supreme court case study 28 answers

Supreme Court Cases Quiz

Our free Supreme Court cases quiz will test your knowledge on 30 landmark Supreme Court cases. It is important for every government and politics student to be familiar with each of these important Supreme Court cases. These cases involve individual rights, criminal law, federalism, first amendment rights, and more. This Supreme Court quiz will help you review and memorize these important decisions.

Which Supreme Court case held that people of African descent who were brought to the U.S. and held as slaves (and their descendants) were not U.S. citizens and were not protected by the Constitution?

Which Supreme Court case held that a search warrant is needed to track an automobile with a GPS tracking device?

Which Supreme Court case held that religious duty is not a legitimate defense to a criminal indictment?

Which Supreme Court case established the basis for the exercise of judicial review under Article III of the Constitution?

Which Supreme Court case invalidated laws prohibiting interracial marriage?

Which Supreme Court case held that state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students were unconstitutional?

Which Supreme Court case established that police must advise criminal suspects of their Constitutional rights before questioning them?

Which Supreme Court case held that the government, through the use of eminent domain, can claim and pass on privately owned land to another private owner if doing so results in economic development?

Which Supreme Court case held that the First Amendment right to free speech doesn't protect speech that presents a “clear and present danger?”

Which Supreme Court case upheld state laws requiring racial segregation at public facilities under the “separate but equal” doctrine?

Which Supreme Court case invalidated a state law prohibiting the use of contraceptives on the grounds that the law violated the right to marital privacy?

Which Supreme Court case held that the right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples?

Which Supreme Court case held that abortion is a fundamental right under the United States Constitution?

Which Supreme Court case struck down state funding for religious schools?

Which Supreme Court case held that state courts are required by the Fourteenth Amendment to provide counsel to defendants in criminal cases, extending this Sixth Amendment federal requirement to the states?

Which Supreme Court case held that the Commerce Clause grants Congress the power to regulate any aspect of commerce that crosses state lines, including modes of transportation?

Which Supreme Court case held that the Constitution does not provide a right to abortion?

Which Supreme Court case held that the act of burning a flag is protected “speech” under the First Amendment?

Which Supreme Court case established that a public official suing for defamation must prove that the statement was made with “actual malice?”

Which Supreme Court case held that it is unconstitutional for state officials to write an official school prayer and to encourage students to recite it?

Which Supreme Court case established that evidence obtained through unreasonable searches and seizures, in violation of the Fourth Amendment, may not be used in state courts for state law criminal prosecutions?

Which Supreme Court case held that the government cannot restrict independent political expenditures by corporations?

Which Supreme Court case protects an individual’s right to possess a functioning handgun in their home?

Which Supreme Court case held that the President cannot use executive privilege to withhold evidence that is relevant in a criminal trial?

Which Supreme Court case reaffirmed that obscene material is not protected by the First Amendment, and also redefined the Constitutional test for determining what constitutes obscene material?

Which Supreme Court case defined the First Amendment rights of public school students?

Which Supreme Court case prohibits race-based admission decisions to institutions of higher education?

Which Supreme Court case upheld the individual health insurance mandate included in the Affordable Care Act?

Which Supreme Court case established that the Constitution grants implied powers to Congress which can be used to implement the Constitution's express powers?

Which Supreme Court case upheld the constitutionality of Executive Order 9066, which ordered Japanese Americans into internment camps during World War II?

Breaking News

Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College

Holding : The admissions programs at Harvard College and the University of North Carolina violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

Judgment : Reversed , 6-2, in an opinion by Chief Justice Roberts on June 29, 2023. Justice Thomas filed a concurring opinion. Justice Gorsuch filed a concurring opinion, in which Justice Thomas joined. Justice Kavanaugh filed a concurring opinion. Justice Sotomayor filed a dissenting opinion, in which Justice Kagan joined. Justice Jackson took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.

SCOTUSblog Coverage

• Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action programs in college admissions (Amy Howe, June 29, 2023)
• Affirmative action appears in jeopardy after marathon arguments (Amy Howe, October 31, 2022)
• The court is poised to set jurisprudence on race for generations — and not just in affirmative action (James Romoser, October 30, 2022)
• A guide to the amicus briefs in the affirmative-action cases (Ellena Erskine, Angie Gou, and Elisabeth Snyder, October 29, 2022)
• The court should relegate racial discrimination in higher education to the dustbin of history (Zach West and Bryan Cleveland, October 28, 2022)
• Being race-conscious is a necessary and effective tool to address racism and discrimination — including for Asian Americans (Bethany Li, October 28, 2022)
• On being original: Racial classifications and the fallacy of a certain strain of “progressive originalism” (Devon Westhill, October 28, 2022)
• A business perspective: Diversity in university admissions is a compelling interest (Michael R. Dreeben, Natalie Camastra, and Kelly Kambourelis, October 27, 2022)
• In higher education and beyond, race-based policies stifle individualism and ultimately harm everyone (Wen Fa, October 27, 2022)
• The history of anti-Black discrimination in higher education and the myth of a color-blind Constitution (Danielle R. Holley, October 26, 2022)
• Diversity by diktat: An obscure 1977 OMB memo forms the basis for today’s affirmative-action programs (David Bernstein, October 26, 2022)
• In cases challenging affirmative action, court will confront wide-ranging arguments on history, diversity, and the role of race in America (Amy Howe, October 26, 2022)
• Affirmative action cases up first in November argument calendar (Amy Howe, August 3, 2022)
• Court will hear affirmative-action challenges separately, allowing Jackson to participate in UNC case (Amy Howe, July 22, 2022)
• The rise of certiorari before judgment (Steve Vladeck, January 25, 2022)
• Court will hear challenges to affirmative action at Harvard and University of North Carolina (Amy Howe, January 24, 2022)
• Revenge of the rescheduled cases: Congressional proxy voting, the ministerial exception, and more (John Elwood, January 20, 2022)
• Court will take up five new cases, including lawsuit from football coach who wanted to pray on the field (Amy Howe, January 14, 2022)
• Blockbuster watch: Affirmative action, same-sex weddings, and other big relists (John Elwood, January 12, 2022)
• Justices add new cases on bankruptcy, workers’ comp, and relief from final judgments (Amy Howe, January 10, 2022)
• Justices request government’s views on Harvard affirmative-action dispute (Amy Howe, June 14, 2021)
• Affirmative action at Harvard, border searches and pedestrian safety (Andrew Hamm, February 26, 2021)

Privacy Overview

Landmark Library

This library of mini-lessons targets a variety of landmark cases from the United States Supreme Court. Each mini-lesson includes a one-page reading and one page of activities. The mini-lessons are designed for students to complete independently without the need for teacher direction. However, they also make great teacher-directed lessons and class discussion-starters. 

Not sure which cases you want to use? Start by reviewing our Meet the Supremes Teacher’s Guide . It provides case summaries, teaching suggestions, and a crosswalk of the themes, laws, and amendments each case addresses. If you want to assign a Supreme Court case as a research project, use our Research Roadmap graphic organizer to guide students through the process.

Explore resources in this unit

• 6-8 | Middle
• 9-12 | High

EEOC v. Abercrombie & Fitch (2015)

This mini-lesson explores the Supreme Court’s decision regarding a company’s discrimination against a Muslim woman during the hiring process. Students learn how Title VII of the…

Marbury v. Madison (1803)

This mini-lesson covers the basics of the Supreme Court’s decision that affirmed the Court’s power of judicial review. Students learn how Congress tried to add to the Supreme…

Brown v. Board of Education (1954)

This mini-lesson covers the basics of the Supreme Court’s decision that overturned “separate but equal” in public schools. Students learn about segregation and “equality under the…

Clapper v. Amnesty International (2013)

This mini-lesson covers the basics of the Supreme Court’s decision that determined the government’s ability to conduct electronic surveillance of its citizens. Students learn about…

Texas v. Johnson (1989)

This mini-lesson covers the basics of the Supreme Court’s decision that burning the American flag is a form of political speech protected by the First Amendment. Students learn…

Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)

This mini-lesson covers the basics of the Supreme Court decision that determined Dred Scott, having lived in a free territory, was not entitled to his freedom. Students learn about…

Minersville v. Gobitas (1940)

This mini-lesson covers the basics of the Supreme Court's decision that allowed schools to require students to salute the flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Students learn…

Elk v. Wilkins (1884)

This mini-lesson examines the Supreme Court’s ruling that the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause did not apply to American Indians born on Native reservations. Students analyze a…

In re Gault (1967)

This mini-lesson covers the basics of the Supreme Court’s decision that said juvenile offenders have a right to due process. Students learn about 14th Amendment due process,…

Tinker v. Des Moines (1969)

This mini-lesson covers the basics of the Supreme Court's decision that extended First Amendment protections to students in the classroom. Students learn about the concept of…

Lau v. Nichols (1974)

This mini-lesson covers the basics of the Supreme Court’s decision that required public schools to provide language supports to English and multilingual learners (ELs/MLs).…

Gibbons v. Ogden (1824)

This mini-lesson covers the basics of the Supreme Court’s decision that interpreted the Commerce and Supremacy Clauses of the U.S. Constitution and affirmed the federal…

Use the Scope & Sequence to help you plan your iCivics classroom experience!

Whether you enjoy finding opportunities within a well-structured sequence of resources or prefer looking around for pieces and bits that can be jigsawed together, our Scope & Sequence documents are a perfect reference point for planning. Scope & Sequence documents are available for elementary, middle, and high school classrooms and list all of our resources in one place.

13.4 The Supreme Court

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Analyze the structure and important features of the Supreme Court
• Explain how the Supreme Court selects cases to hear
• Discuss the Supreme Court’s processes and procedures

The Supreme Court of the United States, sometimes abbreviated SCOTUS, is a one-of-a-kind institution. While a look at the Supreme Court typically focuses on the nine justices themselves, they represent only the top layer of an entire branch of government that includes many administrators, lawyers, and assistants who contribute to and help run the overall judicial system. The Court has its own set of rules for choosing cases, and it follows a unique set of procedures for hearing them. Its decisions not only affect the outcome of the individual case before the justices, but they also create lasting impacts on legal and constitutional interpretation for the future.

THE STRUCTURE OF THE SUPREME COURT

The original court in 1789 had six justices, but Congress set the number at nine in 1869, and it has remained there ever since. There is one chief justice , who is the lead or highest-ranking judge on the Court, and eight associate justice s . All nine serve lifetime terms, after successful nomination by the president and confirmation by the Senate. There was discussion of expanding the court during Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency and also during the 2020 presidential election. Nothing has come of court expansion, however.

The current court is fairly diverse in terms of gender, religion (Christians and Jews), ethnicity, and ideology, as well as length of tenure. Some justices have served for three decades, whereas others were only recently appointed by President Trump. Figure 13.9 lists the names of the nine justices serving on the Court as of June 2021 along with their year of appointment and the president who nominated them.

Currently, there are six justices who are considered part of the Court’s more conservative wing—Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justices Thomas , Alito , Gorsuch , Kavanaugh , and Barrett —while three are considered more liberal-leaning—Justices Breyer, Sotomayor , and Kagan ( Figure 13.10 ).

Link to Learning

While not formally connected with the public the way elected leaders are, the Supreme Court nonetheless offers visitors a great deal of information at its official website.

For unofficial summaries of recent Supreme Court cases or news about the Court, visit the Oyez website or SCOTUS blog.

In fact, none of the justices works completely in an ideological bubble. While their numerous opinions have revealed certain ideological tendencies, they still consider each case as it comes to them, and they don’t always rule in a consistently predictable or expected way. Furthermore, they don’t work exclusively on their own. Each justice has three or four law clerks, recent law school graduates who temporarily work for the justice, do research, help prepare the justice with background information, and assist with the writing of opinions. The law clerks’ work and recommendations influence whether the justices will choose to hear a case, as well as how they will rule. As the profile below reveals, the role of the clerks is as significant as it is varied.

Insider Perspective

Profile of a united states supreme court clerk.

