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40  DOBBS v. JACKSON WOMEN’S HEALTH ORGANIZATION 

Opinion of the Court 

dure through a long lapse of ages,” Martin v. Hunter’s Les-
see,  1  Wheat.  304,  326  (1816)  (opinion  for  the  Court  by 
Story, J.)—we place a high value on having the matter “set-
tled right.”  In addition, when one of our constitutional de-
cisions  goes  astray,  the  country  is  usually  stuck  with  the 
bad decision unless we correct our own mistake.  An erro-
neous constitutional decision can be fixed by amending the
Constitution,  but  our  Constitution  is  notoriously  hard  to
amend.  See Art. V; Kimble, 576 U. S., at 456.  Therefore, in 
appropriate circumstances we must be willing to reconsider 
and, if necessary, overrule constitutional decisions. 

Some of our most important constitutional decisions have
overruled prior precedents.  We mention three.  In Brown 
v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483 (1954), the Court re-
pudiated the “separate but equal” doctrine,  which had  al-
lowed  States  to  maintain  racially  segregated  schools  and 
other facilities.  Id., at 488 (internal quotation marks omit-
ted).  In so doing, the Court overruled the infamous decision 
in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537 (1896), along with six 
other  Supreme  Court  precedents  that  had  applied  the 
separate-but-equal rule.  See Brown, 347 U. S., at 491. 

In West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, 300 U. S. 379 (1937), 
the Court  overruled Adkins v. Children’s Hospital of D. C., 
261 U. S. 525 (1923), which had held that a law setting min-
imum wages for women violated the “liberty” protected by
the  Fifth  Amendment’s  Due  Process  Clause.  Id.,  at  545. 
West  Coast  Hotel  signaled  the  demise  of  an  entire  line  of 
important precedents that had protected an individual lib-
erty right against state and federal health and welfare leg-
islation.  See  Lochner  v.  New  York,  198  U. S.  45  (1905) 
(holding  invalid  a  law  setting  maximum  working  hours); 
Coppage v. Kansas, 236 U. S. 1 (1915) (holding invalid a law
banning  contracts  forbidding  employees  to  join  a  union); 
Jay Burns Baking Co. v. Bryan, 264 U. S. 504 (1924) (hold-
ing invalid laws fixing the weight of loaves of bread). 
  Finally, in West Virginia Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette, 319 U. S.