In U.S. constitutional law, a facial challenge is a challenge to a statute in which the plaintiff alleges that the legislation is always unconstitutional, and therefore void. It is contrasted with an as-applied challenge, which alleges that a particular application of a statute is unconstitutional.
If a facial challenge is successful, a court will declare the statute in question facially invalid, which has the effect of striking it down entirely. This contrasts with a successful as-applied challenge, which will result in a court narrowing the circumstances in which the statute may constitutionally be applied without striking it down. In some cases—e.g. Gonzales v. Carhart or Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, a facial challenge has been rejected with either the court or concurring Justices intimating that the upheld statute might be vulnerable to an as-applied challenge.
In First Amendment cases, another type of facial challenge is enunciated in the overbreadth doctrine. If a statute reaches to include substantially protected conduct and speech in relation to the legitimate reach of the statute, then it is overbroad and thus void on its face.
Read more about Facial Challenge: Facial Versus As-Applied Challenges, Facial Challenge, Contrary Position, First Amendement Context
Famous quotes containing the words facial and/or challenge:
“You must call up every strength you own
And you can rip off the whole facial mask.”
—William Dewitt Snodgrass (b. 1926)
“The great challenge which faces us is to assure that, in our society of big-ness, we do not strangle the voice of creativity, that the rules of the game do not come to overshadow its purpose, that the grand orchestration of society leaves ample room for the man who marches to the music of another drummer.”
—Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978)