How low is the bar for &quot;legitimate government interest&quot;? The default and lowest standard of review for constitutional questions in the US is "rational basis review". Higher standards are required, if fundamental rights or suspect classifications are at issue. As Cornell summarizes the situation, "to pass rational basis review, the challenged law must be rationally related to a legitimate government interest". Assuming a law which is not subject to higher review, it could fail rational basis review if the identified government interest is not legitimate (the cases of interest here), or if the interest is legitimate but the law is not rationally related to that interest. An example of upholding a "legitimate government interest" is Christian Legal Society Chapter v. Martinez, where a UC anti-discrimination requirement was objected to on First Amendment grounds, and the court rejected that argument, finding that "The all-comers policy is a reasonable, viewpoint-neutral condition on access to the RSO forum; it therefore does not transgress First Amendment limitations" – the court found the university's policy to be rational, indeed "creditworthy". My question is, has any ostensive government interest ever been found by a court to be illegitimate? The test would be a case not involving triggers for higher review, where the law was overturned, and the failure was because the interest was deemed to be illegitimate (not because the law isn't rationally related to the interest). I specifically want to exclude any cases where the matter does involve suspect classifications or fundamental rights, but where the court employs a rhetorical flourish and says "This wouldn't even pass rational review", or otherwise declines to focus primarily on existing triggers of higher-level review. An example of a kind of case that doesn't clarify the matter is St. Joseph Abbey v. Castille, 712 F.3d 215. Although the court concludes "The funeral directors have offered no rational basis for their challenged rule and, try as we are required to do, we can suppose none", the ruling also starts by saying The district court enjoined their enforcement, finding that they deny equal protection and due process of law. We will AFFIRM the judgment of the district court. They do not say that the interest is illegitimate. (My underlying hypothesis is that there are no cases of low-review where a government interest is held to be illegitimate, implying that all government interests are legitimate). The case of US v. Morrison adds a complication to the question. In that case (cited in this answer), a law granting federal civil remedy to victims of gender-motivated violence was struck down. The original belief of Congress was that the law would be allowed under the Commerce Clause and the 14th Amendment. The court in its opinion set forth a fundamental constitutional limit on what the federal government can do: Every law enacted by Congress must be based on one or more of its powers enumerated in the Constitution. “The powers of the legislature are defined and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken or forgotten, the constitution is written.” Marbury v. Madison The court did not go any further in pointing to a specific clause in the Constitution (e.g. the 10th Amendment). Likewise in Marbury v. Madison, the constitutional limit on government is captured in the statement The distinction between a government with limited and unlimited powers is abolished if those limits do not confine the persons on whom they are imposed, and if acts prohibited and acts allowed are of equal obligation. It is a proposition too plain to be contested that the Constitution controls any legislative act repugnant to it, or that the Legislature may alter the Constitution by an ordinary act. The Morrison court then rejected the claim that there is such constitutional authority. This puts the case into the "strict scrutiny" basket. Similarly, in US v. Lopez, an anti-gun law (ostensively authorized by the Commerce Clause) was overturned because "The Act exceeds Congress' Commerce Clause authority", and accepting the government's position "would bid fair to convert congressional Commerce Clause authority to a general police power of the sort held only by the States" – a 10th Amendment issue. The complication then is that a court has available a tool for upping the level of scrutiny, if it can be found that there is no constitutional authority for a particular law. The concept of "legitimate interest" could then be dispensed with entirely (although it certainly does exist in the case law, in the affirmative but apparently not in the negative). An observed in Wes Sayeed's answer, one prong of rational basis analysis is whether a law exceeds authority, and a lesser question (the one I focus on) is Whether or not there is an articulatable need for the law to exist (the Congress/Legislature does not have to justify its reasons for a law but it usually does, and that reason is presumed valid regardless of how it's contrived). I am looking for evidence that this lesser prong actually exists, and distinguishes possible vs. impossible laws. Or, is every case of "not a legitimate government interest" elevated to the status "not a constitutionally-granted power"? Even more briefly, is "legitimate interest" just another way of saying "constitutional power"? J. Stevens concurring in NY Bd. of Elections v. Lopez Torres states that as I recall my esteemed former colleague, Thurgood Marshall, remarking on numerous occasions: “The Constitution does not prohibit legislatures from enacting stupid laws.” I have not located a relevant majority opinion which upholds this conclusion.
