Williams v. Zbaraz (1979)
- Docket
- 79-4
- Decided
- 1979-01-01
Summary
Question: (1) Did the district court have the jurisdiction to consider the constitutionality of the Hyde Amendment? (2) Does the Hyde Amendment allow a state to limit its Medicaid funding of abortions to those specified by the Amendment? Conclusion: No, Yes. Justice Potter Stewart delivered the opinion for the 5-4 majority. The Court held that the district court lacked the jurisdiction to consider the constitutionality of the Hyde Amendment, since none of the parties to the case challenged the Amendment. The opinion referenced Harris v. McCrae , another opinion filed the same day, which upheld the constitutionality of the Hyde Amendment. The Court also held that a state is not obligated to pay for abortions through Medicaid when there will be no federal reimbursement because of the restrictions of the Hyde Amendment. Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. dissented and argued that a state’s interest in protecting the life of a fetus could not come at the cost of denying poor women medically necessary abortions. He also argued that, in upholding the constitutionality of the Hyde Amendment, the Court allowed a state to yield undue influence over a woman’s decision whether or not to go through with a pregnancy; this influence disproportionally affects poor women. Justices Thurgood Marshall and Harry A. Blackmun joined in the dissent. Justice Thurgood Marshall dissented and argued that the Hyde Amendment essentially denies women in poverty the ability to have a legal abortion that protects their health but not their lives. Because the burden falls exclusively on poor women who cannot afford an abortion, he disagreed with the Court’s finding that the Hyde Amendment did not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In his a dissenting opinion, Justice Harry A. Blackmun expressed that the Court refused to recognize the realities of poverty. He argued that such actions by the government wrongfully punish those living in poverty. Justice John Paul Stevens also wrote a dissenting opinion. He argued that, since the government provides Medicaid on the basis of expressed financial and medical need, it could not deny assistance when both of those needs have been shown. If a woman has a constitutional right to choose to protect her own health rather than the potential life of the fetus, the government cannot deny her assistance to which she would otherwise be entitled.