A Supreme Court clerkship is one of the most sought-after legal positions, giving “thirty-six young lawyers each year a chance to leave their fingerprints all over constitutional law.” 47 A number of current and former justices were themselves clerks, including Chief Justice John Roberts, Justices Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan, and former chief justice William Rehnquist.

Supreme Court clerks are often reluctant to share insider information about their experiences, but it is always fascinating and informative to hear about their jobs. Former clerk Philippa Scarlett , who worked for Justice Stephen Breyer, describes four main responsibilities: 48

Review the cases: Clerks participate in a “ cert. pool” (short for writ of certiorari , a request that the lower court send up its record of the case for review) and make recommendations about which cases the Court should choose to hear.

Prepare the justices for oral argument: Clerks analyze the filed briefs (short arguments explaining each party’s side of the case) and the law at issue in each case waiting to be heard.

Research and draft judicial opinions: Clerks do detailed research to assist justices in writing an opinion, whether it is the majority opinion or a dissenting or concurring opinion.

Help with emergencies: Clerks also assist the justices in deciding on emergency applications to the Court, many of which are applications by incarcerated people to stay their death sentences and are sometimes submitted within hours of a scheduled execution.

Explain the role of law clerks in the Supreme Court system. What is your opinion about the role they play and the justices’ reliance on them?

HOW THE SUPREME COURT SELECTS CASES

The Supreme Court begins its annual session on the first Monday in October and ends late the following June. Every year, there are literally thousands of people who would like to have their case heard before the Supreme Court, but the justices will select only a handful to be placed on the docket , which is the list of cases scheduled on the Court’s calendar. The Court typically accepts fewer than 2 percent of the as many as ten thousand cases it is asked to review every year. 49

Case names, written in italics, list the name of a petitioner versus a respondent, as in Roe v. Wade , for example. 50 For a case on appeal, you can tell which party lost at the lower level of court by looking at the case name: The party unhappy with the decision of the lower court is the one bringing the appeal and is thus the petitioner, or the first-named party in the case. For example, in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), Oliver Brown was one of the thirteen parents who brought suit against the Topeka public schools for discrimination based on racial segregation.

Most often, the petitioner is asking the Supreme Court to grant a writ of certiorari , a request that the lower court send up its record of the case for review. Once a writ of certiorari ( cert . for short) has been granted, the case is scheduled on the Court’s docket. The Supreme Court exercises discretion in the cases it chooses to hear, but four of the nine justices must vote to accept a case. This is called the Rule of Four .

For decisions about cert ., the Court’s Rule 10 (Considerations Governing Review on Writ of Certiorari ) takes precedence. 51 The Court is more likely to grant certiorari when there is a conflict on an issue between or among the lower courts. Examples of conflicts include (1) conflicting decisions among different courts of appeals on the same matter, (2) decisions by an appeals court or a state court conflicting with precedent, and (3) state court decisions that conflict with federal decisions. Occasionally, the Court will fast-track a case that has special urgency, such as Bush v. Gore in the wake of the 2000 election. 52

Past research indicated that the amount of interest-group activity surrounding a case before it is granted cert. has a significant impact on whether the Supreme Court puts the case on its agenda. The more activity, the more likely the case will be placed on the docket. 53 But more recent research broadens that perspective, suggesting that too much interest-group activity when the Court is considering a case for its docket may actually have diminishing impact and that external actors may have less influence on the work of the Court than they have had in the past. 54 Still, the Court takes into consideration external influences, not just from interest groups but also from the public, from media attention, and from a very key governmental actor—the solicitor general.

The solicitor general is the lawyer who represents the federal government before the Supreme Court: He or she decides which cases (in which the United States is a party) should be appealed from the lower courts and personally approves each one presented ( Figure 13.11 ). Most of the cases the solicitor general brings to the Court will be given a place on the docket. About two-thirds of all Supreme Court cases involve the federal government. 55

The solicitor general determines the position the government will take on a case. The attorneys of the office prepare and file the petitions and briefs, and the solicitor general (or an assistant) presents the oral arguments before the Court.

In other cases in which the United States is not the petitioner or the respondent, the solicitor general may choose to intervene or comment as a third party. Before a case is granted cert. , the justices will sometimes ask the solicitor general to comment on or file a brief in the case, indicating their potential interest in getting it on the docket. The solicitor general may also recommend that the justices decline to hear a case. Though research has shown that the solicitor general’s special influence on the Court is not unlimited, it remains quite significant. In particular, the Court does not always agree with the solicitor general, and “while justices are not lemmings who will unwittingly fall off legal cliffs for tortured solicitor general recommendations, they nevertheless often go along with them even when we least expect them to.” 56

Some have credited Donald B. Verrilli, the solicitor general under President Obama, with holding special sway over the five-justice majority ruling on same-sex marriage in June 2015. Indeed, his position that denying same-sex couples the right to marry would mean “thousands and thousands of people are going to live out their lives and go to their deaths without their states ever recognizing the equal dignity of their relationships” became a foundational point of the Court’s opinion, written by then-Justice Anthony Kennedy. 57 With such power over the Court, the solicitor general is sometimes referred to as “the tenth justice.”

SUPREME COURT PROCEDURES

Once a case has been placed on the docket, briefs , or short arguments explaining each party’s view of the case, must be submitted—first by the petitioner putting forth the case, then by the respondent. After initial briefs have been filed, both parties may file subsequent briefs in response to the first. Likewise, people and groups that are not party to the case but are interested in its outcome may file an amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) brief giving their opinion, analysis, and recommendations about how the Court should rule. Interest groups in particular can become heavily involved in trying to influence the judiciary by filing amicus briefs—both before and after a case has been granted cert . And, as noted earlier, if the United States is not party to a case, the solicitor general may file an amicus brief on the government’s behalf.

With briefs filed, the Court hears oral argument s in cases from October through April. The proceedings are quite ceremonial. When the Court is in session, the robed justices make a formal entrance into the courtroom to a standing audience and the sound of a banging gavel. The Court’s marshal presents them with a traditional chant: “The Honorable, the Chief Justice and the Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! [Hear ye!] All persons having business before the Honorable, the Supreme Court of the United States, are admonished to draw near and give their attention, for the Court is now sitting. God save the United States and this Honorable Court!” 58 It has not gone unnoticed that the Court, which has defended the First Amendment’s religious protection and the traditional separation of church and state, opens its every public session with a mention of God.

During oral arguments, each side’s lawyers have thirty minutes to make their legal case, though the justices often interrupt the presentations with questions. The justices consider oral arguments not as a forum for a lawyer to restate the merits of the case as written in the briefs, but as an opportunity to get answers to any questions they may have. 59 When the United States is party to a case, the solicitor general (or one of the solicitor general's assistants) will argue the government’s position; even in other cases, the solicitor general may still be given time to express the government’s position on the dispute.

When oral arguments have been concluded, the justices have to decide the case, and they do so in conference , which is held in private twice a week when the Court is in session and once a week when it is not. The conference is also a time to discuss petitions for certiorari , but for those cases already heard, each justice may state their views on the case, ask questions, or raise concerns. The chief justice speaks first about a case, then each justice speaks in turn, in descending order of seniority, ending with the most recently appointed justice. 60 The judges take an initial vote in private before the official announcement of their decisions is made public.

Oral arguments are open to the public, but cameras are not allowed in the courtroom, so the only picture we get is one drawn by an artist’s hand, an illustration or rendering. Cameras seem to be everywhere today, especially to provide security in places such as schools, public buildings, and retail stores, so the lack of live coverage of Supreme Court proceedings may seem unusual or old-fashioned. Over the years, groups have called for the Court to let go of this tradition and open its operations to more “sunshine” and greater transparency. Nevertheless, the justices have resisted the pressure and remain neither filmed nor photographed during oral arguments. 61

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The first amendment, supreme court case, dobbs v. jackson women’s health organization (2022).

597 U.S. ___ (2022)

“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled. The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely—the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

Selected by

The National Constitution Center

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was a landmark decision addressing whether the Constitution protects the right to an abortion.  In Dobbs , the Supreme Court reviewed the constitutionality of Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act—a law banning most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy with exceptions for medical emergencies and fetal abnormalities.  In a divided opinion, the Court upheld the Mississippi law and overturned Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992)—concluding that the Constitution does not protect the right to an abortion.  As a result, the Court’s decision returned the issue of abortion regulation to the elected branches.  In an opinion concurring in the judgment, Chief Justice Roberts agreed to uphold the Mississippi law, but chided the majority for reaching out to decide the broader question of whether to overrule Roe and Casey .  He would have left that important constitutional question to a future case.  Finally, in a rare joint dissent, Justices Breyer, Kagan, and Sotomayor criticized the Court for unsettling nearly five decades of precedent and undermining the Constitution’s promise of freedom and equality for women.

Read the Full Opinion

Excerpt: Majority Opinion, Justice Samuel Alito

For the first 185 years after the adoption of the Constitution, each State was permitted to address this issue in accordance with the views of its citizens.  Then, in 1973, this Court decided Roe v. Wade .  Even though the Constitution makes no mention of abortion, the Court held that it confers a broad right to obtain one.  It did not claim that American law or the common law had ever recognized such a right, and its survey ranged from the constitutionally irrelevant (e.g., its discussion of abortion in antiquity) to the plainly incorrect (e.g., its assertion that abortion was probably never a crime under the common law).  After cataloging a wealth of other information having no bearing on the meaning of the Constitution, the opinion concluded with a numbered set of rules much like those that might be found in a statute enacted by a legislature.

Under this scheme, each trimester of pregnancy was regulated differently, but the most critical line was drawn at roughly the end of the second trimester, which, at the time, corresponded to the point in which a fetus was thought to achieve “viability,” i.e., the ability to survive outside the womb.  Although the Court acknowledged that States had a legitimate interest in protecting “potential life,” it found that this interest could not justify any restriction on pre-viability abortions.  The Court did not explain the basis for this line, and even abortion supporters have found it hard to defend Roe’s reasoning.

At the time of Roe , 30 States still prohibited abortion at all stages.  In the years prior to that decision, about a third of States had liberalized their laws, but Roe abruptly ended that political process.  It imposed the same highly restrictive regime on the entire Nation, and it effectively struck down the abortion laws of every single State.

Eventually, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey , the Court revisited Roe . . . . The opinion concluded that stare decisis, which calls for prior decisions to be followed in most instances, required adherence to what it called Roe ’s “central holding”—that a State may not constitutionally protect fetal life before “viability”—even if that holding was wrong.

Casey threw out Roe ’s trimester scheme and substituted a new rule of uncertain origin under which States were forbidden to adopt any regulation that imposed an ‘undue burden’ on a woman’s right to have an abortion. . . . The three Justices who authored the controlling opinion “call[ed] for the contending sides of a national controversy to end their national division” by treating the Court’s decision as the final settlement of the question of the constitutional right to abortion.

As has become increasingly apparent in the intervening years, Casey did not achieve that goal.  Americans continue to hold passionate and widely divergent views on abortion, and state legislatures have acted accordingly.  Some have recently enacted laws allowing abortion, with few restrictions, at all stage of pregnancy.  Others have tightly restricted abortion beginning well before viability.  And in this case, 26 States have expressly asked this Court to overrule Roe and Casey and allow the States to regulate or prohibit pre-viability abortions.

Before us now is one such state law.  The State of Mississippi asks us to uphold the constitutionality of a law that generally prohibits an abortion after the 15th week of pregnancy—several weeks before the point at which a fetus is now regarded as “viable” outside the womb.  In defending this law, the State’s primary argument is that we should reconsider and overrule Roe and Casey and once again allow each State to regulate abortion as its citizens wish.  On the other side, respondents and the Solicitor General ask us to reaffirm Roe and Casey , and they contend that the Mississippi law cannot stand if we do so.

We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled. The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely—the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. That provision has been held to guarantee some rights that are not mentioned in the Constitution, but any such right must be “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” and “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.” 

