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 U.S. Federal tribunals in the United States, 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 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 state ...

Stanley Forman Reed Stanley Forman Reed (December 31, 1884 – April 2, 1980) was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1938 to 1957. He also served as U.S. Solicitor General from 1935 to 1938. Born in Ma ...

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 protecti ...

racial segregation Racial segregation is the systematic separation of people into racial or other ethnic groups in daily life. Racial segregation can amount to the international crime of apartheid and a crime against humanity under the Statute of the Internat ...

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 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 pregnan ...

. The standard was applied by Associate Justice

Sandra Day O'Connor Sandra Day O'Connor (born March 26, 1930) is an American retired attorney and politician who served as the first female associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1981 to 2006. She was both the first woman nominated and the ...

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 demonstrate th ...

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 conferred 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

John Paul Stevens John Paul Stevens (April 20, 1920 – July 16, 2019) was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1975 to 2010. At the time of his retirement, he was the second-oldes ...

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