Massachusetts Board of Retirement v. Murgia’s Empirical Analysis
1976
Citation profile
890 federal appellate · 381 district · 1,141 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 3,744 later decisions (112 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2026 · most notably Batson v. Kentucky (1986), City of Cleburne Texas v. Cleburne Living Center (1985)
890 federal appellate · 381 district · 1,141 state decisions — followed in 49 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
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 1343 · 28 U.S.C. § 2201 · 28 U.S.C. § 2281 · 29 U.S.C. § 621 (§ 2 of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967) · 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth · Edelman v. Jordan · Perry v. Sindermann · Roe v. Wade · Dandridge v. Williams
Cited together with San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez · Vance v. Bradley · Dandridge v. Williams · City of Cleburne Texas v. Cleburne Living Center · Williamson v. Lee Optical of Oklahoma, Inc.
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 3,744 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“saddled with such disabilities, or subjected to such a history of purposeful unequal treatment, or relegated to such a position of political powerlessness as to command extraordinary protection from the majoritarian political process.”
168 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“rationally related to furthering a legitimate state interest.”
9 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Although the Court outwardly adheres to the two-tier model, it has apparently lost interest in recognizing further ‘fundamental’ rights and ‘suspect’ classes. . . In my view, this result is the natural consequence of the limitations of the Court’s traditional equal protection analysis. If a statute invades a “fundamental” right or discriminates against a “suspect” class, it is subject to strict scrutiny. If a statute is subject to strict scrutiny, the statute always, or nearly always ... is struck down. Quite obviously, the only critical decision is whether strict scrutiny should be invoked at all. It should be no surprise, then, that the Court is hesitant to expand the number of categories of rights and classes subject to strict scrutiny, when each expansion involves the invalidation of virtually every classification bearing upon a newly covered category.””
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.