Facts
- Margaret H. Sanger, a birth-control activist, opened a clinic in Brooklyn in October 1916 that distributed contraceptive devices and provided contraceptive information to women.
- Police raided the clinic, and Sanger was arrested and charged under New York Penal Law § 1142 for giving away contraceptive articles and orally providing information about obtaining them.
- Sanger was convicted in the Court of Special Sessions and sentenced to 30 days in the workhouse.
- The Appellate Division affirmed.
- On further appeal, Sanger argued that § 1142 was unconstitutional because it would also bar licensed physicians from giving medically necessary contraceptive advice to married patients.
Issues
- Whether a non-physician defendant may challenge § 1142 as unconstitutional based on its alleged effect on physicians’ ability to advise married patients.
- Whether Penal Law § 1145 creates a physician exception that permits prescribing or supplying contraceptives “for the cure or prevention of disease,” including in medically justified cases involving married persons.
- Whether § 1142 is unconstitutional as applied to a layperson distributing contraceptives and related information.
Decision
- The Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction and sentence.
- Sanger lacked standing to argue the statute was unconstitutional based on hypothetical restrictions on physicians because she was not within the class allegedly burdened.
- Read with § 1145, the statutory scheme allowed licensed physicians, acting in good faith, to prescribe or supply contraceptives for the cure or prevention of disease in proper cases, including where pregnancy would endanger a married patient’s health.
- Sanger’s conduct fell within § 1142’s prohibitions, and she could not invoke the physician exception.
Legal Principles
- A litigant generally may not assert the unconstitutionality of a statute based on its effect on third parties not before the court; only a person directly affected may raise that claim.
- Statutes should be construed, where fairly possible, to avoid unnecessary constitutional questions.
- Under Penal Law §§ 1142 and 1145, lay distribution of contraceptive devices and information was criminalized, while physicians were excepted when prescribing or supplying such items for the cure or prevention of disease in appropriate, good-faith medical treatment.
Conclusion
The court upheld Sanger’s conviction because she could not challenge the statute on physicians’ behalf and because the law, properly construed, preserved a limited medical exception while prohibiting non-physicians from distributing contraceptives or directing others how to obtain them.