Believe it or not, the right to privacy is not specifically mentioned in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. However, that doesn’t mean that folks don’t have a fundamental right to privacy in their home. Indeed, “[t]he home derives its pre-eminence as the seat of family life. And the integrity of that life is something so fundamental that it has been found to draw to its protection the principles of more than one explicitly granted Constitutional right.” Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965). Thus, the right to privacy comes from bits and pieces of other specific language in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, as applied by the United States Supreme Court.
The United States Supreme Court first recognized the Constitutional right to privacy less than 50 years ago, in a case arising out of the criminalization of the distribution of condoms to married people for use as contraceptive devices. In this case, the executive director of the local Planned Parenthood challenged a Connecticut criminal statute making it illegal for him to give his married patients condoms for family planning. The State argued that it had a legitimate interest in preventing married people from obtaining condoms because the distribution of condoms promoted adulterous affairs.
In Griswold v. Connecticut, the Court recognized for the first time that several fundamental constitutional guarantees create a “zone of privacy” for married couples regarding the use of contraceptives for family planning. Moreover, the majority held that the very idea of the police searching marital bedrooms for the telltale signs of condom use was “repulsive to the notions of privacy surrounding the marriage relationship.” Id. Indeed, the Court held that “[t]he entire fabric of the Constitution and the purposes that clearly underlie its specific guarantees demonstrate that the rights to marital privacy and to marry and raise a family are of similar order and magnitude as the fundamental rights specifically protected.” Id. In short, the Griswold decision stands for the proposition that folks have a fundamental right to make decisions about private family planning matters without interference from the State.