This is a bit sideways of your question, but the Supreme Court has held that "a bare congressional desire to harm a politically unpopular group cannot constitute a legitimate governmental interest." United States Dept. of Agriculture v. Moreno, 413 U.S. 528 (1973) later cited in Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620, 634-635 (1996).
There is no &quot;different legal procedure&quot; for challenging the constitutionality of a law. The only way to do so is through the process that this question contemplates: to argue that the law is unconstitutional in a civil or criminal trial. Whether the law bears directly on the matter at trial or only on ancillary matters such as discovery, the court has the power to find the law unconstitutional and to issue orders accordingly. The extent to which such a ruling binds other courts depends on which court issues the ruling.
Walker (Texas DMV) v. Sons of Confederate Veterans holds that Texas’s specialty license plate designs constitute government speech, and thus Texas was entitled to refuse to issue plates featuring SCV’s proposed design... When government speaks, it is not barred by the Free Speech Clause from determining the content of what it says The plate "NULL" falls into the category covered by this ruling. The court has 'refused “[t]o hold that the Government unconstitutionally discriminates on the basis of viewpoint when it chooses to fund a program dedicated to advance certain permissible goals, because the program in advancing those goals necessarily discourages alternative goals.”' In the aforementioned case, the viewpoint that was not permitted was arguably a pro-Confederate viewpoint, and it was ruled that the government has no obligation to express such a viewpoint. The court found that strict scrutiny under the Free Speech Clause is not applicable in this case; in a potential application of strict scrutiny to the instant circumstances, the government is actually on even stronger footing, since there is a compelling government interest at stake (the ability to bill people for road usage without the need for toll booths). Governments have long been able to restrict insulting and profane words as vanity plates. I would be very surprised if he is able to force the government to accept this plate.
In england-and-wales, an illuminating judgement of the Court of Appeal explores the relationship between such terms as &quot;bound to fail&quot;, &quot;not arguable&quot;, &quot;no rational basis&quot;, &quot;unfounded&quot;, &quot;misconcieved&quot;, &quot;hopeless&quot;, &quot;totally without merit&quot;, and &quot;no realistic prospect of success&quot;; Wasif v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2016] EWCA Civ 82. This arose in the context of a judicial review application, where procedural rules allow some claims to be rejected at an early stage, rather than proceeding to a full hearing. The normal course is that the claimant (the person who objects to a decision the government has made) will file papers with the court describing their claim. If the judge deems their case &quot;arguable&quot;, then it can carry on, ultimately with the judge deciding who is right. If not, then there can be a &quot;renewal hearing&quot;, where the applicant can explain their case orally, in the hope of persuading the judge that their case is arguable after all. But if the judge says the case, on the basis of the written material, is &quot;totally without merit&quot;, then there is no renewal hearing, and we are done. The claimant could file a fresh case, if the judge's reasons for denial gave them enough clues about what might be arguable instead, or can appeal the finding. Evidently, then, some points can be not arguable, but also not totally without merit. In Wasif, the court differentiated between (paras 15ff): Cases where the judge &quot;can see no rational basis on which the claim could succeed&quot; are certainly bound to fail, and a hearing would be pointless; they are totally without merit. Cases which contain a rational argument, but the judge &quot;is confident that, even taking the case at its highest, it is wrong&quot;. Notwithstanding the judge's confidence, it is possible that his mind could be changed if an oral hearing took place, so these should not be deemed to be totally without merit. They are described as &quot;not arguable&quot; at this stage, but the claimant gets to argue that they are arguable. The decision is one involving, well, judgement, and is not totally precise, but the experienced judges in Wasif felt that it was a realistic distinction in practice. The court points out (17(3) and (5)) that a hearing gives the claimant the chance to address specific issues the judge has noted, especially when they are self-represented and their documents are not well-prepared. In those instances, the judge might be able to spot an actual arguable claim lurking in the material, and &quot;the correct course&quot; could be to refuse permission but allow an oral hearing so that the real issue can be drawn out. What we can see from this is that a point might be &quot;not arguable&quot; (the judge thinks it is plainly wrong), but still have some level of merit at that stage (the judge is willing to let the claimant address his objections). When the judge comes to deliver his opinion at the very end, he might still say that a particular point is without merit (he has heard all about it and thinks it is completely wrong) even if he'd conceded earlier that the claimant deserved a chance to present it. Not all arguments that fail are described as &quot;without merit&quot;. If Bob prevails in Bob v Rob it does not follow that all of Rob's points were hopeless. Judges can deploy colourful opprobrium but are just as likely to recognize that some arguments are strong, even when the opposing argument was stronger. Equally, a judge might decide that neither Bob nor Rob is completely correct, and the real answer is some other position - even when they both presented reasonable arguments that were worth hearing.
