Whalen v. Roe - Impact

The Court established a tier system for determining constitutionally protected areas of privacy and areas in which the state could intrude upon that zone. Prior to Whalen v. Roe in cases such as Roe v. Wade and Griswold v. Connecticut the Court concluded that individuals have a right to make a decision. In Roe, for instance, a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy was a fundamentally protected constitutional right. Yet, preventing one's name from being included in a computerized drug registry was not a constitutionally protected right. Just a year before the ruling in Whalen v. Roe, the Court in Kelley v. Johnson upheld a police department regulation regulating the length and style of a policeman's haircut. The Court reasoned that there was no fundamental right for police officers to wear their hair any way they wanted.