The Warren Court reflected this high tide of liberalism. The Court affirmed the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act. In 1967, the justices overturned state laws prohibiting interracial marriages. A year later, fourteen years after the Brown decision, they ruled that school districts in the South could no longer maintain racially exclusive schools and must desegregate immediately. In a series of cases, the Warren Court ensured fairer legislative representation for blacks and whites by removing the disproportionate power that rural districts had held over urban districts.

The Supreme Court’s most controversial rulings dealt with the criminal justice system, religion, and private sexual practices. Strengthening the rights of criminal defendants, the justices ruled in Gideon v. Wainwright (1963) that states had to provide indigents accused of felonies with an attorney, and in Miranda v. Arizona (1966) they ordered the police to advise suspects of their constitutional rights.

The Court also moved into new, controversial territory concerning school prayer, contraception, and pornography. In 1962 the Court outlawed a nondenominational Christian prayer recited in New York State schools as a violation of the separation of church and state guaranteed by the First Amendment. Three years later, in Griswold v. Connecticut, the justices struck down a state law that banned the sale of contraceptives because such laws, they contended, infringed on an individual’s right to privacy. In a 1966 case the justices ruled that states could not prohibit what they deemed pornographic material unless it was “utterly without redeeming social value,” a standard that opened the door for the dissemination of sexually explicit books, magazines, and films. These verdicts unleashed a firestorm of criticism, especially from religious groups that accused the Warren Court of undermining traditional values of faith and decency.

REVIEW & RELATE

What problems and challenges did Johnson’s Great Society legislation target?

In what ways did the Warren Court’s rulings advance the liberal agenda?