Which U.S. Supreme Court case struck down laws prohibiting birth control for married couples?

Griswold v. Connecticut struck down Connecticut's prohibition on the use of birth control by married couples and recognized a constitutional protection for marital privacy.

The 1965 case arose after Estelle Griswold, executive director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, and physician C. Lee Buxton opened a birth-control clinic in New Haven. Connecticut law made using contraceptives illegal, not merely selling or distributing them. Griswold and Buxton were arrested, convicted, and fined after deliberately challenging the statute.

The Supreme Court ruled 7–2 that the law violated marital privacy. Justice William O. Douglas's majority opinion described privacy as arising from the “penumbras” of several guarantees in the Bill of Rights. Other justices relied on the Ninth or Fourteenth Amendment. The decision became a foundation for later privacy cases, although the Court did not frame it as a general, unrestricted right to privacy.

Eisenstadt v. Baird later extended contraceptive protections to unmarried people. Griswold also influenced Roe v. Wade, but the cases concerned different constitutional questions and different forms of intimate decision-making.