In the US, the most wide-spread proscription against a medical treatment (broadly construed) is that only 10 of 50 states allow physician-assisted suicide. In Washington v. Glucksberg (one of the states that subsequently made such suicides legal), SCOTUS affirms that such a law does not violate the Due Process Clause. Given a historical analysis, the court concludes that an &quot;asserted 'right' to assistance in committing suicide is not a fundamental liberty interest protected by the Due Process Clause&quot;. O'Connor in her concurring opinion further states that &quot;There is no dispute that dying patients in Washington and New York can obtain palliative care, even when doing so would hasten their deaths&quot;, but this falls short of a ruling that a person has a protected liberty interest in seeking medical care. Cruzan v. Director affirms that &quot;[a] competent person has a liberty interest under the Due Process Clause in refusing unwanted medical treatment&quot; (also noting that &quot;informed consent&quot; may derive from common law or specific state constitutions). Reciting prior reasoning on Due Process and medical treatment and referring to Jacobson v. Massachusetts (smallpox case), they note that &quot;the Court balanced an individual's liberty interest in declining an unwanted smallpox vaccine against the State's interest in preventing disease&quot;. There seems to be a dearth of cases affirming a protected liberty interest in seeking a particular medical procedure. Were the court to announce a fundamental right to seek some medical treatment, that right could still be subordinated to the states compelling interest in preventing some harm associated with a medical procedure, with legal review being carried out under a strict scrutiny standard. It should be borne in mind that Congress does limit access to drugs and devices, hence there is no constitutionally-protected right to take LSD as a treatment for mental problems. To the extent that a procedure relies on a (not-yet approved) device, that device must be approved by the FDA.
If I want to protest for or against President Trump and decide to wear a Trump mask, isn't that speech protected by the first amendment? Probably. The matter of intent, in any event, is for a court to decide (if the prosecutor determines that the question should even be presented to a court). For example, someone seeking to rob a bank in a mask would probably fall afoul of this law, and it's not likely that using a mask of a political figure would enable a successful first-amendment defense. For a political protestor, it could be easy to show that the intent was to make a political statement and not to conceal identity, in which case it would not be necessary to consider the constitutional question, for a critical element of the crime would be missing. That is, if you say "I wasn't trying to hide my identity," and the court believes you, then you haven't violated the statute. That is a separate question from whether the statute is constitutional. For the law itself to be unconstitutional, it would have to be unconstitutional in every application, generally. If some applications of the law are unconstitutional, the law could stand, but prosecutions for the unconstitutional application would not succeed.
