Cleburne Living Center, Inc. v. City of Cleburne’s Empirical Analysis
726 F.2d 191 · 1984
Citation profile
12 federal appellate · 4 district · 2 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 34 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently December 2022 · most notably City of Cleburne Texas v. Cleburne Living Center (1985), Haitian Refugee Center v. Gracey (1987)
12 federal appellate · 4 district · 2 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.
Appellate journey
Relationships
Applies 31 U.S.C. § 6716 (§ 31001 of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994)
Relies on Warth v. Seldin · Sierra Club v. Morton · San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez · Village of Euclid Ohio v. Ambler Realty Co · Plyler v. Doe
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 34 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Discrimination against the mentally retarded is likely to reflect deep-seated prejudice. They have been subjected to a history of unfair and often grotesque mistreatment. Until the 1970s, they were universally denied admittance into public schools in the United States. In addition, the Eugenic Society of America fought during the first half of this century to have retarded persons eradicated entirely through euthanasia and compulsory sterilization. Euthanasia was rejected; but thirty-two states have had statutes providing for the sterilization of retarded individuals. Mental retardates have been segregated into remote, stigmatizing institutions ... and when permitted in society, they have often been subject to ridicule. Once-technical terms for various degrees of retardation — e.g. “idiots,” “imbeciles,” “morons”— have become popular terms of derision.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[t]he availability of such a home in communities is an essential ingredient of normal living patterns for persons who are mentally retarded, and each factor that makes such group homes harder to establish operates to exclude persons who are mentally retarded from the community.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“the class is ... saddled with such disabilities, or subjected to such a history of purposeful unequal treatment, or relegated to such a position of political powerlessness as to command extraordinary protection from the majoritarian political process.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Clark v. Manuel
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.