Cite as: 519 U. S. 102 (1996)
Opinion of the Court
("[A] law nondiscriminatory on its face may be grossly discriminatory in its operation."). But the Williams Court went on to explain that "the Illinois statute in operative effect exposes only indigents to the risk of imprisonment beyond the statutory maximum." 399 U. S., at 242 (emphasis added). Sanctions of the Williams genre, like the Mississippi prescription here at issue, are not merely disproportionate in impact. Rather, they are wholly contingent on one's ability to pay, and thus "visi[t] different consequences on two categories of persons," ibid.; they apply to all indigents and do not reach anyone outside that class.
In sum, under respondents' reading of Washington v. Davis, our overruling of the Griffin line of cases would be two decades overdue. It suffices to point out that this Court has not so conceived the meaning and effect of our 1976 "disproportionate impact" precedent. See Bearden v. Georgia, 461 U. S., at 664-665 (adhering in 1983 to "Griffin's principle of 'equal justice' ").16
Respondents and the dissenters urge that we will open floodgates if we do not rigidly restrict Griffin to cases typed "criminal." See post, at 141-144 (Thomas, J., dissenting); Brief for Respondents 27-28. But we have repeatedly noticed what sets parental status termination decrees apart from mine run civil actions, even from other domestic relations matters such as divorce, paternity, and child custody. See supra, at 117-120, and n. 11. To recapitulate, termination decrees "wor[k] a unique kind of deprivation." Lassiter, 452 U. S., at 27. In contrast to matters modifiable at
16 Six of the seven Justices in the majority in Washington v. Davis, 426 U. S. 229 (1976), had two Terms before Davis read our decisions in Griffin and related cases to hold that "[t]he State cannot adopt procedures which leave an indigent defendant 'entirely cut off from any appeal at all,' by virtue of his indigency, or extend to such indigent defendants merely a 'meaningless ritual' while others in better economic circumstances have a 'meaningful appeal.' " Ross v. Moffitt, 417 U. S. 600, 612 (1974) (opinion of the Court by Rehnquist, J.) (citations omitted).
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