The right to abortion does not fall within this category. Until the latter part of the 20th century, such a right was entirely unknown in American law. Indeed, when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, three quarters of the States made abortion a crime at all stages of pregnancy. The abortion right is also critically different from any other right that this Court has held to fall within the Fourteenth Amendment’s protection of “liberty.” Roe ’s defenders characterize the abortion right as similar to the rights recognized in past decisions involving matters such as intimate sexual relations, contraception, and marriage, but abortion is fundamentally different, as both Roe and Casey acknowledged, because it destroys what those decisions called “fetal life” and what the law now before us describes as an “unborn human being.”

Stare decisis , the doctrine on which Casey ’s controlling opinion was based, does not compel unending adherence to Roe ’s abuse of judicial authority. Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division. 

It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives. . . .

We discuss [substantive due process] in depth below, but before doing so, we briefly address one additional constitutional provision that some of respondents’ amici have now offered as yet another potential home for the abortion right: the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. . . . Neither Roe nor Casey saw fit to invoke this theory, and it is squarely foreclosed by our precedents, which establish that a State’s regulation of abortion is not a sex-based classification and is thus not subject to the “heightened scrutiny” that applies to such classifications. . . . The regulation of a medical procedure that only one sex can undergo does not trigger heightened constitutional scrutiny unless the regulation is a “mere pretex[t] designed to effect an invidious discrimination against members of one sex or the other.” . . . And as the Court has stated, the “goal of preventing abortion” does not constitute “invidiously discriminatory animus” against women. . . .

With this new theory addressed, we turn to Casey’s bold assertion that the abortion right is an aspect of the “liberty” protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. . . .

We begin by considering the critical question of whether the Constitution, properly understood, confers a right to obtain an abortion. . . .

The Constitution makes no express reference to a right to obtain an abortion, and therefore those who claim that it protects such a right much show that the right is somehow implicit in the constitutional text. . . .

In interpreting what is meant by the Fourteenth Amendment’s reference to ‘liberty,’ we must guard against the natural human tendency to confuse what the Amendment protects with our own ardent views about the liberty that Americans should enjoy.  That is why the Court has long been reluctant to recognize rights that are not mentioned in the Constitution. . . . Instead, guided by the history and tradition that map the essential components of our Nation’s concept of ordered liberty, we must ask what the Fourteenth Amendment means by the term “liberty.” When we engage in that inquiry in the present case, the clear answer is that the Fourteenth Amendment does not protect the right to an abortion. 

Until the latter part of the 20th century, there was no support in American law for a constitutional right to obtain an abortion. No state constitutional provision had recognized such a right. Until a few years before Roe was handed down, no federal or state court had recognized such a right. Nor had any scholarly treatise of which we are aware.  And although law review articles are not reticent about advocating new rights, the earliest article proposing a constitutional right to an abortion that has come to our attention was published only a few years before Roe .

Not only was there no support for such a constitutional right until shortly before Roe , but abortion had long been a crime in every single State. At common law, abortion was criminal in at least some stages of pregnancy and was regarded as unlawful and could have very serious consequences at all stages. American law followed the common law until a wave of statutory restrictions in the 1800s expanded criminal liability for abortions. By the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, three-quarters of the States had made abortion a crime at any stage of pregnancy, and the remaining States would soon follow. . . .

This overwhelming consensus endured until the day Roe was decided. At that time, also by the Roe Court’s own count, a substantial majority—30 States—still prohibited abortion at all stages except to save the life of the mother. And though Roe discerned a “trend toward liberalization” in about “one-third of the States,” those States still criminalized some abortions and regulated them more stringently than Roe would allow. . . .

The inescapable conclusion is that a right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and traditions. On the contrary, an unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain of criminal punishment persisted from the earliest days of the common law until 1973 . . . .

We next consider whether the doctrine of stare decisis counsels continued acceptance of Roe and Casey . . . .

In this case, five factors weigh strongly in favor of overruling Roe and Casey : the nature of their error, the quality of their reasoning, the “workability” of the rules they imposed on the country, their disruptive effect on other areas of the law, and the absence of concrete reliance . . . .

[T]o ensure that our decision is not misunderstood or mischaracterized, we emphasize that our decision concerns the constitutional right to abortion and no other right. Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion . . . .

We do not pretend to know how our political system or society will respond to today’s decision overruling Roe and Casey . And even if we could foresee what will happen, we would have no authority to let that knowledge influence our decision. We can only do our job, which is to interpret the law, apply longstanding principles of stare decisis , and decide this case accordingly.

We therefore hold that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. Roe and Casey must be overruled . . . .

We must now decide what standard will govern if state abortion regulations undergo constitutional challenge and whether the law before us satisfies the appropriate standard. . . . Under our precedents, rational-basis review is the appropriate standard for such challenges. . . .

We end this opinion where we began.  Abortion presents a profound moral question.  The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion.   Roe and Casey arrogated that authority.  We now overrule those decisions and return that authority to the people and their elected representatives.  

Excerpt: Concurrence, Justice Brett Kavanaugh

Abortion is a profoundly difficult and contentious issue because it presents an irreconcilable conflict between the interests of a pregnant woman who seeks an abortion and the interests of protecting fetal life.  The interests on both sides of the abortion issue are extraordinarily weighty.

The issue before this Court . . . is not the policy or morality of abortion.  The issue before the Court is what the Constitution says about abortion.  The Constitution does not take sides on the issue of abortion. . . . On the question of abortion, the Constitution is . . . neither pro-life nor pro-choice.  The Constitution is neutral and leaves the issue for the people and their elected representatives to resolve through the democratic process in the States or Congress—like the numerous other difficult questions of American social and economic policy that the Constitution does not address. . . .

After today’s decision, the nine Members of this Court will no longer decide the basic legality of pre-viability abortion for all 330 million Americans. . . . But the parties’ arguments have raised other related questions, and I address some of them here. 

First , is the question of how this decision will affect other precedents involving issues such as contraception and marriage—in particular, the decisions in Griswold v. Connecticut . . . , Eisenstadt v. Baird . . . , Loving v. Virginia . . . , and Obergefell v. Hodges . . . . I emphasize what the Court today states: Overruling Roe does not mean the overruling of those precedents, and does not threaten or cast doubt on those precedents. 

Second , as I see it, some of the other abortion-related legal questions raised by today’s decision are not especially difficult as a constitutional matter. For example, may a State bar a resident of that State from traveling to another State to obtain an abortion? In my view, the answer is no based on the constitutional right to interstate travel. May a State retroactively impose liability or punishment for an abortion that occurred before today’s decision takes effect? In my view, the answer is no based on the Due Process Clause or the Ex Post Facto Clause .  

Excerpt: Concurrence, Justice Clarence Thomas

I write separately to emphasize a . . . more fundamental reason why there is no abortion right guarantee lurking in the Due Process Clause.  Considerable historical evidence indicates that “due process of law” merely requires executive and judicial actors to comply with legislative enactments and the common law when depriving a person of life, liberty, or property. . . . [T]he Due Process Clause at most guarantees process.  It does not, as the Court’s substantive due process cases suppose, “forbi[d] the government to infringe certain ‘fundamental’ liberty interests at all, no matter what process is provided.” . . .

 [I]n future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold [v. Connecticut ], Lawrence [v. Texas ], and Obergefell [v. Hodges ]. Because any substantive due process decision is “demonstrably erroneous” . . . , we have a duty to “correct the error” established in those precedents . . . . After overruling these demonstrably erroneous decisions, the question would remain whether other constitutional provisions guarantee the myriad rights that our substantive due process cases have generated. For example, we could consider whether any of the rights announced in this Court’s substantive due process cases are “privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States” protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. 

Substantive due process exalts judges at the expense of the People from whom they derive their authority. . . . In practice, the Court’s approach for identifying those fundamental rights unquestionably involves policymaking rather than neutral legal analysis.  The Court divines new rights in line with its own, extraconstitutional value preferences and nullifies state laws that do not align with the judicially created rights.

Substantive due process . . . has harmed our country in many ways.  Accordingly, we should eliminate it from our jurisprudence at the earliest opportunity.  

Excerpt: Concurring in the Judgment, Chief Justice John Roberts

I would take a more measured course. I agree with the Court that the viability line established by Roe and Casey should be discarded under a straightforward stare decisis analysis. That line never made any sense. Our abortion precedents describe the right at issue as a woman’s right to choose to terminate her pregnancy. That right should therefore extend far enough to ensure a reasonable opportunity to choose, but need not extend any further— certainly not all the way to viability. Mississippi’s law allows a woman three months to obtain an abortion, well be-yond the point at which it is considered “late” to discover a pregnancy… I see no sound basis for questioning the adequacy of that opportunity.

But that is all I would say, out of adherence to a simple yet fundamental principle of judicial restraint: If it is not necessary to decide more to dispose of a case, then it is necessary not to decide more. Perhaps we are not always perfect in following that command, and certainly there are cases that warrant an exception. But this is not one of them. Surely we should adhere closely to principles of judicial restraint here, where the broader path the Court chooses entails repudiating a constitutional right we have not only previously recognized, but also expressly reaffirmed applying the doctrine of stare decisis. The Court’s opinion is thoughtful and thorough, but those virtues cannot compensate for the fact that its dramatic and consequential ruling is unnecessary to decide the case before us. . . .

Here, there is a clear path to deciding this case correctly without overruling Roe all the way down to the studs: recognize that the viability line must be discarded, as the majority rightly does, and leave for another day whether to reject any right to an abortion at all. . . .

Almost all know [about a pregnancy] by the end of the first trimester.  Safe and effective abortifacients, moreover, are now readily available, particularly during those early stages.  Given all this, it is no surprise that the vast majority of abortions happen in the first trimester.  Presumably most of the remainder would also take place earlier if later abortions were not a legal option.  Ample evidence thus suggests that a 15-week ban provides sufficient time, absent rare circumstances, for a woman to decide for herself whether to terminate her pregnancy. . . .

The Court’s decision to overrule Roe and Casey is a serious jolt to the legal system—regardless of how you view those cases. A narrower decision rejecting the misguided viability line would be markedly less unsettling, and nothing more is needed to decide this case. . . .

Both the Court’s opinion and the dissent display a relentless freedom from doubt on the legal issue that I cannot share.  I am not sure, for example, that a ban on terminating a pregnancy from the moment of conception must be treated the same under the Constitution as a ban after fifteen weeks. . . . I would decide the question we granted review to answer—whether the previously recognized abortion right bars all abortion restrictions prior to viability, such that a ban on abortions after fifteen weeks of pregnancy is necessarily unlawful.  The answer to that question is no, and there is no need to go further to decide this case.

Excerpt: Joint Dissent, Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor

For half a century, Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey have protected the liberty and equality of women.   Roe held, and Casey reaffirmed, that the Constitution safeguards a woman’s right to decide for herself whether to bear a child.   Roe held, and Casey reaffirmed, that in the first stages of pregnancy, the government could not make that choice for women.  The government could not control a woman’s body or the course of a woman’s life: It could not determine what the woman’s future would be.  Respecting a woman as an autonomous being, and granting her full equality, meant giving her substantial choice over this most personal and most consequential of all life decisions.

The Court struck a balance, as it often does when values and goals compete.  It held that the State could prohibit abortions until after fetal viability, so long as the ban contained exceptions to safeguard a woman’s life or health.  It held that even before viability, the State could regulate the abortion procedure in multiple and meaningful ways.  But until the viability line was crossed, the Court held, a State could not impose a “substantial obstacle” on a woman’s “right to elect the procedure” as she (not the government) thought proper, in light of all the circumstances and complexities of her own life.

Today, the Court discards that balance.  It says that from the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to speak of. . . .

