The Supreme Court is about to decide whether an IQ number can outweigh a human life.
Story Snapshot
- The Court’s ruling in Hamm v. Smith will reset how “intellectual disability” is defined in death penalty cases nationwide.
- Alabama wants IQ scores to dominate; disability experts insist on a full clinical picture.
- The decision will test the strength of Atkins, Hall, and Moore in a more conservative Court.
- How the Court rules could ripple into disability benefits, education, and beyond.
Why One Alabama Case Could Rewrite the Rules of Life and Death
Joseph Clifton Smith has sat on Alabama’s death row for a murder committed in 1997, but his fate now turns less on what happened that night than on how nine justices define a diagnosis. After Atkins v. Virginia barred the execution of people with intellectual disability in 2002, Smith’s lawyers argued he falls inside that constitutional shield. Alabama counters that his IQ scores are too high, pressing for a definition that treats a test number as the near-final answer.
At the center of Hamm v. Smith is a deceptively simple question that hides enormous stakes: does the Eighth Amendment require courts to follow modern clinical standards, or may states rely primarily on IQ scores to decide who lives and who dies? Major professional bodies, from the AAIDD to the APA, define intellectual disability through three coordinated prongs—intellectual functioning, adaptive behavior, and onset in childhood—evaluated holistically, not by a single score.
From Atkins to Moore: How We Got Here
When the Court decided Atkins, it declared that executing people with intellectual disability violates “evolving standards of decency,” but it left states some room to define the condition. That flexibility quickly turned into a battleground. Florida tried to impose a rigid IQ cutoff of 70, only to be rebuked in Hall v. Florida, which required consideration of the test’s margin of error and real-world adaptive functioning. Texas went further off-script, using lay stereotypes and “Briseno” factors, until Moore v. Texas forced it back toward clinical science—twice.
Those decisions sent a clear message: states cannot write their own makeshift medical standards to narrow who counts as intellectually disabled. Courts must hew closely to contemporary clinical guidance and avoid rules that create “an unacceptable risk” of executing protected individuals. Yet states like Alabama kept pushing at the margins, litigating every borderline IQ and every contested life-history record, looking for room to shrink the exempt class just enough to preserve contested death sentences.
Alabama’s Argument Versus Clinical Reality
Alabama now asks the Supreme Court to let IQ rule the day, effectively turning complex human functioning into a numeric gatekeeper. Disability advocates say that move ignores what every serious clinician knows: intellectual disability is a lifelong, multidimensional condition that cannot be captured by a “rote IQ number.” The Arc and allied groups warn that Alabama’s position would “open the door to executing people with intellectual disability,” plainly contradicting what Atkins, Hall, and Moore already promised.
From a common-sense, conservative perspective, the tension is stark. On one side stand standardized tests that were never designed to be the sole determinant of who the state may kill. On the other stand decades of medical consensus urging multi-method, multi-source evaluation. Respecting state sovereignty does not require blind deference to state-crafted shortcuts that run headlong into earlier Supreme Court commands and into the basic prudence that irreversible punishments demand heightened accuracy.
A Conservative Court Confronts Its Own Precedent
Hamm v. Smith arrives at a time when this Supreme Court has proven willing to narrow or revisit prior precedents, which raises an unavoidable question: will Atkins, Hall, and Moore stand as robust guardrails or be pared back to technicalities? The justices must balance federalism, stare decisis, and responsibility for life-and-death constitutional lines. Disability groups urge the Court to reaffirm that states may not water down protections just because science makes them administratively inconvenient.
Legal analysts stress that the decision will not just resolve Smith’s fate but “will provide a clear, lasting standard for all future death penalty cases involving claims of ID.” If the Court insists on adherence to clinical standards, states using narrow cutoffs or outdated tests will have to revisit capital cases and adjust statutes, jury instructions, and forensic procedures. If it blesses Alabama’s IQ-centered approach, it effectively greenlights broader state experimentation with the very definition of intellectual disability.
Beyond Death Row: Why This Ruling Will Not Stay in Its Lane
Intellectual disability does not mean one thing in a capital case and another in a Social Security office. Courts routinely borrow definitions and concepts across legal contexts, so a tight, IQ-heavy standard in Hamm could leak into disability benefits, special education eligibility, and ADA or IDEA disputes. Urblaw’s analysis warns that what starts as a death-penalty ruling may influence how ID is defined in “other legal areas, such as qualifying for disability benefits and educational services.”
For families, caregivers, and people with intellectual disability, the case is not an abstraction; it is a referendum on whether the law will recognize the full complexity of their condition or reduce them to a test result. For conservatives who value limited but competent government, the core question is whether the state will exercise its harshest power with the humility to listen to genuine expertise. When the justices issue their opinion, they will not only decide who may be executed; they will decide how seriously America takes both science and mercy when they matter most.
Sources:
SCOTUS to Determine Definition of Intellectual Disability
