Shapiro v. Thompson - Significance

This decision was a landmark in judicial right-to-travel interpretation. The first case to analyze the right to travel in the context of the Equal Protection Clause, it was also the first to apply "strict scrutiny" to the protection of that right and to confirm that government statutes could not even indirectly restrict it. The U.S. Supreme Court had long before established travel as a valid right, but before this case it had never addressed how that right might conflict with a modern government's needs and abilities to withhold benefits. By this ruling the Court gave unprecedented weight to the right.