Supreme Court Cases Involving Georgia

Question 1

McCulloch v. Maryland

Answer 1

Supreme Court adopted a broad view of the national government’s powers when it decided that the elastic clause allows Congress to exercise implied powers that are not mentioned explicitly in the U.S. Constitution but that can be inferred from the enumerated powers.

Question 2

Marbury V. Madison

Answer 2

Supreme Court gained the power of judicial review, which is the power of courts to declare acts unconstitutional.

Question 3

Baker v. Carr

Answer 3

Supreme Court ruled against gerrymandering. States are forced to draw legislative districts on the basis of population rather than political boundaries such as county lines.

Question 4

King v. Chapman

Answer 4

Building on a 1944 U.S. Supreme Court case covering Texas, the circuit court of appeals found that the rules of Georgia’s Democratic Party, which restricted voting in primary elections to whites only, violated the equal protection guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Question 5

Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States

Answer 5

Upheld constitutionality of Title 2 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited racial discrimination in public accommodations.

Question 6

Olmstead v. L.C.

Answer 6

The state’s practice of involuntarily institutionalizing disabled individuals judged suitable to live in less restrictive settings violates the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

Question 7

Fortson v. Toombs

Answer 7

Upheld a lower court’s 1962 decision that the Fourteenth Amendment required seats in the General Assembly to be apportioned with districts of roughly equal population rather than being based on county or other political boundaries.

Question 8

Gray v. Sanders

Answer 8

Held that Georgia’s county-unit system violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection guarantee because it malapportioned votes among the state’s counties.

Question 9

Miller v. Johnson

Answer 9

Invalidated Georgia’s congressional redistricting following the 1990 census as a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause because race was the predominant factor in drawing district boundaries. The General Assembly had created three black-majority districts, with the Eleventh District having a very irregular shape.

Question 10

Georgia v. Ashcroft

Answer 10

Held that courts reviewing redistricting under the Voting Rights Act have to consider all relevant factors affecting minority voters, not just the chance of electing minority candidates.

Question 11

Stanley v. Georgia

Answer 11

Overturned state law making private possession of obscene material a crime. The Georgia law was held to violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution

Question 12

Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton

Answer 12

Held that banning the showing of allegedly obscene films to consenting adults in a commercial theater does not violate the First Amendment or the right to privacy.

Question 13

Cox Broadcasting Corp v. Colin

Answer 13

Overturned the Georgia law prohibiting publication of the name of a rape victim obtained from public records.

Question 14

Forsyth County v. Nationalist Movement

Answer 14

Invalidated a local ordinance requiring participants to pay law enforcement costs for demonstrations and empowering the county administrator to determine how much to charge a group seeking a permit for a demonstration. The court found fault with the ordinance because it granted excessively broad discretion to the administrator, who was required to examine the content of a group’s message in determining a fee to be charged for law enforcement protection.

Question 15

Chandler v. Miller

Answer 15

Held that Georgia’s requirement that candidates for state office pass a drug test violated the Fourth Amendment protection against suspicionless searches.

Question 16

Georgia v. Randolph

Answer 16

Police cannot search a home without a warrant when one occupant grants permission but another physically present occupant refuses to permit the search.

Question 17

Ballew v. Georgia

Answer 17

Held that a criminal trial using a jury of less than six members violated the Sixth Amendment guarantee to a fair trial.

Question 18

Furman v. Georgia

Answer 18

Held that Georgia’s methods of administering the death penalty violated the Eighth Amendment’s guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment. The decision effectively ended executions in the United States for more than a decade.

Question 19

Gregg v. Georgia

Answer 19

Upheld Georgia’s revised law on capital punishment, which limited the crimes for which the death penalty could be imposed and specified the factors to be considered and procedures to be used in deciding when to impose capital punishment.

Question 20

Coker v. Georgia

Answer 20

Found that Georgia’s imposition of the death penalty for the crime of rape was grossly disproportionate and thus a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Question 21

McCleskey v. Georgia

Answer 21

Rejected the claim that racial differences in the imposition of the death penalty violated the equal protection guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment and amounted to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment.

Question 22

Doe v. Bolton

Answer 22

This is the less famous Georgia case decided along with Roe v. Wade. It overturned Georgia’s ban on abortions as a violation of a woman’s right to privacy.

Question 23

Bowers v. Hardwick

Answer 23

Held that the right to privacy did not protect consensual homosexual sex from prosecution under Georgia’s sodomy law.

Question 24

Christensen v. State

Answer 24

Reinforcement of the Hardwick decision that Georgia’s sodomy law did not violate Georgia’s right to privacy.

Question 25

Powell v. State

Answer 25

Involving a heterosexual couple, the Georgia Supreme Court held that “insofar as it criminalizes the performance of private, non-commercial acts of sexual intimacy between persons legally able to consent, [the sodomy law] ‘manifestly infringes upon a constitutional provision’…which guarantees to the citizens of Georgia the right to privacy.”