On March 26, 2008, a federal district judge ruled that the primary law violated the 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection.
His order was immediately appealed by lawyers for New York newspapers and television stations who contended that the order violated Fourth Amendment guarantees of a free press.
The constitutional provision at issue in the case the Court accepted today, Bennis v. Michigan, No. 94-8729, is the 14th Amendment guarantee of due process of law.
In several cold-war cases that came before him on appeal, he reversed convictions that violated the Fourth Amendment guarantee against unwarranted search and seizure and for other constitutional reasons.
The crackdown on free-range dogs, they contend, is not only "arbitrary and capricious," in violation of city law, but also flouts the 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection.
Conservatives who have been slow to apply 14th Amendment guarantees were quick to bring them into a whole new area.
Judge Bork has said that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of "equal protection of the laws" was intended to bar only racial, ethnic and religious discrimination.
The constitutional question is whether this practice violates the 14th Amendment guarantee to provide each citizen equal protection of the law.
Without the exclusionary rule, the Fourth Amendment guarantee against unreasonable searches would be a dead letter - because the rule is the only effective way of enforcing it.
We value our First Amendment guarantees.