Taylor v. Louisiana
United States Supreme Court
419 U.S. 522 (1975)
Taylor (defendant) was indicted for aggravated kidnapping in Louisiana (plaintiff) and moved to quash the jury venire. Louisiana law excluded women from jury service unless a woman filed a written declaration requesting to serve, and in the relevant district 53% of those eligible for jury service were women, yet very few filed such declarations or actually served. Taylor argued the systematic exclusion of women deprived him of a jury drawn from a fair cross-section of the community.
Whether a statute that systematically excludes women from jury service, absent their own written request to serve, violates the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments' guarantee of a jury drawn from a fair cross-section of the community.