[O]ne result of today’s decision is certain: the curtailment of women’s rights, and of their status as free and equal citizens. Yesterday, the Constitution guaranteed that a woman confronted with an unplanned pregnancy could (within reasonable limits) make her own decision about whether to bear a child, with all the life-transforming consequences that act involves. And in thus safeguarding each woman’s reproductive freedom, the Constitution also protected “[t]he ability of women to participate equally in [this Nation’s] economic and social life.” . . .  But no longer. As of today, this Court holds, a State can always force a woman to give birth, prohibiting even the earliest abortions. A State can thus transform what, when freely undertaken, is a wonder into what, when forced, may be a nightmare. Some women, especially women of means, will find ways around the State’s assertion of power. Others—those without money or childcare or the ability to take time off from work—will not be so fortunate. Maybe they will try an unsafe method of abortion, and come to physical harm, or even die. Maybe they will undergo pregnancy and have a child, but at significant personal or familial cost. At the least, they will incur the cost of losing control of their lives. The Constitution will, today’s majority holds, provide no shield, despite its guarantees of liberty and equality for all.

And no one should be confident that this majority is done with its work. The right Roe and Casey recognized does not stand alone. To the contrary, the Court has linked it for decades to other settled freedoms involving bodily integrity, familial relationships, and procreation. Most obviously, the right to terminate a pregnancy arose straight out of the right to purchase and use contraception. . . . In turn, those rights led, more recently, to rights of same-sex intimacy and marriage. . . . They are all part of the same constitutional fabric, protecting autonomous decision making over the most personal of life decisions. . . .

The majority has no good reason for the upheaval in law and society it sets off. Roe and Casey have been the law of the land for decades, shaping women’s expectations of their choices when an unplanned pregnancy occurs. Women have relied on the availability of abortion both in structuring their relationships and in planning their lives. The legal framework Roe and Casey developed to balance the competing interests in this sphere has proved workable in courts across the country. No recent developments, in either law or fact, have eroded or cast doubt on those precedents. Nothing, in short, has changed. . . . The Court reverses course today for one reason and one reason only: because the composition of this Court has changed. Stare decisis , this Court has often said, contributes to the actual and perceived integrity of the judicial process by ensuring that decisions are founded in the law rather than in the proclivities of individuals.  Today, the proclivities of individuals rule.  The Court departs from its obligation to faithfully and impartially apply the law.  We dissent. . . .

The majority would allow States to ban abortion from conception onward because it does not think forced childbirth at all implicates a woman’s rights to equality and freedom. Today’s Court, that is, does not think there is anything of constitutional significance attached to a woman’s control of her body and the path of her life. Roe and Casey thought that one-sided view misguided. In some sense, that is the difference in a nutshell between our precedents and the majority opinion. The constitutional regime we have lived in for the last 50 years recognized competing interests, and sought a balance between them. The constitutional regime we enter today erases the woman’s interest and recognizes only the State’s (or the Federal Government’s). 

The majority makes this change based on a single question: Did the reproductive right recognized in Roe and Casey exist in “1868, the year when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified?” . . . The majority says (and with this much we agree) that the answer to this question is no: In 1868, there was no nationwide right to end a pregnancy, and no thought that the Fourteenth Amendment provided one.

Of course, the majority opinion refers as well to some later and earlier history. On the one side of 1868, it goes back as far as the 13th (the 13th!) century. . . . But that turns out to be wheel-spinning. First, it is not clear what relevance such early history should have, even to the majority. . . . If the early history obviously supported abortion rights, the majority would no doubt say that only the views of the Fourteenth Amendment’s ratifiers are germane. . . . Second—and embarrassingly for the majority—early law in fact does provide some support for abortion rights. Common-law authorities did not treat abortion as a crime before “quickening”—the point when the fetus moved in the womb. And early American law followed the common-law rule. So the criminal law of that early time might be taken as roughly consonant with Roe’ s and Casey’ s different treatment of early and late abortions. Better, then, to move forward in time. On the other side of 1868, the majority occasionally notes that many States barred abortion up to the time of Roe . That is convenient for the majority, but it is window dressing… Had the pre- Roe liberalization of abortion laws occurred more quickly and more widely in the 20th century, the majority would say (once again) that only the ratifiers’ views are germane.

The majority’s core legal postulate, then, is that we in the 21st century must read the Fourteenth Amendment just as its ratifiers did. And that is indeed what the majority emphasizes over and over again. . . . If the ratifiers did not understand something as central to freedom, then neither can we.  Or said more particularly: If those people did not understand reproductive rights as part of the guarantee of liberty conferred in the Fourteenth Amendment, then those rights do not exist.

As an initial matter, note a mistake in the just preceding sentence.  We referred to the “people” who ratified the Fourteenth Amendment: What rights did those “people” have in their heads at the time? But, of course, “people” did not ratify the Fourteenth Amendment. Men did. So it is perhaps not so surprising that the ratifiers were not perfectly attuned to the importance of reproductive rights for women’s liberty, or for their capacity to participate as equal members of our Nation. Indeed, the ratifiers—both in 1868 and when the original Constitution was approved in 1788—did not understand women as full members of the community embraced by the phrase “We the People.” In 1868, the first wave of American feminists were explicitly told—of course by men—that it was not their time to seek constitutional protections. (Women would not get even the vote for another half-century.). . . . Those responsible for the original Constitution, including the Fourteenth Amendment, did not perceive women as equals, and did not recognize women’s rights. When the majority says that we must read our foundational charter as viewed at the time of ratification (except that we may also check it against the Dark Ages), it consigns women to second-class citizenship. . . .

So how is it that, as Casey said, our Constitution, read now, grants rights to women, though it did not in 1868?  How is it that our Constitution subjects discrimination against them to heightened scrutiny?  How is it that our Constitution, through the Fourteenth Amendment’s liberty clause, guarantees access to contraception (also not legally protected in 1868) so that women can decide for themselves whether and when to bear a child?  How is it that until today, that same constitutional clause protected a woman’s right, in the event contraception failed, to end a pregnancy in its earlier stages?

The answer is that this Court has rejected the majority’s pinched view of how to read our Constitution. . . . [I]n the words of the great Chief Justice John Marshall, our Constitution is “intended to endure for ages to come,” and must adapt itself to a future “seen dimly,” if at all. . . . That is indeed why our Constitution is written as it is. The Framers (both in 1788 and 1868) understood that the world changes. So they did not define rights by reference to the specific practices existing at the time. Instead, the Framers defined rights in general terms, to permit future evolution in their scope and meaning. And over the course of our history, this Court has taken up the Framers’ invitation. It has kept true to the Framers’ principles by applying them in new ways, responsive to new societal understandings and conditions. . . .

Nowhere has that approach been more prevalent than in construing the majestic but open-ended words of the Fourteenth Amendment—the guarantees of “liberty” and “equality” for all.  And nowhere has that approach produced prouder moments, for this country and the Court.  Consider an example Obergefell used a few years ago.  The Court there confronted a claim . . . that the Fourteenth Amendment “must be defined in a most circumscribed manner, with central reference to specific historical practices”—exactly the view today’s majority follows. . . . And the Court specifically rejected that view.  In doing so, the Court reflected on what the proposed, historically circumscribed approach would have meant of interracial marriage.  The Fourteenth Amendment’s ratifiers did not think it gave black and white people a right to marry each other.  To the contrary, contemporaneous practice deemed that act quite as unprotected as abortion.  Yet the Court in Loving v. Virginia read the Fourteenth Amendment to embrace the Lovings’ union.  If, Obergefell explained, “rights were defined by who exercised them in the past, then received practices could serve as their own continued justification”—even when they conflict with “liberty” and “equality” as later and more broadly understood.  The Constitution does not freeze for all time the original view of what those rights guarantee, or how they apply.

That does not mean anything goes.  The majority wishes people to think there are but two alternatives: (1) accept the original applications of the Fourteenth Amendment and no others, or (2) surrender to judges’ “own ardent views,” ungrounded in law, about the liberty that Americans should enjoy.  . . . [A]pplications of liberty and equality can evolve while remaining grounded in constitutional principles, constitutional history, and constitutional precedents.  The second Justice Harlan discussed how to strike the right balance when he explained why he would have invalidated a State’s ban on contraceptive use.  Judges, he said, are not ‘free to roam where unguided speculation might take them. . . . Yet they also must recognize that the constitutional ‘tradition’ of this country is not captured whole at a single moment.  Rather, its meaning gains content from the long sweep of our history and from successive judicial precedents—each looking to the last and each seeking to apply the Constitution’s most fundamental commitments to new conditions.  That is why Americans . . . have a right to marry across racial lines.  And it is why, to go back to Justice Harlan’s case, Americans have a right to use contraceptives so they can choose for themselves whether to have children. . . .

Faced with all these connections between Roe/Casey and judicial decisions recognizing other constitutional rights, the majority tells everyone not to worry. It can (so it says) neatly extract the right to choose from the constitutional edifice without affecting any associated rights. (Think of someone telling you that the Jenga tower simply will not collapse.). . . .

According to the majority, no liberty interest is present [in the context of abortion]—because (and only because) the law offered no protection to the woman’s choice in the 19th century. But here is the rub. The law also did not then (and would not for ages) protect a wealth of other things. It did not protect the rights recognized in Lawrence and Obergefell to same-sex intimacy and marriage. It did not protect the right recognized in Loving to marry across racial lines. It did not protect the right recognized in Griswold to contraceptive use. For that matter, it did not protect the right . . . not to be sterilized without consent. So if the majority is right in its legal analysis, all those decisions were wrong, and all those matters properly belong to the States too—whatever the particular state interests involved. And if that is true, it is impossible to understand (as a matter of logic and principle) how the majority can say that its opinion today does not threaten—does not even “undermine”—any number of other constitutional rights.

Nor does it even help just to take the majority at its word. Assume the majority is sincere in saying, for whatever reason, that it will go so far and no further. Scout’s honor. Still, the future significance of today’s opinion will be decided in the future. And law often has a way of evolving without regard to original intentions—a way of actually following where logic leads, rather than tolerating hard-to-explain lines.

By overruling Roe , Casey , and more than 20 cases reaffirming or applying the constitutional right to abortion, the majority abandons stare decisis, a principle central to the rule of law.  [In previous cases overturning precedent,] the Court found, for example, (1) a change in legal doctrine that undermined or made obsolete the earlier decision; (2) a factual change that had the same effect; or (3) an absence of reliance because the earlier decision was less than a decade old. . . . None of those factors apply here: Nothing—and in particular, no significant legal or factual change—supports overturning a half-century of settled law giving women control over their reproductive lives.

[The Court’s decision] makes radical change too easy and too fast, based on nothing more than the new views of new judges.  The majority has overruled Roe and Casey for one and only one reason: because it has always despised them, and now it has the votes to discard them.  The majority thereby substitutes a rule by judges for the rule of law.

This Court will surely face critical question about how [its new approach] applies.  Must a state law allow abortions when necessary to protect a woman’s life and health?  And if so, exactly when?  How much risk to a woman’s life can a State force her to incur, before the Fourteenth Amendment’s protection of life kicks in?  Suppose a patient with pulmonary hypertension has a 30-to-50 percent risk of dying with ongoing pregnancy; is that enough?  And short of death, how much illness or injury can the State require her to accept, consistent with the Amendment’s protection of liberty and equality?  Further, the Court may face questions about the application of abortion regulations to medical care most people view as quite different from abortion.  What about the morning-after pill?  IUDs?  In vitro fertilization?  And how about the use of dilation and evacuation or medication for miscarriage management? . . .

Justice Jackson once called a decision he dissented from [ Korematsu v. United States (1944)] a “loaded weapon,” ready to hand for improper uses. . . . We fear that today’s decision, departing from stare decisis for no legitimate reason, is its own loaded weapon. Weakening stare decisis threatens to upend bedrock legal doctrines, far beyond any single decision. Weakening stare decisis creates profound legal instability. And as Casey recognized, weakening stare decisis in a hotly contested case like this one calls into question this Court’s commitment to legal principle. It makes the Court appear not restrained but aggressive, not modest but grasping. In all those ways, today’s decision takes aim, we fear, at the rule of law. . . .

Now a new and bare majority of this Court—acting at practically the first moment possible—overrules Roe and Casey .  It converts a series of dissenting opinions expressing antipathy toward Roe and Casey into a decision greenlighting even total abortion bans.  It eliminates a 50-year-old constitutional right that safeguards women’s freedom and equal station.  It breaches a core rule-of-law principle, designed to promote constancy in the law.  In doing all of that, it places in jeopardy other rights, from contraception to same-sex intimacy and marriage.  And finally, it undermines the Court’s legitimacy. . . .

