1977) Stump v. Sparkman, 435 U.S. 349 (1978), is the leading United States Supreme Court decision on judicial immunity.

The judge did not hold a hearing to receive evidence or appoint a lawyer to protect the daughter's interests.

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the decision, holding that the judge had lost his immunity because he failed to observe "elementary principles of due process" when he ordered the sterilization.

On July 9, 1971, Ora Spitler McFarlin of Auburn, Indiana, through her attorney Warren G. Sunday, presented a petition to Judge Harold D. Stump of the DeKalb County Circuit Court asking to have her 15-year-old daughter, Linda Spitler, surgically sterilized.

Leo Sparkman asserted a pendent claim under state law for loss of potential fatherhood.

Linda Sparkman also asserted pendent state claims for assault and battery and medical malpractice.

[4] Linda Sparkman later changed her name to Jamie Renae Coleman and co-authored a 2003 book, The Blanket She Carried, with her friend Paula Headley.

[5] The district court judge, Jesse E. Eschbach, dismissed the case, holding that the only state action, which was necessary to the federal claims, was Judge Stump's approval of the petition and that he was "clothed with absolute judicial immunity", thereby cutting off the claims against the other defendants as well.

It also held that Stump's action could not be justified as a valid exercise of the power of courts to fashion new common law.

Concluding, Judge Swygert wrote: Even if defendant Stump had not been foreclosed under the Indiana statutory scheme from fashioning a new common law remedy in this case, we would still find his action to be an illegitimate exercise of his common law power because of his failure to comply with elementary principles of procedural due process.

Justice White acknowledged an intervening decision of the Indiana Court of Appeals[10] in 1975 that held that a parent has no common-law right to have a minor child sterilized; but he reasoned that when presented with a petition like Ora McFarlin's, an Indiana circuit judge "should deny it on its merits rather than dismiss it for lack of jurisdiction.

"[15] Justice Stewart also denounced it as "legally unsound" to rule that Judge Stump had acted in a "judicial capacity".

[15] "A judge is not free, like a loose cannon", he wrote, "to inflict indiscriminate damage whenever he announces that he is acting in his judicial capacity.

[16]Joining in Justice Stewart's opinion, Justice Lewis Powell filed a separate dissent that emphasized what he called "...the central feature of this case - Judge Stump's preclusion of any possibility for the vindication of respondents' rights elsewhere in the judicial system.

"[17] Continuing, he wrote: Underlying the Bradley immunity...is the notion that private rights can be sacrificed in some degree to the achievement of the greater public good deriving from a completely independent judiciary, because there exist alternative forums and methods for vindicating those rights.