A class action was formed representing female welfare recipients residing in Connecticut and wishing divorces, but prevented from bringing divorce suits by Connecticut statutes requiring payment of court fees and costs for service of process as a condition precedent to access to the courts.

Plaintiffs sought a judgment declaring the statutes (requirements for payment of court fees and costs for service of process that restricted their access to the courts in an effort to bring an action for divorce) invalid as applied to the class, and an injunction requiring defendants to permit members of the class to sue for divorce without payment of any fees and costs.

The Supreme Court concluded that, given the basic position of the marriage relationship in this society's hierarchy of values and the concomitant state monopolization of the means for legally dissolving this relationship, due process did prohibit a state from denying, solely because of inability to pay, access to its courts to individuals who sought judicial dissolution of their marriages.

Thus, the Court held that a state could not, consistent with the obligations imposed on it by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, pre-empt the right to dissolve this legal relationship without affording all citizens access to the means it had prescribed for doing so.

Justice Black dissented on the ground that charging practically nominal initial court costs in civil actions does not violate either the due process or equal protection clause.