Loss of Individual Rights

In the United States, a criminal conviction spawns the permanent or temporary loss of some individual rights. Codified as the first 10 amendments of the U.S. Constitution, commonly known as the Bill of Rights, individual rights guarantee American citizens certain freedoms and protections. The U.S. Constitution generally forbids federal, state, or local action that infringes on citizens' individual rights. In some circumstances, however, courts have upheld legislation limiting or eliminating the individual rights of convicted criminals. Specifically, the Supreme Court has authorized federal legislation that permanently prohibits certain criminal offenders from possessing firearms or ammunition, effectively abolishing their Second Amendment individual rights. The Supreme Court has also upheld probation and parole regulations that require most convicted criminals to submit to suspicionless, warrantless searches of their homes or persons, temporarily eradicating their Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

In 1789, James Madison introduced the Bill of Rights at the first U.S. Congress. Ratified on December 15, 1791, the Bill of Rights initially served as a check on the powers of the federal government, prohibiting federal actors from encroaching on citizens' individual rights. Nevertheless, at the time of their codification, the Bill of Rights did little to protect citizens from state or local government threats to individual rights. In 1833, the Supreme Court squarely addressed the breadth of protection offered by the Bill of Rights in Barron v. the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore. In Barron, the Court held that the Bill of Rights only stemmed the power of the federal government and did not forbid state or local authorities from impinging on the individual rights of its citizenry.

Following the Civil War, the United States again amended its Constitution. Commonly known as the Reconstruction Amendments or the Civil War Amendments, the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments were legislative attempts [Page 238]to halt widespread racial discrimination against African Americans at the federal, state, and local levels. Of these measures, the Fourteenth Amendment proved the most drastic constraint on state and local power. In relevant part, the Fourteenth Amendment states, “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” Through this due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court has applied the Bill of Rights to state and local governments in a series of landmark decisions, protecting citizens from state or local action that eliminates or diminishes their individual rights.

Challenges to legislation affecting individual rights force courts to engage in rather complex constitutional analyses. Generally, in such cases, courts will scrutinize restrictive legislation by examining the purpose of the legislation and the legislation's relationship to its professed purpose. When legislation targets an individual right, the level of scrutiny a court applies depends entirely on the nature of the right at issue and the history and characteristics of the population affected. If federal, state, or local legislation impacts an individual right that is also a fundamental right or implicates a group that has historically suffered discrimination because of a common immutable trait, courts will employ a heightened level of scrutiny when reviewing such legislation. Courts may also defer to the text of the Constitution, conducting an analysis specific to the individual right at issue.

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