With sorrow—for this Court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection—we dissent.  

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Criminal Trials & Prosecutions Supreme Court Cases

A defendant in a criminal prosecution faces the potential loss of their liberty. In addition to basic due process protections, defendants have certain rights under the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, including:

• Speedy and public trial
• Trial by an impartial jury
• Assistance of counsel
• Confrontation of opposing witnesses

The right to confront opposing witnesses includes the right to cross-examine those witnesses. Under Crawford v. Washington , the modern standard for determining whether confrontation is required hinges on whether a statement is testimonial. Decisions following Crawford have sought to define testimonial statements. Confrontation Clause questions also may involve the meaning of “confrontation,” such as whether a confrontation must be face to face.

Beyond the Confrontation Clause, the Supreme Court has shaped constitutional rights related to lawyers and juries in criminal cases. For example, a defendant is entitled to the assistance of counsel regardless of whether they can afford a lawyer. This right even attaches before the start of a trial. The Supreme Court has interpreted the Sixth Amendment to require “effective” assistance of counsel. Meanwhile, a jury must be selected from a representative cross-section of the community. Jury pools and juries must be formed in a non-discriminatory way.

Below is a selection of Supreme Court cases involving criminal trials and prosecutions, arranged from newest to oldest.

Author: Elena Kagan

When an expert in a criminal trial conveys an absent analyst's statements in support of their opinion, and the statements provide that support only if true, the statements come into evidence for their truth. If those statements are also testimonial, the Confrontation Clause will bar their admission.

Author: Clarence Thomas

The Confrontation Clause does not bar the admission of a non-testifying co-defendant's confession when the confession has been modified to avoid directly identifying the non-confessing co-defendant, and the court offers a limiting instruction that jurors may consider the confession only with respect to the confessing co-defendant.

Author: Neil Gorsuch

The Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial, incorporated against the states by the Fourteenth Amendment, requires a unanimous verdict to convict a defendant of a serious offense.

Author: Ruth Bader Ginsburg

The Sixth Amendment's speedy trial guarantee does not apply once a defendant has been found guilty at trial or has pleaded guilty to criminal charges.

Author: Samuel A. Alito, Jr.

The Confrontation Clause does not necessarily bar the introduction of all out-of-court statements that support the prosecution's case. Instead, a court asks whether a statement was given with the primary purpose of creating an out-of-court substitute for trial testimony.

Out-of-court statements that are related by an expert solely for the purpose of explaining the assumptions on which that opinion rests are not offered for their truth and thus fall outside the scope of the Confrontation Clause.

If an out-of-court statement is testimonial in nature, it may not be introduced against the accused at trial unless the witness who made the statement is unavailable, and the accused has had a prior opportunity to confront that witness.

Author: Sonia Sotomayor

An identification and description of a shooter and the location of a shooting were not testimonial statements for Confrontation Clause purposes because they had a primary purpose to enable police assistance to meet an ongoing emergency.

Author: Antonin Scalia

Affidavits reporting the results of forensic analysis are testimonial, rendering the affiants “witnesses” subject to the defendant's right of confrontation under the Sixth Amendment.

Author: David Souter

A criminal defendant's initial appearance before a magistrate judge, where they learn the charge against them and their liberty is subject to restriction, marks the initiation of adversary judicial proceedings that trigger the attachment of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel.

Author: Stephen Breyer

The Constitution does not forbid states from insisting on representation by counsel for people competent enough to stand trial but who suffer from severe mental illness to the point that they are not competent to conduct trial proceedings by themselves.

A trial court's erroneous deprivation of a criminal defendant's choice of counsel entitles them to reversal of their conviction.

Statements are testimonial for Confrontation Clause purposes when the circumstances objectively indicate that the primary purpose of the interrogation is to establish or prove past events potentially relevant to later criminal prosecution.

When testimonial statements are at issue, the only indicium of reliability sufficient to satisfy constitutional demands is confrontation.

Author: Sandra Day O’Connor

The right to confront accusatory witnesses may be satisfied without a physical, face-to-face confrontation at trial only when the denial of such a confrontation is necessary to further an important public policy, and only when the testimony's reliability is otherwise assured.

A screen placed between the defendant and the complaining witnesses, which blocked the defendant from their sight, violated the defendant's Sixth Amendment right to confront the witnesses against him.

The Confrontation Clause guarantees an opportunity for effective cross-examination but not successful cross-examination. It is satisfied when the defendant has a full and fair opportunity to bring out the witness' bad memory and other facts tending to discredit their testimony.

The Confrontation Clause is not violated by the admission of a non-testifying co-defendant's confession with a proper limiting instruction when the confession is redacted to eliminate not only the defendant's name but also any reference to their existence.

Author: Lewis Powell

When the state obtains incriminating statements from the accused after the right to counsel has attached, a defendant does not make out a violation of the right to counsel simply by showing that an informant reported their incriminating statements to the police. Instead, the defendant must demonstrate that the police and their informant took some action beyond merely listening that was designed deliberately to elicit incriminating remarks.

While a defendant has no right to a jury composed in whole or in part of persons of their own race, the Equal Protection Clause guarantees the defendant that the state will not exclude members of their race from the jury venire on account of race, or on the false assumption that members of their race as a group are not qualified to serve as jurors. In addition, the Equal Protection Clause forbids the prosecutor to challenge potential jurors solely on account of their race or on the assumption that black jurors as a group will be unable impartially to consider the State's case against a black defendant.

Author: William Rehnquist

A criminal defendant states a violation of the Confrontation Clause by showing that they were prohibited from engaging in otherwise appropriate cross-examination designed to show a prototypical form of bias on the part of the witness. However, the constitutionally improper denial of a defendant's opportunity to impeach a witness for bias is subject to harmless error analysis. Whether an error is harmless depends on factors such as the importance of the witness' testimony, whether the testimony was cumulative, the presence or absence of evidence corroborating or contradicting the testimony on material points, the extent of cross-examination otherwise permitted, and the overall strength of the prosecution's case.

The Sixth Amendment becomes applicable only when the government's role shifts from investigation to accusation through the initiation of adversary judicial proceedings. Also, Miranda should not be extended to require the reversal of a conviction if the police are less than forthright in their dealings with an attorney or if they fail to tell a suspect of an attorney's unilateral efforts to contact them.

Author: Warren Burger

The Sixth Amendment right of a criminal defendant to assistance of counsel is not violated when an attorney refuses to cooperate with the defendant in presenting perjured testimony at their trial.

Author: William Brennan

The right to assistance of counsel attaches at critical stages in the criminal justice process, at which the results might well settle the accused's fate and reduce the trial itself to a formality.

The Sixth Amendment right to counsel is the right to the effective assistance of counsel, and the benchmark for judging any claim of ineffectiveness must be whether counsel's conduct so undermined the proper functioning of the adversarial process that the trial cannot be relied on as having produced a just result. A convicted defendant's claim that counsel's assistance was so defective as to require reversal of a conviction or setting aside of a death sentence requires that the defendant show that counsel's performance was deficient and that the deficient performance prejudiced the defense so as to deprive the defendant of a fair trial.

By intentionally creating a situation likely to induce the accused to make incriminating statements without the assistance of counsel, the government violated his Sixth Amendment right to counsel, and the resulting statements should not have been admitted at trial.

The Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments require that no indigent criminal defendant be sentenced to a term of imprisonment unless the state has provided them with the right to assistance of appointed counsel in their defense. However, these Amendments do not require a state trial court to appoint counsel for a criminal defendant who is charged with a statutory offense for which imprisonment on conviction is authorized but not imposed.

Author: Potter Stewart

The Sixth Amendment right to counsel means at least that a person is entitled to a lawyer's help at or after the time that judicial proceedings have been initiated against them. To show a waiver of the right to the assistance of counsel, the state must prove an intentional relinquishment or abandonment of a known right or privilege.

The Sixth Amendment guarantees that a defendant in a criminal trial has an independent constitutional right of self-representation. They may defend themselves without counsel when they voluntarily and intelligently elect to do so.

Author: Byron White

The requirement that a jury be selected from a representative cross-section of the community is fundamental to the jury trial guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment. This requirement is violated by the systematic exclusion of women from jury panels.

The right of confrontation is paramount to a state policy of protecting juvenile offenders, and any temporary embarrassment to a witness by the disclosure of their juvenile court record and probation status is outweighed by the defendant's right effectively to cross-examine a witness.

Author: Harry Blackmun

The Sixth Amendment does not grant an accused the right to have counsel present when the government conducts a post-indictment photographic display, containing a picture of the accused, for the purpose of allowing a witness to attempt an identification of the offender.

A defendant's constitutional right to a speedy trial cannot be established by any inflexible rule. It must be determined on an ad hoc balancing basis in which the conduct of the prosecution and the defendant are weighed. The court should assess factors such as the length of the delay, the reason for the delay, the defendant's assertion of their right, and prejudice to the defendant.

Author: William O. Douglas

The right of an indigent defendant in a criminal trial to the assistance of counsel is not governed by the classification of the offense or by whether a jury trial is required.

A showup after arrest, but before the initiation of any adversary criminal proceeding, is not a criminal prosecution at which the accused as a matter of absolute right is entitled to counsel.

The Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment is not violated by admitting a declarant's out-of-court statements as long as they are testifying as a witness at trial and are subject to full cross-examination.

The conviction of a defendant at a joint trial should be set aside on Confrontation Clause grounds when a co-defendant's confession inculpating the defendant was introduced as evidence against the co-defendant during the trial, even though the jury was instructed that the confession should be disregarded in determining the defendant's guilt or innocence.

The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees a right to a jury trial in all criminal cases that would come within the Sixth Amendment guarantee of trial by jury if they were tried in a federal court. Crimes carrying possible penalties up to six months do not require a jury trial if they otherwise qualify as petty offenses.

The Sixth Amendment guarantees an accused the right to counsel at any critical confrontation by the prosecution at pre-trial proceedings at which the results might well determine their fate, and at which the absence of counsel might derogate from their right to a fair trial. A post-indictment lineup is a critical prosecutive stage at which an accused is entitled to the aid of counsel.

Author: Hugo Black

The right granted to a defendant by the Sixth Amendment to confront the witnesses against them, which includes the right of cross-examination, is a fundamental right essential to a fair trial and is made obligatory on the states by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Author: Arthur Goldberg

When a police investigation is no longer a general inquiry into an unsolved crime but has begun to focus on a particular suspect in police custody who has been refused an opportunity to consult with their counsel and has not been warned of their constitutional right to keep silent, the accused has been denied the assistance of counsel, and no statement extracted by the police during the interrogation may be used against them at trial.

Incriminating statements deliberately elicited by federal agents from a defendant in the absence of their attorney deprived them of their right to counsel under the Sixth Amendment and could not be used as evidence against them at their trial.

Suppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to an accused who has requested it violates due process when the evidence is material either to guilt or to punishment, irrespective of the good faith or bad faith of the prosecution.

The right of an indigent defendant in a criminal trial to have the assistance of counsel is a fundamental right essential to a fair trial.

Author: Felix Frankfurter

Involuntary verbal confessions are inadmissible in a criminal trial under the Due Process Clause even though statements contained in them may be independently established as true. Coerced confessions offend the community's sense of fair play and decency.

Author: Owen Josephus Roberts

Under the circumstances, the refusal of a state court to appoint counsel to represent an indigent defendant at a trial in which he was convicted of robbery did not deny him due process of law in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. (This decision was overruled by Gideon v. Wainwright below.)

Author: Frank Murphy

The right to have the assistance of counsel is too fundamental to be made to depend upon nice calculations by courts of the degree of prejudice arising from its denial.

The right to assistance of counsel may be waived, but the waiver must be intelligent. Whether there was a waiver must depend on the particular facts and circumstances, including the background, experience, and conduct of the accused.

