Opinion ID: 109509
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Right of Privacy

Text: The Court has held that in some situations the Constitution confers a right of privacy. See Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113, 152-153; Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U. S. 438, 453; Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U. S. 557, 564-565; Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U. S. 479, 484-485. See also Loving v. Virginia, 388 U. S. 1, 12; Skinner v. Oklahoma ex rel. Williamson, 316 U. S. 535, 541. While the application of § 1981 to the conduct at issue herea private school's adherence to a racially discriminatory admissions policydoes not represent governmental intrusion into the privacy of the home or a similarly intimate setting, [14] it does implicate parental interests. These interests are related to the procreative rights protected in Roe v. Wade, supra , and Griswold v. Connecticut, supra . A person's decision whether to bear a child and a parent's decision concerning the manner in which his child is to be educated may fairly be characterized as exercises of familial rights and responsibilities. But it does not follow that because government is largely or even entirely precluded from regulating the child-bearing decision, it is similarly restricted by the Constitution from regulating the implementation of parental decisions concerning a child's education. The Court has repeatedly stressed that while parents have a constitutional right to send their children to private schools and a constitutional right to select private schools that offer specialized instruction, they have no constitutional right to provide their children with private school education unfettered by reasonable government regulation. See Wisconsin v. Yoder, supra, at 213; Pierce v. Society of Sisters, supra, at 534; Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U. S., at 402. [15] Indeed, the Court in Pierce expressly acknowledged the power of the State reasonably to regulate all schools, to inspect, supervise and examine them, their teachers and pupils . . . . 268 U. S., at 534. See also Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U. S. 158, 166. Section 1981, as applied to the conduct at issue here, constitutes an exercise of federal legislative power under § 2 of the Thirteenth Amendment fully consistent with Meyer, Pierce, and the cases that followed in their wake. As the Court held in Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co., supra : It has never been doubted . . . `that the power vested in Congress to enforce [the Thirteenth Amendment] by appropriate legislation' . . . includes the power to enact laws `direct and primary, operating upon the acts of individuals, whether sanctioned by State legislation or not.'  392 U. S., at 438 (citation omitted). The prohibition of racial discrimination that interferes with the making and enforcement of contracts for private educational services furthers goals closely analogous to those served by § 1981's elimination of racial discrimination in the making of private employment contracts [16] and, more generally, by § 1982's guarantee that a dollar in the hands of a Negro will purchase the same thing as a dollar in the hands of a white man. 392 U. S., at 443.