The undue burden standard is a constitutional test fashioned by the

Supreme Court of the United States 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 Federal tribunals in the United States, U.S. federal court cases, and over Stat ...

. The test, first developed in the late 20th century, is widely used in American constitutional law. In short, the undue burden standard states that a legislature cannot make a particular law that is too burdensome or restrictive of one's fundamental rights. One use of the standard was in '' Morgan v. Virginia,'' 328 U.S. 373 (1946). In a 7-to-1 ruling,

Associate Justice An associate justice or associate judge (or simply associate) is a judicial panel member who is not the chief justice in some jurisdictions. The title "Associate Justice" is used for members of the Supreme Court of the United States and some ...

Stanley Forman Reed fashioned an "undue burden" test to decide the constitutionality of a

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law requiring

separate but equal Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in United States constitutional law, according to which racial segregation did not necessarily violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which nominally guaranteed "equal protectio ...

racial segregation Racial segregation is the separation of people into race (human classification), racial or other Ethnicity, ethnic groups in daily life. Segregation can involve the spatial separation of the races, and mandatory use of different institutions, ...

in public transportation. "There is a recognized abstract principle, however, that may be taken as a postulate for testing whether particular state legislation in the absence of action by Congress is beyond state power. This is that the state legislation is invalid if it unduly burdens that commerce in matters where uniformity is necessary—necessary in the constitutional sense of useful in accomplishing a permitted purpose." More recently, the standard has been used in cases involving state restrictions on a woman's access to

abortion Abortion is the early termination of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus. Abortions that occur without intervention are known as miscarriages or "spontaneous abortions", and occur in roughly 30–40% of all pregnan ...

. The standard was applied by Associate Justice

Sandra Day O'Connor Sandra Day O'Connor (March 26, 1930 – December 1, 2023) was an American attorney, politician, and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1981 to 2006. Nominated by President Ronald Reagan, O' ...

in her dissent in '' City of Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health,'' 462 US 416 (1983). O'Connor utilized the test as an alternative to the

strict scrutiny In U.S. constitutional law, when a law infringes upon a fundamental constitutional right, the court may apply the strict scrutiny standard. Strict scrutiny holds the challenged law as presumptively invalid unless the government can demonstrat ...

test applied in ''

Roe v. Wade ''Roe v. Wade'', 410 U.S. 113 (1973),. was a List of landmark court decisions in the United States, landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States protected the right to have an ...

,'' 410 U.S. 113 (1973). The test was later used by a plurality opinion in '' Planned Parenthood v. Casey,'' 505 U.S. 833 (1992), to uphold state regulations on abortion. In ''City of Akron,'' O'Connor stated: "If the particular regulation does not 'unduly burden' the fundamental right, then our evaluation of that regulation is limited to our determination that the regulation rationally relates to a legitimate state purpose." Justice

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in his partial concurrence, partial dissent to ''Casey'' further defined undue burden by saying, " burden may be 'undue' either because tis too severe or because it lacks a legitimate, rational justification." The undue burden test has been used to judge the constitutionality of tax laws, consumer product liability laws, affirmative action, voter registration laws, abortion laws, and even anti-

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laws. Some courts have described the undue burden standard as "a 'middle way' forward" for Constitutional analysis, between the

and the

rational basis test In U.S. constitutional law, rational basis review is the normal standard of review that courts apply when considering constitutional questions, including due process or equal protection questions under the Fifth Amendment or Fourteenth Amendment ...

Notes

{{reflist United States constitutional law