The first thing to note is that your question is kind of the wrong way around. US states are sovereign and generally have the ability to make any kind of laws they want, unless they violate some specific tenet of federal law or the US Constitution. You suggest, for instance, that arguments which are "culturally founded" have no place in the law, but that's just your opinion, and there isn't generally anything preventing a state from making law based on such things, should its elected legislature see fit to do so. (Indeed, one could argue that nearly all laws are in some sense "culturally founded", since they are based on some notion of what kind of behavior is or is not appropriate, and those tend to be culturally based.) So legally speaking, the states aren't, by default, obligated to give any sort of justification for the laws they made. The burden of proof is on the other side. Someone seeking to overturn those laws would have to convince a court that the laws violated some specific provision of the Constitution (or another superior law). If they couldn't convince a court of this, the law would stand. From what I have read, before the US Supreme Court's 2015 legalization of same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges, the previous precedent was set in 1971 by the Minnesota Supreme Court in Baker v. Nelson. The decision itself is quite short and is worthwhile to read. Quoting Wikipedia's summary, the plaintiffs claimed that Minnesota's restriction of marriage to opposite-sex couples violated several provisions of the US Constitution: First Amendment (freedom of speech and of association), Eighth Amendment (cruel and unusual punishment), Ninth Amendment (unenumerated right to privacy), and Fourteenth Amendment (fundamental right to marry under the Due Process Clause and sex discrimination contrary to the Equal Protection Clause). The Minnesota court determined that none of the plaintiffs' objections were valid. Again, I'll refer you to the decision for the details, but the court mainly focused on their Fourteenth Amendment arguments (the others may have been addressed by the trial court, whose opinion I can't find online). They wrote: The equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, like the due process clause, is not offended by the state's classification of persons authorized to marry. There is no irrational or invidious discrimination. They specifically rejected any analogy to bans on interracial marriage, which had been held unconstitutional in Loving v. Virginia: But in commonsense and in a constitutional sense, there is a clear distinction between a marital restriction based merely upon race and one based upon the fundamental difference in sex. Baker appealed to the US Supreme Court, but his appeal was dismissed "for want of a substantial federal question," without any further explanation. (Nobody quite seems to understand what they meant by that, but here is an essay discussing the situation in a little more depth.) The effect of the dismissal was that the Minnesota court's decision became binding precedent upon the whole nation - laws against same-sex marriage didn't violate those provisions of the Constitution. And that was how matters stood for 44 years until Obergefell. (Of course, there was nothing to stop individual states from deciding to allow same-sex marriage, and some in fact did so in the meantime.) You have suggested that laws against same-sex marriage were religiously motivated. This might suggest an argument that they would violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The plaintiffs in Baker didn't raise that point, so it wasn't considered in the Minnesota court's opinion. I don't know whether any other courts have considered it; no such argument was mentioned in the opinion in Obergefell.
The only relevant case heard by SCOTUS is Nixon v. US, 506 U.S. 224, where a federal judge was tried and convicted for actual crimes, but would not resign his position so continued to draw his salary. The key legal question was whether the matter is "justiciable" (meaning, not a political matter but a legal matter). Nixon's argument was that Senate Rule XI violates the Impeachment Trial Clause, and the court held that the question (more specifically what it means to "try") is nonjusticiable. White &amp; Blackmun, and Souter, wrote concurring opinions (which might be called on in a subsequent impeachment case) that reminds the reader (and future court) what was not part of the holding of the court, and what might therefore allow future impeachment review. White writes The Court is of the view that the Constitution forbids us even to consider his contention. I find no such prohibition and would therefore reach the merits of the claim. I concur in the judgment because the Senate fulfilled its constitutional obligation to "try" petitioner. He observes that the Senate has very wide discretion in specifying impeachment trial procedures and because it is extremely unlikely that the Senate would abuse its discretion and insist on a procedure that could not be deemed a trial by reasonable judges. But, I would prefer not to announce an unreviewable discretion in the Senate to ignore completely the constitutional direction to "try" impeachment cases. When asked at oral argument whether that direction would be satisfied if, after a House vote to impeach, the Senate, without any procedure whatsoever, unanimously found the accused guilty of being "a bad guy," counsel for the United States answered that the Government's theory "leads me to answer that question yes." Tr. of Oral Arg. 51. Especially in light of this advice from the Solicitor General, I would not issue an invitation to the Senate to find an excuse, in the name of other pressing business, to be dismissive of its critical role in the impeachment process. Souter in his opinion states that One can, nevertheless, envision different and unusual circumstances that might justify a more searching review of impeachment proceedings. If the Senate were to act in a manner seriously threatening the integrity of its results, convicting, say, upon a coin toss, or upon a summary determination that an officer of the United States was simply" 'a bad guy,'", judicial interference might well be appropriate. In such circumstances, the Senate's action might be so far beyond the scope of its constitutional authority, and the consequent impact on the Republic so great, as to merit a judicial response despite the prudential concerns that would ordinarily counsel silence. In other words, review of an impeachment is largely but not entirely off the table, at least until SCOTUS declares that impeachments are completely unreviewable, no matter what, period (unlikely to ever happen).