Hoff v. Berg’s Empirical Analysis
1999
Citation profile
40 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 43 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently November 2025 · most notably Troxel v. Granville (2000), 34 Cal. 4th 210 - In Re Marriage of Harris (2004)
40 state decisions — followed in 11 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Santosky v. Kramer · Stanley v. Illinois · Meyer v. State of Nebraska · Wisconsin v. Yoder · Lassiter v. Department of Social Services of Durham County North Carolina
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 43 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Parents have a fundamental, natural right to their children which is of constitutional dimension. In re L.F., 1998 ND 129 , ¶ 9, 580 N.W.2d 573 ; Kleingartner v. D.P.A.B., 310 N.W.2d 575, 578 (N.D. 1981). The right is paramount. In re R.D.S., 259 N.W.2d 636 , 638 (N.D.1977). A parent's paramount and constitutional right to the custody and companionship of their children is superior to that of any other person. Patzer v. Glaser, 396 N.W.2d 740, 743 (N.D.1986); Hust v. Hust, 295 N.W.2d 316, 318 (N.D.1980); Boeddeker v. Reel, 517 N.W.2d 407, 409 (N.D.1994).”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage““[T]he Fourteenth Amendment ‘forbids the government to infringe ... “fundamental” liberty interests ... unless the infringement is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest.’ ” If a fundamental liberty interest is not involved, a statute need only “be rationally related to legitimate government interests.” “[N]arrow tailoring is required only when fundamental rights are involved. The impairment of a lesser interest ... demands no more than a ‘reasonable fit’ between governmental purpose ... and the means chosen to advance that purpose.” The level of scrutiny employed in analyzing due process claims has been recently summarized: Where fundamental rights or interests are involved, a state regulation limiting these fundamental rights can be justified only by a compelling state interest and legislative enactments must be narrowly drawn to express only the legitimate state interests at stake. Therefore, state limitations on a fundamental right such as the right of privacy are permissible only if they survive strict constitutional scrutiny. However, where fundamental rights or interests are not implicated or infringed, state statutes are reviewed under the rational basis test.... Under rational basis review, “a statute withstands a substantive due process challenge if the state identifies a legitimate state interest that the legislature could rationally conclude was served by the statute.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“the right to enjoy the domestic relations and the privileges of the family and the home ... without restriction or obstruction ... except in so far as may be necessary to secure the equal rights of others.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.