[10] Judges following the Supreme Court's instructions understand themselves to be "obligated to seek out other conceivable reasons for validating" challenged laws if the government is unable to justify its own policies.
[12] Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., a student of Thayer's, articulated a version of what would become rational basis review in his canonical dissent in Lochner v. New York, arguing that the word 'liberty', in the 14th Amendment, is perverted when it is held to prevent the natural outcome of a dominant opinion, unless it can be said that a rational and fair man necessarily would admit that the statute proposed would infringe fundamental principles as they have been understood by the traditions of our people and our law.However, the court's extensive application of economic substantive due process during the years following Lochner meant that Holmes' proposed doctrine of judicial deference to state interest was not immediately adopted.
In United States v. Carolene Products Co. the Court in Footnote Four left open the possibility that laws that seem to be within "a specific prohibition of the Constitution", which restrict the political process, or which burden "discrete and insular minorities" might receive more exacting review.
The rational basis test prohibits the government from imposing restrictions on liberty that are irrational or arbitrary, or drawing distinctions between persons in a manner that serves no constitutionally legitimate end.
In 2008, Justice John Paul Stevens reaffirmed the lenient nature of rational basis review in a concurring opinion: "[A]s I recall my esteemed former colleague, Thurgood Marshall, remarking on numerous occasions: 'The Constitution does not prohibit legislatures from enacting stupid laws.