''Hodgson v. Minnesota'', 497 U.S. 417 (1990), was a
United States Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
abortion
Abortion is the termination of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus. An abortion that occurs without intervention is known as a miscarriage or "spontaneous abortion"; these occur in approximately 30% to 40% of pre ...
rights case that dealt with whether a
state law may require notification of both parents before a minor can obtain an abortion. The law in question provided a judicial alternative.
Background
The case concerned a Minnesota law. The law required notice to both parents of a minor before she could undergo an abortion; it also contained a judicial bypass provision designed to take effect only if a court found one to be necessary.
, a Minneapolis gynecologist, challenged the law. The Eighth Circuit had ruled that the law would be unconstitutional without a judicial bypass, but that the bypass provision saved it.
[
]
Opinion of the Court
While Justice Stevens delivered a majority opinion for one of the holdings, there were five votes for each of two holdings, with Justice O'Connor proving as the decisive vote for each.[ Justices Stevens, Brennan, Marshall, Blackmun and O'Connor formed a majority holding that the two-parent notice requirement by itself was unconstitutional.][ Justice O'Connor believed that the two-parent requirement entailed risk to a pregnant teenager; she also argued that the rule failed to meet even the lowest standard of judicial review, a rationality standard.][ She joined the Court's more conservative Justices (Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices White, Scalia and Kennedy), to form a majority for the law being valid with the judicial bypass; ]Justice Kennedy
Anthony McLeod Kennedy (born July 23, 1936) is an American lawyer and jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1988 until his retirem ...
had pointed out the usefulness of the bypass procedure, as judges granted all but a handful of requests to authorize abortions without parental notice.[
The ruling struck down the two-parent notification requirement, the majority citing an APA brief asserting that one-parent families are common in that state and that within the state, a minor often only needs one parent's permission for certain health needs; the rest of the statute, though, was voted constitutional because of its allowance for judicial bypass.
This case involved the first restriction on abortion that Justice O'Connor voted to strike down.][
]
See also
* List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 497
* List of United States Supreme Court cases
This page serves as an index of lists of United States Supreme Court cases. The United States Supreme Court is the highest federal court of the United States.
By Chief Justice
Court historians and other legal scholars consider each Chief J ...
* Lists of United States Supreme Court cases by volume
The following is a complete list of cases decided by the United States Supreme Court organized by volume of the ''United States Reports'' in which they appear. This is a list of volumes of ''U.S. Reports'', and the links point to the contents of e ...
*
References
External links
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{{US14thAmendment, dueprocess
United States abortion case law
Right to abortion under the United States Constitution
United States Supreme Court cases
United States Supreme Court cases of the Rehnquist Court
1990 in United States case law
American Civil Liberties Union litigation
United States privacy case law
Right to privacy under the United States Constitution
Women in Minnesota