Has the US Supreme court ever altered its own precedent on the same topic twice?

Question

I know there have been a number of instances where the United States Supreme Court has basically 'changed its mind' and ruled in a manner counter to a previous Supreme Court ruling. The most obvious being *Brown v. Board of Education*.Many of these cases are clearly examples of society moving on, for instance overruling decisions that a modern US person would likely have viewed as racist, sexist, or otherwise clearly 'wrong' by modern sensibilities; though that by no means applies to all of them.I'm wondering though if there has ever been a case of a the court changing its mind twice. That is to say that it originally ruled in favor of some concept X, later ruled against X, and still later overturned the second ruling by again ruling in favor of X?What keeps this situation from being more common? I know that Supreme Court Justices tend to be loath to overturn previous rulings. Not only has that happened, but given the highly polarized nature of American politics and the tendency of political parties to do everything they can to overturn any decisions made by the opposite party when they gain a majority, I'm a little surprised that Justices aren't more prone to the same, regardless of the general stigma against changing old precedents.

Answer 1

There's more that goes into sticking with precedent than adhering to what the previous justices ruled. Among other things, there are policy implications to consider as well as the impact on other constitutional issues dealing with similar topics.

For example, in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) held that education is not a fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution. The petitioners, local taxpayers with children attending local schools, cited in their complaint that offering children a low quality education harmed the societal interest of having an educated population for purposes of voting. Essentially, the parents tried to link education with the right to vote. SCOTUS did not agree and sided with the state.

If SCOTUS had agreed that having better quality schools was a fundamental right that created more educated people, and thus improved on the right to vote, then the court would have to consider other elements that impact the right to vote. What about providing good quality healthcare? Doesn't a voter need to be healthy to vote? If a voter is not given good quality healthcare, then shouldn't the state provide that service so that people may be healthy enough to vote?

These types of cases may lead some justices to conclude that it's better to side with the majority in one instance to avoid opening the door to future litigation that they may not wish to consider.