City of Cleburne Texas v. Cleburne Living Center’s Empirical Analysis
1985
Citation profile
2,153 federal appellate · 1,345 district · 1,919 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 9,679 later decisions (102 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2026 · most notably Batson v. Kentucky (1986), Hernandez v. New York (1991)
2,153 federal appellate · 1,345 district · 1,919 state decisions — followed in 47 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedCleburne Living Center, Inc. v. City of Cleburne (from Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 20 U.S.C. § 1400 (Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975) · 20 U.S.C. § 1401 · 20 U.S.C. § 1412 · 29 U.S.C. § 794 · 42 U.S.C. § 1396D (§ 1905 of the Social Security Act of 1935)
Relies on Mitchell v. Forsyth · Stanley v. Illinois · Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp. · Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka et al.
Cited together with Plyler v. Doe · City of New Orleans v. Dukes · Vance v. Bradley · Heller v. Doe Ex Rel. Doe · Federal Communications Commission v. Beach Communications, 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 9,679 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“is essentially a direction that all persons similarly situated should be treated alike.”
336 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[t]he State may not rely on a classification whose relationship to an asserted goal is so attenuated as to render the distinction arbitrary or irrational.”
61 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[W]e conclude for several reasons that the Court of Appeals erred in holding mental retardation a quasi-suspect classification calling for a more exacting standard of judicial review than is normally accorded economic and social legislation.”
36 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.