Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case regarding abortion. In a plurality opinion, the Court upheld the constitutional right to have an abortion that was established in Roe v. Wade (1973), but altered the standard for analyzing restrictions on that right, crafting the undue burden standard for abortion restrictions.[1]
The case arose from a challenge to five provisions of the Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act of 1982; among the provisions were requirements for a waiting period, spousal notice, and (for minors) parental consent prior to undergoing an abortion procedure. In a plurality opinion jointly written by associate justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony Kennedy, and David Souter, the Supreme Court upheld the "essential holding" of Roe, which was that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects a woman's right to choose to have an abortion prior to viability.[citation needed]
The Court overturned the Roe trimester framework in favor of a viability analysis, thereby allowing states to implement abortion restrictions that apply during the first trimester of pregnancy. The Court also replaced the strict scrutiny standard of review required by Roe with the undue burden standard, under which abortion restrictions would be unconstitutional when they were enacted for "the purpose or effect of placing a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion of a nonviable fetus." Applying this new standard of review, the Court upheld four provisions of the Pennsylvania law, but invalidated the requirement of spousal notification. Four justices wrote or joined opinions arguing that Roe v. Wade should have been struck down, while two justices wrote opinions favoring the preservation of the higher standard of review for abortion restrictions.
For more on the undue burden standard, click here.
The undue burden standard is a constitutional test fashioned by the Supreme Court of the United States. The test, first developed in the late 19th century, is widely used in American constitutional law.[1] In short, the undue burden standard states that a legislature cannot make a particular law that is too burdensome or restrictive of one's fundamental rights.
One use of the standard was in Morgan v. Virginia, 328 U.S. 373 (1946). In a 7-to-1 ruling, Associate Justice Stanley Forman Reed fashioned an "undue burden" test to decide the constitutionality of a Virginia law requiring separate but equal racial segregation in public transportation. "There is a recognized abstract principle, however, that may be taken as a postulate for testing whether particular state legislation in the absence of action by Congress is beyond state power. This is that the state legislation is invalid if it unduly burdens that commerce in matters where uniformity is necessary—necessary in the constitutional sense of useful in accomplishing a permitted purpose."[2]
More recently, the standard has been used in cases involving state restrictions on a woman's access to abortion. The standard was applied by Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in her dissent in City of Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health, 462 US 416 (1983). O'Connor utilized the test as an alternative to the strict scrutiny test applied in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973). The test was later used by a plurality opinion[3] in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992), to uphold state regulations on abortion.[4][5][6] In City of Akron, O'Connor stated: "If the particular regulation does not 'unduly burden' the fundamental right, then our evaluation of that regulation is limited to our determination that the regulation rationally relates to a legitimate state purpose."[7] Justice John Paul Stevens in his partial concurrence, partial dissent to Casey further defined undue burden by saying, "[a] burden may be 'undue' either because [it] is too severe or because it lacks a legitimate, rational justification."[8]
The undue burden test has been used to judge the constitutionality of tax laws,[9] consumer product liability laws,[10] affirmative action,[11] voter registration laws,[12] abortion laws,[13] and even anti-spam laws.[14]
Some courts have described the undue burden standard as "a 'middle way' forward" for Constitutional analysis, between the strict scrutiny and the rational basis tests.
