Vacco v. Quill’s Empirical Analysis
1997
Citation profile
126 federal appellate · 61 district · 92 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 494 later decisions (4 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Washington v. Glucksberg (1997), McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010)
126 federal appellate · 61 district · 92 state decisions — followed in 21 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
reviewedQuill v. Vacco (from Second Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 42 U.S.C. § 14402
Relies on San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez · Morissette v. United States · Plyler v. Doe · Personnel Administrator of Mass. v. Feeney · Washington v. Glucksberg
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 494 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“so long as it bears a rational relation to some legitimate end.”
21 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“embodies a general rule that States must treat like cases alike but may treat unlike cases accordingly.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage“laws that apply evenhandedly to all `unquestionably comply' with the Equal Protection Clause.”
2 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.