HILL v. GARNER. - 434 U.S. 989 (1977)
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U.S. Supreme Court
HILL v. GARNER. , 434 U.S. 989 (1977)
434 U.S. 989
Sharon HILL
v.
David Max GARNER
No. 77-132
Supreme Court of the United States
December 12, 1977
The appeal is dismissed for want of a substantial federal question.
Mr. Justice WHITE, with whom Mr. Justice BRENNAN joins, dissenting.
In 1929 this Court held that Connecticut's guest statute did not violate the Equal Protection Clause, because it could not be said that "no grounds exist[ed] for the distinction" between gratuitous passengers in automobiles and those in other classes of vehicles. Silver v. Silver, 280 U.S. 117, 123 (1929). While that decision for a while foreclosed federal equal protection challenges to the guest statutes of the various States, in recent years the issue of the constitutional validity of these statutes has been frequently litigated in state courts with conflicting results. Since 1971 the highest courts of no fewer than 6 States have concluded that their guest statutes violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,2 while during the same period similar statutes [434 U.S. 989 , 991]
