Substantive Due Process and the Fourteenth Amendment

Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (1868) Meyer v. State of Nebraska, 1923

The concept of legal privacy was first introduced in 1923 in Meyer v. Nebraska, a U.S. Supreme Court case which ruled in favor of family privacy with respect to languages taught at school. The Court cited the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, establishing "penumbras" of equal protection that covered rights beyond what was stated in the Constitution itself.