The Meachum v. Fano case in 1975 involved the transfer of prisoners without a hearing, which was argued to be a violation of their due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court ruled that such transfers did not infringe upon these rights as long as they remained within the normal limits or boundaries of confinement initially sentenced to them. This decision was based on two main reasons: firstly, imprisonment inherently deprives an individual's liberty and secondly, transferring inmates from one institution to another does not impose additional punishment beyond what is part of their sentence. Therefore, it concluded that no due process protections were required for prison transfers because they do not represent a significant change in conditions severe enough to be considered an additional punishment.

In the dissenting opinion for Meachum v. Fano, Justice Brennan argued that prisoners should have due process rights when being transferred to a prison with significantly worse conditions. He disagreed with the majority's view that such transfers are part of the sentence and thus do not require additional procedural protections. Instead, he believed that these transfers can be punitive in nature and therefore warrant due process safeguards. Furthermore, he contended that even if some transfers were part of the original sentence, it would still be necessary to provide hearings to determine which ones were punitive and which ones weren't. In his view, denying all prisoners this right was an unjust blanket policy.