on access to abortion and were therefore unconstitutional under the Court’s ruling in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey.
Gill v. Whitford	2018	Vacated for lack of standing and remanded a lower court’s decision that had struck down a redistricting plan of the Wisconsin state legislature as an unconstitutional political, or partisan, gerrymander.
Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees	2018	Overturned the Court’s earlier decision in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, ruling that compelled funding of collective bargaining activities effectively subsidizes union speech on matters of “great public importance.”
Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission	2018	Ruled that a Colorado civil rights agency had acted unfairly in its finding that a baker’s refusal on religious grounds to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple had violated the state’s antidiscrimination law.
American Legion v. American Humanist Association	2019	Reversed and remanded a lower court’s ruling that a publicly maintained 40-foot cross in Maryland erected to honor local soldiers killed in World War I failed the “Lemon test” and thus was unconstitutional under the establishment clause; see above Lemon v. Kurtzman.
Madison v. Alabama	2019	Vacated and remanded an Alabama state court’s decision finding that the execution of a prisoner with dementia is not inconsistent with the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of “cruel and unusual” punishment.
Rucho v. Common Cause	2019	Held that claims of partisan gerrymandering of U.S. congressional districts by state legislatures present “political questions” and are therefore “nonjusticiable,” or beyond the jurisdiction of federal courts.
Bostock v. Clay County, Georgia	2020	Ruled that firing an employee for being homosexual or transgender constitutes a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin.
Seila Law, LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau	2020	Ruled that Congress’s prohibition of the removal of the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) for any reason but “cause” (inefficiency, neglect, or malfeasance) violated the Constitution’s separation of powers.
Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Center	2022	Overturned the Court’s earlier decisions in Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992), holding that the Roe Court was mistaken in its recognition of a constitutional right to abortion.
New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen	2022	Struck down a New York state law requiring that residents who wish to carry concealed pistols or handguns outside their homes must first prove that they have special self-defense needs.
West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency	2022	Limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by finding that industry-wide changes ostensibly justified under the Clean Air Act of 1970 violated the “major questions doctrine,” a judicial principle requiring agency actions with major economic, political, or social consequences to be explicitly authorized by Congress.
Moore v. Harper	2023	Rejected the “independent state legislature theory,” which holds that the Constitution’s establishment clause grants to state legislatures exclusive and independent authority to conduct federal elections.
Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency	2023	Narrowed the scope of the federal Clean Water Act of 1972 by ruling that the law is not applicable to wetlands that lack a continuous surface connection to any “relatively permanent body of water connected to traditional interstate navigable waters.”
Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard University and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina	2023	Effectively ended affirmative action in higher education by finding that the admissions programs at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina failed to meet restrictions established in the Bollinger decisions.
Fischer v. United States	2024	Reversed the conviction of a rioter in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol under a law preventing the obstruction of an official proceeding, holding that the law applies only to acts that impair the integrity or availability of evidence (i.e., evidence tampering).
Loper Bright Enterprises, Inc. v. Raimondo	2024	Overturned the Court’s earlier decision in Chevron USA, Inc. v. National Resources Defense Council, thus eliminating the Chevron deference principle and facilitating legal challenges to rules and regulations issued by federal agencies.
Trump v. Anderson	2024	Overturned a decision by the Colorado Supreme Court holding that former president Donald Trump was ineligible to appear on the state’s 2024 Republican primary ballot under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which states in part that “No person shall hold any office…under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath…to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same.”
Trump v. United States	2024	Established broad immunity for Donald Trump and all future presidents, declaring that presidents are absolutely immune from criminal prosecution for acts involving their “core constitutional powers” and presumptively immune for all other official acts.
United States v. Rahimi	2024	Reversed a lower court’s decision striking down a federal law prohibiting the owning of firearms by individuals under domestic-violence restraining orders, holding that the lower court had misunderstood the logic underlying the Court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen.