Читать книгу Food Regulation - Neal D. Fortin - Страница 41

Although privacy right objections are frequently made against public health laws—such as immunization, fluoridation, and compulsory HIV testing—the argument is less common against food laws. The seminal case on privacy rights is Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965), where a Connecticut law prohibited the prescribing of contraceptives and their use by any person, including married couples. The U.S. Supreme Court declared the Connecticut statute unconstitutional. In the main opinion, Justice William O. Douglas laid out the basis of a constitutional right to privacy. The constitutional right to privacy has been applied by the Supreme Court only in situations involving the personal intimacies of the home, the family, marriage, motherhood, procreation, and child rearing. Efforts to expand the right of privacy to less intimate areas as a basis for invalidating public health and safety laws have not succeeded.