Harris v. McRae’s Empirical Analysis
1980
Citation profile
938 federal appellate · 394 district · 840 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 3,442 later decisions (104 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 2026 · most notably Lewis Director Arizona Department of Corrections v. Casey (1996), Joshua Deshaney, a Minor, by His Guardian Ad Litem, and Melody Deshaney,s v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services, et al. (1989)
938 federal appellate · 394 district · 840 state decisions — followed in 42 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 Warth v. Seldin · Goldberg v. Kelly · Roe v. Wade · Broadrick v. Oklahoma · Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka et al.
Cited together with Maher v. Roe · Roe v. Wade · Planned Parenthood of Central Missouri v. Danforth · Buckley v. Valeo · Regan v. Taxation With Representation of Washington
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 3,442 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“for the purpose of providing federal financial assistance to States that choose to reimburse certain costs of medical treatment for needy persons.”
167 later decisions quote this exact passage“federal financial assistance to States that choose to reimburse certain costs of medical treatment for needy persons.”
25 later decisions quote this exact passage“substantial constitutional question would arise if Congress had attempted to withhold all Medicaid benefits from an otherwise eligible candidate simply because that candidate had exercised her constitutionally protected freedom to terminate her pregnancy by abortion.”
16 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.