In the case of Rose, Warden v. Hodges et al., 1975, the U.S Supreme Court ruled on a matter concerning habeas corpus petitions filed by state prisoners who were convicted in Kentucky courts for various crimes. The petitioners claimed that their constitutional rights had been violated due to racial discrimination during jury selection at their trials. They argued that African Americans were systematically excluded from serving as grand and petit jurors in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. However, they failed to provide statistical evidence supporting this claim. The District Court dismissed these claims without an evidentiary hearing but was reversed by the Court of Appeals which held that such allegations warranted a hearing even without specific factual support or statistical data. Upon reaching the Supreme Court, it was decided that while systematic exclusion based on race is unconstitutional and warrants relief under habeas corpus if proven true; mere assertions are not enough to warrant an evidentiary hearing unless supported with some factual basis or statistics showing discriminatory intent. Therefore, reversing its previous decision, it held that dismissal without a full-blown evidentiary hearing did not violate any constitutional right since there wasn't sufficient proof provided initially about racial discrimination in juror selection process.

In the dissenting opinion for Rose v. Hodges, Justice Rehnquist argued that the majority's decision to grant habeas corpus relief was incorrect because it failed to consider whether or not a constitutional violation had occurred in the first place. He contended that there were no clear standards established by previous case law or legislation indicating that an all-white jury constituted a violation of equal protection rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. Furthermore, he pointed out inconsistencies in how similar cases had been handled and criticized what he saw as judicial overreach on part of federal courts interfering with state court decisions without proper justification. In his view, this undermined principles of federalism and respect for state sovereignty within their own legal systems.