Lewitus v. Colwell’s Empirical Analysis
1979
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 4 district · 7 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 14 later decisions — most recently July 2009
2 federal appellate · 4 district · 7 state decisions
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 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 · Morrissey v. Brewer · Wolff v. McDonnell · First Nat. Bank of Ariz. v. Cities Service Co. · Paul v. Davis
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 14 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It is true that the regulation as applied to Mr. Lewitus seems somewhat irrational, given that he himself has done no wrong. However, the equal protection clause does not require that all classifications be drawn with absolute precision. "If the classification has some 'reasonable basis,' it does not offend the Constitution simply because the classification 'is not made with mathematical nicety or because in practice it results in some inequality.' ” (Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U.S. 471, 485 , 90 S.Ct. 1153 , 25 L.Ed.2d 491 ... (1970)[q]uoting Lindsley v. Natural Carbonic Gas Co., 220 U.S. 61, 78, 31 S.Ct. 337 , 55 L.Ed. 369 ... (1911)[)]. The Commission had a reasonable basis for believing that anyone who consorts or associates with bookmakers, touts, or others of similar pursuits would be likely to interfere with the scrupulous conduct of racing. The fact that the plaintiff may in fact pose no threat, or that other more threatening applicants are not excluded by [the] Regulation ..., does not of itself invalidate the regulation. The plaintiff cites authority for the proposition that implicit in the due process clause is the principle that guilt is personal, and that "legal burdens should bear some relationship to individual responsibility or wrongdoing.” Weber v. Aetna Casualty and Surety Co., 406 U.S. 164, 175 , 92 S.Ct. 1400 , 31 L.Ed.2d 768 ... (1972). * * * [T]he plaintiff's point is an important one. Regulation 25B forces him to suffer a genuine deprivation when he is ”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“a fast horse that is run under the identity of a slower horse,” Catrone, 683 F.Supp. at 304 & n. 1, which "permits the perpetrator to bet large sums of money at odds made very favorable by the public's ignorance of the switch,”
1 later decision 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.