Author: George Sutherland

The right of the accused, at least in a capital case, to have the aid of counsel for their defense is one of the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This includes the right to have sufficient time to advise with counsel and prepare a defense.

Author: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

A trial for murder in a state court in which the accused are hurried to conviction under mob domination without regard for their rights is without due process and void.

Author: William Howard Taft

The provisions of the Constitution guaranteeing a jury trial in all criminal prosecutions do not apply to a territory belonging to the U.S. that has not been incorporated into the Union, such as Puerto Rico.

Author: William Strong

When a state law secures to every white man the right of trial by a jury selected from and without discrimination against his race, and at the same time permits or requires such discrimination against the colored man because of his race, the latter is not equally protected by law with the former.

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United states v. alvarez.

• Supreme Court

UNITED STATES v. ALVAREZ 617 F. 3d 1198, affirmed.

• Syllabus [Syllabus] [PDF]
• Opinion , Kennedy [Kennedy Opinion] [PDF]
• Concurrence , Breyer [Breyer Concurrence] [PDF]
• Dissent , Alito [Alito Dissent] [PDF]

NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued. The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader. See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321 , 337.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

UNITED STATES v . ALVAREZ

certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the ninth circuit

The Stolen Valor Act makes it a crime to falsely claim receipt of military decorations or medals and provides an enhanced penalty if the Congressional Medal of Honor is involved. 18 U. S. C. §§704 (b), (c). Respondent pleaded guilty to a charge of falsely claiming that he had received the Medal of Honor, but reserved his right to appeal his claim that the Act is unconstitutional. The Ninth Circuit reversed, finding the Act invalid under the First Amendment .

Held:  The judgment is affirmed. Pp. 3−18.

617 F. 3d 1198 , affirmed.

  Justice Kennedy , joined by The Chief Justice , Justice Ginsburg, and Justice Sotomayor, concluded that the Act infringes upon speech protected by the First Amendment . Pp. 3–18.

 (a) The Constitution “demands that content-based restrictions on speech be presumed invalid . . . and that the Government bear the burden of showing their constitutionality.” Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union, 542 U. S. 656 , 660.

 Content-based restrictions on speech have been permitted only for a few historic categories of speech, including incitement, obscenity, defamation, speech integral to criminal conduct, so-called “fighting words,” child pornography, fraud, true threats, and speech presenting some grave and imminent threat the Government has the power to prevent.

 Absent from these few categories is any general exception for false statements. The Government argues that cases such as Hustler Magazine, Inc. , v. Falwell , 485 U. S. 46 , 52, support its claim that false statements have no value and hence no First Amendment protection. But all the Government’s quotations derive from cases dis cussing defamation, fraud, or some other legally cognizable harm associated with a false statement. In those decisions the falsity of the speech at issue was not irrelevant to the Court’s analysis, but neither was it determinative. These prior decisions have not confronted a measure, like the Stolen Valor Act, that targets falsity and nothing more.

 Even when considering some instances of defamation or fraud, the Court has instructed that falsity alone may not suffice to bring the speech outside the First Amendment ; the statement must be a knowing and reckless falsehood. See New York Times v. Sullivan , 376 U. S. 254 , 280. Here, the Government seeks to convert a rule that limits liability even in defamation cases where the law permits recovery for tortious wrongs into a rule that expands liability in a different, far greater realm of discourse and expression.

 The Government’s three examples of false-speech regulation that courts generally have found permissible do not establish a principle that all proscriptions of false statements are exempt from rigorous First Amendment scrutiny. The criminal prohibition of a false statement made to Government officials in communications concerning official matters, 18 U. S. C. §1001 , does not lead to the broader proposition that false statements are unprotected when made to any person, at any time, in any context. As for perjury statutes, perjured statements lack First Amendment protection not simply because they are false, but because perjury undermines the function and province of the law and threatens the integrity of judgments. Finally, there are statutes that prohibit falsely representing that one is speaking on behalf of the Government, or prohibit impersonating a Government officer. These examples, to the extent that they implicate fraud or speech integral to criminal conduct, are inapplicable here.

 While there may exist “some categories of speech that have been historically unprotected,” but that the Court has not yet specifically identified or discussed, United States v. Stevens, 559 U. S. ___, ___, the Government has not demonstrated that false statements should constitute a new category. Pp. 3−10.

 (b) The Act seeks to control and suppress all false statements on this one subject in almost limitless times and settings without regard to whether the lie was made for the purpose of material gain. Permitting the Government to decree this speech to be a criminal offense would endorse government authority to compile a list of subjects about which false statements are punishable. That governmental power has no clear limiting principle. Pp. 10−11.

 (c) The Court applies the “most exacting scrutiny” in assessing content-based restrictions on protected speech. Turner Broadcasting System Inc. v. FCC, 512 U. S. 622 , 642. The Act does not satisfy that  scrutiny. While the Government’s interest in protecting the integrity of the Medal of Honor is beyond question, the First Amendment requires that there be a direct causal link between the restriction imposed and the injury to be prevented. Here, that link has not been shown. The Government points to no evidence supporting its claim that the public’s general perception of military awards is diluted by false claims such as those made by respondent. And it has not shown, and cannot show, why counterspeech, such as the ridicule respondent received online and in the press, would not suffice to achieve its interest.

 In addition, when the Government seeks to regulate protected speech, the restriction must be the “least restrictive means among available, effective alternatives.” Ashcroft, 542 U. S., at 666. Here, the Government could likely protect the integrity of the military awards system by creating a database of Medal winners accessible and searchable on the Internet, as some private individuals have already done. Pp. 12−18.

 Justice Breyer, joined by Justice Kagan, concluded that because the Stolen Valor Act, as presently drafted, works disproportionate constitutional harm, it fails intermediate scrutiny, and thus violates the First Amendment . Pp. 1−10.

 (a) In determining whether a statute violates the First Amendment , the Court has often found it appropriate to examine the fit between statutory ends and means, taking into account the seriousness of the speech-related harm the provision will likely cause, the nature and importance of the provision’s countervailing objectives, the extent to which the statute will tend to achieve those objectives, and whether there are other, less restrictive alternatives. “Intermediate scrutiny” describes this approach. Since false factual statements are less likely than true factual statements to make a valuable contribution to the marketplace of ideas, and the government often has good reason to prohibit such false speech, but its regulation can threaten speech-related harm, such an approach is applied here. Pp. 1−3.

 (b) The Act should be read as criminalizing only false factual statements made with knowledge of their falsity and with intent that they be taken as true. Although the Court has frequently said or implied that false factual statements enjoy little First Amendment protection, see, e.g., Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. , 418 U. S. 323 , 340, those statements cannot be read to mean “no protection at all.” False factual statements serve useful human objectives in many contexts. Moreover, the threat of criminal prosecution for making a false statement can inhibit the speaker from making true statements, thereby “chilling” a kind of speech that lies at the First Amendment ’s heart. See id., at 340−341. And the pervasiveness of false factual  statements provides a weapon to a government broadly empowered to prosecute falsity without more. Those who are unpopular may fear that the government will use that weapon selectively against them.

 Although there are many statutes and common-law doctrines making the utterance of certain kinds of false statements unlawful, they tend to be narrower than the Act, in that they limit the scope of their application in various ways, for example, by requiring proof of specific harm to identifiable victims. The Act lacks any such limiting features. Although it prohibits only knowing and intentional falsehoods about readily verifiable facts within the personal knowledge of the speaker, it otherwise ranges broadly, and that breadth means that it creates a significant risk of First Amendment harm. Pp. 3−8.

 (c) The Act nonetheless has substantial justification. It seeks to protect the interests of those who have sacrificed their health and life for their country by seeking to preserve intact the country’s recognition of that sacrifice in the form of military honors. P. 8.

 (d) It may, however, be possible substantially to achieve the Government’s objective in less burdensome ways. The First Amendment risks flowing from the Act’s breadth of coverage could be diminished or eliminated by a more finely tailored statute, for example, a statute that requires a showing that the false statement caused specific harm or is focused on lies more likely to be harmful or on contexts where such lies are likely to cause harm. Pp. 8−10.

  Kennedy, J., announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an opinion, in which Roberts, C. J., and Ginsburg and Sotomayor, JJ., joined. Breyer, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which Kagan, J., joined. Alito, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Scalia and Thomas, JJ., joined.

NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the preliminary print of the United States Reports. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press.

_________________

UNITED STATES, PETITIONER v. XAVIER ALVAREZ

on writ of certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the ninth circuit

 Justice Kennedy announced the judgment of the  Court and delivered an opinion, in which The Chief Justice , Justice Ginsburg , and Justice Sotomayor join.

 Lying was his habit. Xavier Alvarez, the respondent here, lied when he said that he played hockey for the Detroit Red Wings and that he once married a starlet from Mexico. But when he lied in announcing he held the Con-gressional Medal of Honor, respondent ventured onto new ground; for that lie violates a federal criminal statute, the Stolen Valor Act of 2005. 18 U. S. C. §704 .

 In 2007, respondent attended his first public meeting as a board member of the Three Valley Water District Board. The board is a governmental entity with headquarters in Claremont, California. He introduced himself as follows: “I’m a retired marine of 25 years. I retired in the year 2001. Back in 1987, I was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. I got wounded many times by the same guy.” 617 F. 3d 1198 , 1201–1202 (CA9 2010). None of this was true. For all the record shows, respondent’s statements were but a pathetic attempt to gain respect that eluded him. The statements do not seem to have been made to secure  employment or financial benefits or admission to privileges reserved for those who had earned the Medal.

 Respondent was indicted under the Stolen Valor Act for lying about the Congressional Medal of Honor at the meeting. The United States District Court for the Central District of California rejected his claim that the statute is invalid under the First Amendment . Respondent pleaded guilty to one count, reserving the right to appeal on his First Amendment claim. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in a decision by a divided panel, found the Act invalid under the First Amendment and reversed the conviction. Id. , at 1218. With further opinions on the issue, and over a dissent by seven judges, rehearing en banc was denied. 638 F. 3d 666 (2011). This Court granted certiorari. 565 U. S. ___ (2011).

 After certiorari was granted, and in an unrelated case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, also in a decision by a divided panel, found the Act constitutional. United States v. Strandlof , 667 F. 3d 1146 (2012). So there is now a conflict in the Courts of Appeals on the question of the Act’s validity.

 This is the second case in two Terms requiring the Court to consider speech that can disparage, or attempt to steal, honor that belongs to those who fought for this Nation in battle. See Snyder v. Phelps , 562 U. S. ___ (2011) (hateful protests directed at the funeral of a serviceman who died in Iraq). Here the statement that the speaker held the Medal was an intended, undoubted lie.

 It is right and proper that Congress, over a century ago, established an award so the Nation can hold in its high- est respect and esteem those who, in the course of carrying out the “supreme and noble duty of contributing to the defense of the rights and honor of the nation,” Selective Draft Law Cases, 245 U. S. 366 , 390 (1918), have acted with extraordinary honor. And it should be uncontested that this is a legitimate Government objective, indeed a  most valued national aspiration and purpose. This does not end the inquiry, however. Fundamental constitutional principles require that laws enacted to honor the brave must be consistent with the precepts of the Constitution for which they fought.

 The Government contends the criminal prohibition is a proper means to further its purpose in creating and awarding the Medal. When content-based speech regulation is in question, however, exacting scrutiny is required. Statutes suppressing or restricting speech must be judged by the sometimes inconvenient principles of the First Amendment . By this measure, the statutory provisions under which respondent was convicted must be held invalid, and his conviction must be set aside.

 Respondent’s claim to hold the Congressional Medal of Honor was false. There is no room to argue about in-terpretation or shades of meaning. On this premise, respondent violated §704(b); and, because the lie concerned the Congressional Medal of Honor, he was subject to an enhanced penalty under subsection (c). Those statutory provisions are as follows:

 “(b) F alse C laims A bout R eceipt of M ilitary D ecorations or M edals .––Whoever falsely represents himself or herself, verbally or in writing, to have been awarded any decoration or medal authorized by Congress for the Armed Forces of the United States . . . shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than six months, or both.

