Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522

Case citation

Case citation is the system used in many countries to identify the decisions in past court cases, either in special series of books called reporters or law reports, or in a 'neutral' form which will identify a decision wherever it was reported...

 (1975), is a significant Supreme Court of the United States

Supreme Court of the United States

The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...

 case, which held women could not be excluded from a venire, or jury pool

Jury duty

Jury duty is service as a juror in a legal proceeding. When a person is called for jury duty in the United States, that service is usually not optional: one must attend or face strict penalties. Employers are not allowed to fire an employee simply for being called to jury duty...

, on the basis of having to register for jury duty, thus overturning Hoyt v. Florida

Hoyt v. Florida

Hoyt v. Florida, 368 U.S. 57 , was an appeal by Gwendolyn Hoyt, who had killed her husband and received a jail sentence for second degree murder...

, the 1961 case that had allowed such a practice.

Background

Billy J. Taylor was indicted and tried for "aggravated kidnapping

Kidnapping

In criminal law, kidnapping is the taking away or transportation of a person against that person's will, usually to hold the person in false imprisonment, a confinement without legal authority...

". Both parties agreed that:

Issues

The issue before the court was not whether Taylor actually kidnapped anyone, but whether he had a fair trial because Louisiana law had a "conceded systematic impact" to eliminate female jurors from his jury:
A secondary issue was whether Taylor had standing

Standing (law)

In law, standing or locus standi is the term for the ability of a party to demonstrate to the court sufficient connection to and harm from the law or action challenged to support that party's participation in the case...

, as a man that would not be excluded from jury duty in Louisiana, to challenge the rule.

Decision

The Supreme Court "changed its mind and ruled the affirmative registration process was unconstitutional."

It held:
On the secondary issue of standing, it held:

Reasoning

The Courts' reasoning was based heavily on the precedent from prior caselaw, that "The Court's prior cases are instructive":
Duncan v. Louisiana appears to have been especially important to the court for use as a precedent. It was a significant United States Supreme Court decision, which incorporated the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial and applied it to the states.

Ballard v. United States (1946), another precedent, concerned the exclusion of "an economic or racial group...." Ultimately, this line of cases come from Glasser v. United States (1942), Smith v. Texas (1940), Pierre v. Louisiana (1939), and Strauder v. State of West Virginia (1880). all of which concern the exclusion of blacks from juries as unconstitutional violations of the Equal Protection Clause

Equal Protection Clause

The Equal Protection Clause, part of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, provides that "no state shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws"...

.

External links

• Full Supreme Court opinion in Taylor v. Louisiana, courtesy of Justia