The Ninth Amendment

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Stephanie Englar
  • 14th Flying Training Wing Public Affairs
COLUMBUS AIR FORCE BASE, Miss. --  The Ninth Amendment covers basic human rights that the Founders believed should not have to be given to the people by the government. On its own, the Ninth Amendment does not make specific laws unconstitutional; it simply states that our basic rights need not be numbered.

When creating the Ninth Amendment the Founding Fathers believed that all Americans possessed innate rights as human beings that did not need to be given them by the government. They believed that there were some rights that the government should not be able to deny.

Not long after the Constitution was first created, a group called the Anti-Federalists began petitioning for a Bill of Rights to be added. On the other hand, the Federalist Party was worried that a Bill of Rights would give too much power to the government. Due to the debates between the two, the Virginia Ratifying Convention came up with a compromise: a constitutional amendment that would refer to the unlisted rights that could not be taken away by the government.

Even with its broad coverage of pressing issues, the Ninth Amendment does not see as much time in court as many of the other amendments. In fact, the first big case litigating the Ninth Amendment was a 1965 Supreme Court case covering the right to privacy.

The Constitution does not explicitly mention the word "privacy." Yet, the Supreme Court, in Griswold v. Connecticut, found a state law that criminalized the use of contraceptives to be an unconstitutional law limiting one's privacy. Estelle Griswold, a member of Planned Parenthood, opened up a birth control clinic in Connecticut to challenge the contraceptive law. Shortly after the clinic was opened she was arrested and fined $100.

In addition to the Ninth Amendment argument, Griswold argued that the law violates her Fourteenth Amendment rights which declares: "no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law...nor deny any person the equal protection of the laws."

Griswold won the case after the Supreme Court found the Connecticut law to be unconstitutional. Other cases such as Eisenstadt v. Baird followed and extended the "inherent" right to privacy beyond married couples on the grounds of "irrational discrimination."

The limits of the Ninth Amendment protections are quite controversial. For example, some people believe there are "inherent rights" to marry a person of the same sex or to choose to have abortions. Though it took nearly 200 years for the Ninth Amendment to reach serious litigation, with today's advances in communication the limits of the Ninth Amendment are bound to be further explored by the courts. While the previous eight amendments have specifically listed the rights guaranteed to the individual, the ninth amendment states that there are others rights granted that are not listed, and that they cannot be violated.