 “(c) E nhanced Penalty for O ffenses I nvolving C ongressional M edal of H onor .––

 “(1) I n G eneral .––If a decoration or medal involved in an offense under subsection (a) or (b) is a Congressional Medal of Honor, in lieu of the punishment provided in that subsection, the offender shall be fined under  this title, imprisoned not more than 1 year, or both.”

 Respondent challenges the statute as a content-based suppression of pure speech, speech not falling within any of the few categories of expression where content-based regulation is permissible. The Government defends the statute as necessary to preserve the integrity and purpose of the Medal, an integrity and purpose it contends are compromised and frustrated by the false statements the statute prohibits. It argues that false statements “have no First Amendment value in themselves,” and thus “are protected only to the extent needed to avoid chilling fully protected speech.” Brief for United States 18, 20. Al-though the statute covers respondent’s speech, the Government argues that it leaves breathing room for pro-tected speech, for example speech which might criticize the idea of the Medal or the importance of the military. The Government’s arguments cannot suffice to save the statute.

 “[A]s a general matter, the First Amendment means that government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content.” Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union , 535 U. S. 564 , 573 (2002) (internal quotation marks omitted). As a result, the Constitution “demands that content-based restrictions on speech be presumed invalid . . . and that the Government bear the burden of showing their constitutionality.” Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union , 542 U. S. 656 , 660 (2004).

 In light of the substantial and expansive threats to free expression posed by content-based restrictions, this Court has rejected as “startling and dangerous” a “free-floating test for First Amendment coverage . . . [based on] an ad hoc balancing of relative social costs and benefits.” United States v. Stevens , 559 U. S. ___, ___ (2010) (slip op.,  at 7). Instead, content-based restrictions on speech have been permitted, as a general matter, only when confined to the few “ ‘historic and traditional categories [of expression] long familiar to the bar,’ ” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 5) (quoting Simon & Schuster, Inc. v. Members of N. Y. State Crime Victims Bd. , 502 U. S. 105 , 127 (1991) (K ennedy , J., concurring in judgment)). Among these categories are advocacy intended, and likely, to incite imminent lawless action, see Brandenburg v. Ohio , 395 U. S. 444 (1969)   (per curiam); obscenity, see, e.g., Miller v. California , 413 U. S. 15 (1973) ; defamation, see, e.g., New York Times Co. v. Sullivan , 376 U. S. 254 (1964) (providing substantial protection for speech about public figures); Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. , 418 U. S. 323 (1974) (imposing some limits on liability for defaming a private figure); speech integral to criminal conduct, see, e.g., Giboney v. Empire Storage & Ice Co. , 336 U. S. 490 (1949) ; so-called “fighting words,” see Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire , 315 U. S. 568 (1942) ; child pornography, see New York v. Ferber , 458 U. S. 747 (1982) ; fraud, see Virginia Bd. of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, Inc. , 425 U. S. 748 , 771 (1976); true threats, see Watts v. United States , 394 U. S. 705 (1969) (per curiam); and speech presenting some grave and imminent threat the government has the power to prevent, see Near v. Minnesota ex rel. Olson , 283 U. S. 697 , 716 (1931), although a restriction under the last category is most difficult to sustain, see New York Times Co. v. United States , 403 U. S. 713 (1971) (per curiam) . These categories have a historical foundation in the Court’s free speech tradition. The vast realm of free speech and thought always protected in our tradition can still thrive, and even be furthered, by adherence to those categories and rules.

 Absent from those few categories where the law allows content-based regulation of speech is any general exception to the First Amendment for false statements. This  comports with the common understanding that some false statements are inevitable if there is to be an open and vigorous expression of views in public and private con-versation, expression the First Amendment seeks to guarantee. See Sullivan, supra, at 271 (“Th[e] erroneous statement is inevitable in free debate”).

 The Government disagrees with this proposition. It cites language from some of this Court’s precedents to support its contention that false statements have no value and hence no First Amendment protection. See also Brief for Eugene Volokh et al. as Amici Curiae 2–11. These isolated statements in some earlier decisions do not support the Government’s submission that false statements, as a general rule, are beyond constitutional protection. That conclusion would take the quoted language far from its proper context. For instance, the Court has stated “[f]alse statements of fact are particularly valueless [because] they interfere with the truth-seeking function of the marketplace of ideas,” Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell , 485 U. S. 46 , 52 (1988), and that false statements “are not protected by the First Amendment in the same manner as truthful statements,” Brown v. Hartlage , 456 U. S. 45 , 60–61 (1982). See also, e.g., Virginia Bd. of Pharmacy , supra , at 771 (“Untruthful speech, commercial or otherwise, has never been protected for its own sake”); Herbert v. Lando , 441 U. S. 153 , 171 (1979) (“Spreading false information in and of itself carries no First Amendment credentials”); Gertz , supra , at 340 (“[T]here is no constitutional value in false statements of fact”); Garrison v. Louisiana , 379 U. S. 64 , 75 (1964) (“[T]he knowingly false statement and the false statement made with reckless disregard of the truth, do not enjoy constitutional protection”).

 These quotations all derive from cases discussing def-amation, fraud, or some other legally cognizable harm associated with a false statement, such as an invasion of  privacy or the costs of vexatious litigation. See Brief for United States 18–19. In those decisions the falsity of the speech at issue was not irrelevant to our analysis, but neither was it determinative. The Court has never endorsed the categorical rule the Government advances: that false statements receive no First Amendment protection. Our prior decisions have not confronted a measure, like the Stolen Valor Act, that targets falsity and nothing more.

 Even when considering some instances of defamation and fraud, moreover, the Court has been careful to instruct that falsity alone may not suffice to bring the speech outside the First Amendment . The statement must be a knowing or reckless falsehood. See Sullivan , supra , at 280 (prohibiting recovery of damages for a defamatory falsehood made about a public official unless the statement was made “with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not”); see also Garrison , supra , at 73 (“[E]ven when the utterance is false, the great principles of the Constitution which secure freedom of expression . . . preclude attaching adverse consequences to any except the knowing or reckless falsehood”); Illinois ex rel. Madigan v. Telemarketing Associates, Inc. , 538 U. S. 600 , 620 (2003) (“False statement alone does not subject a fundraiser to fraud liability”).

 The Government thus seeks to use this principle for a new purpose. It seeks to convert a rule that limits liability even in defamation cases where the law permits recovery for tortious wrongs into a rule that expands liability in a different, far greater realm of discourse and expression. That inverts the rationale for the exception. The requirements of a knowing falsehood or reckless disregard for the truth as the condition for recovery in certain defamation cases exists to allow more speech, not less. A rule designed to tolerate certain speech ought not blossom to become a rationale for a rule restricting it.

  The Government then gives three examples of regulations on false speech that courts generally have found per-missible: first, the criminal prohibition of a false statement made to a Government official, 18 U. S. C. §1001 ; second, laws punishing perjury; and third, prohibi-tions on the false representation that one is speaking as a Government official or on behalf of the Government, see, e.g., §912; §709. These restrictions, however, do not establish a principle that all proscriptions of false statements are exempt from exacting First Amendment scrutiny.

 The federal statute prohibiting false statements to Government officials punishes “whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government . . . makes any mate-rially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or repre-sentation.” §1001. Section 1001’s prohibition on false statements made to Government officials, in communications concerning official matters, does not lead to the broader proposition that false statements are unprotected when made to any person, at any time, in any context.

 The same point can be made about what the Court has confirmed is the “unquestioned constitutionality of perjury statutes,” both the federal statute, §1623, and its state-law equivalents. United States v. Grayson , 438 U. S. 41 , 54 (1978). See also Konigsberg v. State Bar of Cal. , 366 U. S. 36 , 51, n. 10 (1961). It is not simply because perjured statements are false that they lack First Amendment protection. Perjured testimony “is at war with justice” because it can cause a court to render a “judgment not resting on truth.” In re Michael , 326 U. S. 224 , 227 (1945). Perjury undermines the function and province of the law and threatens the integrity of judgments that are the basis of the legal system. See United States v. Dunnigan , 507 U. S. 87 , 97 (1993) (“To uphold the integrity of our trial system . . . the constitutionality of perjury statutes is unquestioned”). Unlike speech in other contexts, testi- mony under oath has the formality and gravity necessary to remind the witness that his or her statements will be the basis for official governmental action, action that often affects the rights and liberties of others. Sworn testimony is quite distinct from lies not spoken under oath and sim-ply intended to puff up oneself.

 Statutes that prohibit falsely representing that one is speaking on behalf of the Government, or that prohibit im-personating a Government officer, also protect the integrity of Government processes, quite apart from merely restricting false speech. Title 18 U. S. C. §912 , for ex-ample, prohibits impersonating an officer or employee of the United States. Even if that statute may not require proving an “actual financial or property loss” resulting from the deception, the statute is itself confined to “maintain[ing] the general good repute and dignity of . . . government . . . service itself.” United States v. Lepowitch , 318 U. S. 702 , 704 (1943) (internal quotation marks omitted). The same can be said for prohibitions on the unauthorized use of the names of federal agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation in a manner calculated to convey that the communication is approved, see §709, or using words such as “Federal” or “United States” in the collection of private debts in order to convey that the communication has official authorization, see §712. These examples, to the extent that they implicate fraud or speech integral to criminal conduct, are inapplicable here.

 As our law and tradition show, then, there are instances in which the falsity of speech bears upon whether it is protected. Some false speech may be prohibited even if analogous true speech could not be. This opinion does not imply that any of these targeted prohibitions are somehow vulnerable. But it also rejects the notion that false speech should be in a general category that is presumptively unprotected.

 Although the First Amendment stands against any  “freewheeling authority to declare new categories of speech outside the scope of the First Amendment ,” Stevens , 559 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 9), the Court has acknowledged that perhaps there exist “some categories of speech that have been historically unprotected . . . but have not yet been specifically identified or discussed . . . in our case law.” Ibid . Before exempting a category of speech from the normal prohibition on content-based re-strictions, however, the Court must be presented with “per-suasive evidence that a novel restriction on content is part of a long (if heretofore unrecognized) tradition of proscription,” Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Assn., 564 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 4). The Government has not demonstrated that false statements generally should constitute a new category of unprotected speech on this basis.

 The probable, and adverse, effect of the Act on free- dom of expression illustrates, in a fundamental way, the reasons for the Law’s distrust of content-based speech prohibitions.

 The Act by its plain terms applies to a false statement made at any time, in any place, to any person. It can be assumed that it would not apply to, say, a theatrical performance. See Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co. , 497 U. S. 1 , 20 (1990) (recognizing that some statements nominally purporting to contain false facts in reality “cannot reasonably be interpreted as stating actual facts about an individual” (internal quotation marks and brackets omitted)). Still, the sweeping, quite unprecedented reach of the statute puts it in conflict with the First Amendment . Here the lie was made in a public meeting, but the statute would apply with equal force to personal, whispered conversations within a home. The statute seeks to control and suppress all false statements on this one subject in  almost limitless times and settings. And it does so en-tirely without regard to whether the lie was made for the purpose of material gain. See San Francisco Arts & Athletics, Inc. v. United States Olympic Comm. , 483 U. S. 522 , 539–540 (1987) (prohibiting a nonprofit corporation from exploiting the “commercial magnetism” of the word “Olym-pic” when organizing an athletic competition (internal quotation marks omitted)).

 Permitting the government to decree this speech to be a criminal offense, whether shouted from the rooftops or made in a barely audible whisper, would endorse government authority to compile a list of subjects about which false statements are punishable. That governmental power has no clear limiting principle. Our constitutional tradition stands against the idea that we need Oceania’s Ministry of Truth. See G. Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) (Centennial ed. 2003). Were this law to be sustained, there could be an endless list of subjects the National Government or the States could single out. Where false claims are made to effect a fraud or secure moneys or other valuable considerations, say offers of employment, it is well established that the Government may restrict speech without affronting the First Amendment . See, e.g., Virginia Bd. of Pharmacy , 425 U. S., at 771 (noting that fraudulent speech generally falls outside the protections of the First Amendment ). But the Stolen Valor Act is not so limited in its reach. Were the Court to hold that the interest in truthful discourse alone is sufficient to sustain a ban on speech, absent any evidence that the speech was used to gain a material advantage, it would give government a broad censorial power unprecedented in this Court’s cases or in our constitutional tradition. The mere potential for the exercise of that power casts a chill, a chill the First Amendment cannot permit if free speech, thought, and discourse are to remain a foundation of our freedom.

