Merrifield v. Lockyer’s Empirical Analysis
547 F.3d 978 · 2008
Citation profile
12 federal appellate · 4 district · 5 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 36 later decisions — most recently June 2024 · most notably St. Joseph Abbey v. Castille (2013), Kleinsmith v. Shurtleff (2009)
12 federal appellate · 4 district · 5 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 Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife · City of Cleburne Texas v. Cleburne Living Center · Hunt v. Washington State Apple Advertising Commission · Williamson v. Lee Optical of Oklahoma, Inc. · 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 36 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The casket retailers in Craigmiles argued that their business was so different from funeral directors that the government’s interest in public health and safety in regulating funeral directors was not implicated. In other words, although the casket sellers brought claims under both the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses, and the Sixth Circuit affirmed on both grounds, their argument was not that they were being treated differently in violation of the Equal Protection Clause, but that they were suffering an unconstitutional barrier to practice their profession — a due process claim.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“Merrifield’s claim must be rejected as long as there is any reasonably conceivable state of facts that could provide a rational basis for the challenged law. The government is not required to substantiate its reasoning with facts. In an equal protection case of this type ... those challenging the legislative judgment must convince the court that the legislative facts on which the' classification is apparently based could not rea sonably be conceived to be true by the governmental decision maker. The State is not compelled to verify logical assumptions with statistical evidence.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“requiring persons who do not use pesticides to learn about the risks of pesticides ... because persons like [plaintiff] work in environments where they may be exposed to pesticides that have been applied previously and left on-site.”
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.