Schweiker v. Wilson’s Empirical Analysis
1981
Citation profile
439 federal appellate · 160 district · 305 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,516 later decisions (51 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2025 · most notably City of Cleburne Texas v. Cleburne Living Center (1985), Logan v. Zimmerman Brush Co. (1982)
439 federal appellate · 160 district · 305 state decisions — followed in 38 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 Udall v. Tallman · Ohio Bureau of Employment Services v. Hodory · Dandridge v. Williams · San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez · McGowan v. State of Maryland Gallagher
Cited together with City of Cleburne Texas v. Cleburne Living Center · Dandridge v. Williams · United States Railroad Retirement Board v. Fritz · Vance v. Bradley · City of New Orleans v. Dukes
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 1,516 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“advances legitimate legislative goals in a rational fashion.”
48 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“that legislation classify the persons it affects in a manner rationally related to legitimate governmental objectives.”
19 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“a statutory distinction does not violate the Equal Protection Clause 'if any state of facts reasonably may be conceived to justify it,'”
4 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.