 The previous discussion suffices to show that the Act conflicts with free speech principles. But even when examined within its own narrow sphere of operation, the Act cannot survive. In assessing content-based restrictions on protected speech, the Court has not adopted a free-wheeling approach, see Stevens , 559 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 7) (“The First Amendment ’s guarantee of free speech does not extend only to categories of speech that survive an ad hoc balancing of relative social costs and benefits”), but rather has applied the “most exacting scrutiny.” Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC , 512 U. S. 622 , 642 (1994). Although the objectives the Government seeks to further by the statute are not without significance, the Court must, and now does, find the Act does not satisfy exacting scrutiny.

 The Government is correct when it states military medals “serve the important public function of recognizing and expressing gratitude for acts of heroism and sacrifice in military service,” and also “ ‘foste[r] morale, mission accomplishment and esprit de corps’ among service members.” Brief for United States 37, 38. General George Washington observed that an award for valor would “cherish a virtuous ambition in . . . soldiers, as well as foster and encourage every species of military merit.” General Orders of George Washington Issued at Newburgh on the Hudson, 1782–1783 (Aug. 7, 1782), p. 30 (E. Boynton ed. 1883). Time has not diminished this idea. In periods of war and peace alike public recognition of valor and noble sacrifice by men and women in uniform reinforces the pride and national resolve that the military relies upon to fulfill its mission.

 These interests are related to the integrity of the military honors system in general, and the Congressional Medal of Honor in particular. Although millions have served with brave resolve, the Medal, which is the highest  military award for valor against an enemy force, has been given just 3,476 times. Established in 1861, the Medal is reserved for those who have distinguished themselves “conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty.” 10 U. S. C. §§3741 (Army), 6241 (Navy and Marine Corps), 8741 (Air Force), 14 U. S. C. §491 (Coast Guard). The stories of those who earned the Medal inspire and fascinate, from Dakota Meyer who in 2009 drove five times into the midst of a Taliban ambush to save 36 lives, see Curtis, President Obama Awards Medal of Honor to Dakota Meyer, The White House Blog (Sept. 15, 2011) (all Internet materials as visited June 25, 2012, and available in Clerk of Court’s case file); to Desmond Doss who served as an army medic on Okinawa and on June 5, 1945, rescued 75 fellow soldiers, and who, after being wounded, gave up his own place on a stretcher so others could be taken to safety, see America’s Heroes 88–90 (J. Willbanks ed. 2011); to William Carney who sustained multiple gunshot wounds to the head, chest, legs, and arm, and yet carried the flag to ensure it did not touch the ground during the Union army’s assault on Fort Wagner in July 1863, id., at 44–45. The rare acts of courage the Medal celebrates led President Truman to say he would “rather have that medal round my neck than . . . be president of the United States.” Truman Gives No. 1 Army Medal to 15 Heroes, Washington Post, Oct. 13, 1945, p. 5. The Government’s interest in protecting the integrity of the Medal of Honor is beyond question.

 But to recite the Government’s compelling interests is not to end the matter. The First Amendment requires that the Government’s chosen restriction on the speech at issue be “actually necessary” to achieve its interest. En-tertainment Merchants Assn. , 564 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 12). There must be a direct causal link between the restriction imposed and the injury to be prevented. See ibid .  The link between the Government’s interest in protecting the integrity of the military honors system and the Act’s restriction on the false claims of liars like respondent has not been shown. Although appearing to concede that “an isolated misrepresentation by itself would not tarnish the meaning of military honors,” the Government asserts it is “common sense that false representations have the tendency to dilute the value and meaning of military awards,” Brief for United States 49, 54. It must be acknowledged that when a pretender claims the Medal to be his own, the lie might harm the Government by demeaning the high purpose of the award, diminishing the honor it confirms, and creating the appearance that the Medal is awarded more often than is true. Furthermore, the lie may offend the true holders of the Medal. From one perspective it in-sults their bravery and high principles when falsehood puts them in the unworthy company of a pretender.

 Yet these interests do not satisfy the Government’s heavy burden when it seeks to regulate protected speech. See United States v. Playboy Entertainment Group, Inc. , 529 U. S. 803 , 818 (2000). The Government points to no evidence to support its claim that the public’s general perception of military awards is diluted by false claims such as those made by Alvarez. Cf. Entertainment Merchants Assn., supra, at ___–___ (slip op., at 12–13) (analyzing and rejecting the findings of research psychologists demonstrating the causal link between violent video games and harmful effects on children). As one of the Government’s amici notes “there is nothing that charlatans such as Xavier Alvarez can do to stain [the Medal winners’] honor.” Brief for Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States et al. as Amici Curiae 1. This general proposition is sound, even if true holders of the Medal might experience anger and frustration.

 The lack of a causal link between the Government’s stated interest and the Act is not the only way in which  the Act is not actually necessary to achieve the Government’s stated interest. The Government has not shown, and cannot show, why counterspeech would not suffice to achieve its interest. The facts of this case indicate that the dynamics of free speech, of counterspeech, of refutation, can overcome the lie. Respondent lied at a public meeting. Even before the FBI began investigating him for his false statements “Alvarez was perceived as a phony,” 617 F. 3d, at 1211 . Once the lie was made public, he was ridiculed online, see Brief for Respondent 3, his actions were reported in the press, see Ortega, Alvarez Again Denies Claim, Ontario, CA, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Sept. 27, 2007), and a fellow board member called for his resignation, see, e.g., Bigham, Water District Rep Requests Alvarez Resign in Wake of False Medal Claim,  San Bernardino Cty., CA, The Sun (May 21, 2008). There is good reason to believe that a similar fate would befall other false claimants. See Brief for Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press et al. as Amici Curiae 30–33 (listing numerous examples of public exposure of false claimants). Indeed, the outrage and contempt expressed for respondent’s lies can serve to reawaken and reinforce the public’s respect for the Medal, its recipients, and its high purpose. The acclaim that recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor receive also casts doubt on the proposition that the public will be misled by the claims of charlatans or become cynical of those whose heroic deeds earned them the Medal by right. See, e.g., Well Done, Washington Post, Feb. 5, 1943, p. 8 (reporting on Pres-ident Roosevelt’s awarding the Congressional Medal of Honor to Maj. Gen. Alexander Vandegrift); Devroy, Medal of Honor Given to 2 Killed in Somalia, Washington Post, May 24, 1994, p. A6 (reporting on President Clinton’s awarding the Congressional Medal of Honor to two special forces soldiers killed during operations in Somalia).

 The remedy for speech that is false is speech that is true. This is the ordinary course in a free society. The  response to the unreasoned is the rational; to the uninformed, the enlightened; to the straight-out lie, the simple truth. See Whitney v. California , 274 U. S. 357 , 377 (1927) (Brandeis, J., concurring) (“If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be ap-plied is more speech, not enforced silence”). The theory of our Constitution is “that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market,” Abrams v. United States , 250 U. S. 616 , 630 (1919) (Holmes, J., dissenting). The First Amendment itself ensures the right to respond to speech we do not like, and for good reason. Freedom of speech and thought flows not from the beneficence of the state but from the inalienable rights of the person. And suppression of speech by the government can make exposure of falsity more difficult, not less so. Society has the right and civic duty to engage in open, dynamic, rational discourse. These ends are not well served when the government seeks to orchestrate public discussion through content-based mandates.

 Expressing its concern that counterspeech is insuf- ficient, the Government responds that because “some military records have been lost . . . some claims [are] un-verifiable,” Brief for United States 50. This proves little, however; for without verifiable records, successful criminal prosecution under the Act would be more difficult in any event. So, in cases where public refutation will not serve the Government’s interest, the Act will not either. In addition, the Government claims that “many [false claims] will remain unchallenged.” Id., at 55. The Government provides no support for the contention. And in any event, in order to show that public refutation is not an adequate alternative, the Government must demonstrate that unchallenged claims undermine the public’s perception of the military and the integrity of its awards system. This showing has not been made.

  It is a fair assumption that any true holders of the Medal who had heard of Alvarez’s false claims would have been fully vindicated by the community’s expression of outrage, showing as it did the Nation’s high regard for the Medal. The same can be said for the Government’s interest. The American people do not need the assistance of a government prosecution to express their high regard for the special place that military heroes hold in our tradi-tion. Only a weak society needs government protection or intervention before it pursues its resolve to preserve the truth. Truth needs neither handcuffs nor a badge for its vindication.

 In addition, when the Government seeks to regulate protected speech, the restriction must be the “least restrictive means among available, effective alternatives.” Ashcroft , 542 U. S., at 666. There is, however, at least one less speech-restrictive means by which the Government could likely protect the integrity of the military awards system.  A Government-created database could list Congressional Medal of Honor winners. Were a database accessible through the Internet, it would be easy to verify and expose false claims. It appears some private individuals have already created databases similar to this,  see Brief for Respondent 25, and at least one data- base of past winners is online and fully searchable, see Congressional Medal of Honor Society, Full Archive, http://www.cmohs.org/recipient-archive.php. The Solicitor General responds that although Congress and the Department of Defense investigated the feasibility of establishing a database in 2008, the Government “concluded that such a database would be impracticable and insuf-ficiently comprehensive.” Brief for United States 55. Without more explanation, it is difficult to assess the Gov-ernment’s claim, especially when at least one database of Congressional Medal of Honor winners already exists.

 The Government may have responses to some of these criticisms, but there has been no clear showing of the  necessity of the statute, the necessity required by exacting scrutiny.

 The Nation well knows that one of the costs of the First Amendment is that it protects the speech we detest as well as the speech we embrace. Though few might find respondent’s statements anything but contemptible, his right to make those statements is protected by the Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of speech and expression. The Stolen Valor Act infringes upon speech protected by the First Amendment .

 The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.

It is so ordered.

Linkages Between Terrorist and Organized Crime Groups in Nuclear Smuggling: A Case Study of Chelyabinsk Oblast

• July 23, 2012
• Robert Orttung

An analysis of the cities in Russia’s Chelyabinsk oblast where weapons of mass destruction are researched and produced reveals that there are increasing threats that terrorist groups could use existing criminal networks and corruption to steal nuclear material. Such facilities exist in areas known as “closed cities” because of the increased security and access limitations that apply to them. Earlier analyses of nuclear smuggling, or those that have not focused on the specifics of the criminal and terrorism threat, have not paid enough attention to these linkages. Unfortunately, as the threats increase, state capacity to address these problems is declining. [ … ]

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Chelyabinsk Oblast is situated in the Southern Urals, with much of the region lying on the eastern slopes of the Southern Ural Mountains. Orenburg Oblast lies to the south, the Republic of Bashkortostan to the west, Sverdlovsk Oblast to the north and Kurgan Oblast to the east. At the end of 2020 there were 1,795 km of railway track in the Oblast. On 19 March 2019 Dubrovskii resigned as Governor. Putin appointed Aleksei Teksler, hitherto the federal First Deputy Minister of Energy, as Acting Governor. Dubrovskii had recently been placed under investigation by the Federal Antimonopoly Service, after it had emerged that in 2015–18 more than 90% of road contracts in the Oblast had been awarded to his Yuzhuralmost company. The Oblast’s agriculture consists mainly of animal husbandry, horticulture and the production of grain. It is one of the principal meat producing federal territories. The sector employed 5.1% of the workforce and contributed 4.1% of GRP in 2020.

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Is Chelyabinsk in Asia or Europe?

Definitely Europe . Chelyabinsk is south of the Ural Mountains and the city of the Chelyabinsk oblast is in Europe. Also Chelyabinsk is inhabited by European(Russians).

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is novosibirsk in europe

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