1925 Gitlow v. New York The Court held, for the first time, that the free speech clause of the First Amendment is applicable to the states.

1941 Edwards v. California The Court struck down an "anti-Okie" law that made it a crime to transport indigents into California.

1943 West Virginia v. Barnette The Court held that a state could not force a Jehovah's Witness child to salute the American flag (even during wartime). In his majority opinion, Justice Jackson wrote, "The very purpose of the Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One's rights to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections."

1944 Smith v. Allwright The Court invalidated the exclusion of blacks from Texas's "white primary" on the grounds that despite the fact that political parties are private organizations, primaries are central to the electoral process.

1948 Shelley v. Kraemer The Court invalidated "restrictive covenants", contracts between whites barring the sale of homes to blacks.

1954 Brown v. Board of Education In one of the most important decisions of the century, the Court reversed Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and declared racially segregated schools to be unconstitutional.

1962 Engel v. Vitale The Court struck down New York's "nondenominational" school prayer, declaring that it "is no part of the business of government to compose official prayers."

1965 Griswold v. Connecticut In striking down a Connecticut law forbidding the use of contraceptives the Court found that a right of "marital privacy" is protected by "several fundamental constitutional guarantees."

1966 Bond v. Floyd The Court ordered Georgia's Legislature to seat duly elected state senator Julian Bond, a civil rights activist denied his seat for publicly supporting Vietnam war resisters. "Criticizing U.S. foreign policy", declared the Court, "does not violate a legislator's oath to uphold the Constitution."

1967 Loving v. Virginia The Court struck down state laws prohibiting interracial marriages.

1968 Epperson v. Arkansas The Court held that Arkansas's ban on teaching "that mankind ascended or descended from a lower order of animals" violates the First Amendment's establishment clause.

1969 Tinker v. Des Moines Invalidating the suspension of public school students who wore black armbands to protest the Vietnam war, the Court rendered its opinion that students do not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."

1971 Cohen v. California The Court reversed the conviction of a man who "disturbed the peace" by wearing a jacket containing the words, "Fuck the Draft", while walking along a courthouse corridor, rejecting the notion that speech can be prohibited on the grounds that it is "offensive".

1971 Reed v. Reed The Court found that, like race-based classifications, sex-based ones also violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

1972 Eisenstadt v. Baird Extending Griswold, the Court overturned the conviction of a reproductive rights activist who had given a contraceptive device to an unmarried Massachusetts woman.

1973 Roe v. Wade In one of its most significant decisions, the Court swept away all existing criminal abortion laws, recognizing a woman's constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy.

1975 O'Connor v. Donaldson In one of its first rulings on the rights of mental patients, the Court intervened on behalf of a non-violent man who had been confined against his will for 15 years in a state hospital.

1985 Wallace v. Jaffree The Court struck down the "moment of silence" law then applying to Alabama's public schools.

1987 Edwards v. Aguillard By a vote of 7-2, the Court struck down a Louisiana statute that mandated teaching "creation science" and evolutionary biology as equivalent theories. [Molleen Matsumura of the National Center for Science Education was prompted to remark that "creationism never goes away, it just evolves."]

1993 Wisconsin v. Mitchell The Court upheld a Wisconsin law providing additional penalties for crimes where the victim was deliberately selected on the basis of "race, religion, color, disability, sexual orientation, national origin, or ancestry". The Court found that while the First Amendment may protect racist speech, it does not protect racist acts.

1997 Reno v. ACLU The Court struck down provisions of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 that infringed the freedom of speech provisions of the First Amendment.

2000 Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe The Court struck down student led prayer at public school events. Sweeping aside the specious argument that students have a First Amendment right to use a school public address system to lead prayers before football games, a 6-3 majority held that not everyone favors Christian prayer, and school officials have no business favoring it either.

2003 Lawrence v. Texas Overruling its own 1986 decision in Bowers v. Hardwick, the court struck down a Texas same-sex sodomy law. The 6-3 decision, recognizing the right of gay people to have intimate sexual relationships, was based in part on a Constitutional right to privacy.