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Virginia Held criticizes utilitarianism as a basis for strong individual rights in her book Rights and Goods. Her criticism is typical of many moral philosophers.

There has been much agreement that what has been called act-utilitarianism cannot provide an adequate basis for serious rights. Act-utilitarianism recommends that among the actions open to us, we perform those which will produce the most happiness for all who will be affected. This would seem not only to allow but even to require that if many people will be made very happy by disregarding the interests of a few burdensome and pathetic ones among them, and the latter are too demoralized to care very much, this should be done. But what about the rights of these few? we may ask. Does not a person have a right to live, even if the sum total of happiness would be slightly increased if that person were disposed of? Does not a slave have a right to be free even if this will decrease the overall happiness? Does not the right to speak freely, or not to be punished if innocent, have to be upheld even when it inconveniences and even substantially burdens the majority? Anyone who takes rights the least bit seriously will agree that it does. The act-utilitarian may protest that these problems will never arise in an actual situation; at the level of moral theory, what to hold if they were to arise is problem enough.

And so those with inclinations toward utilitarianism -- and who wishes to discount human happiness? -- have looked to what has been called rule-utilitarianism. On this theory we should decide what to do in particular cases by referring to a rule -- such as a rule assuring rights to live, not to be enslaved, to speak freely, not to be punished if innocent, and so on. Rules should be judged on the basis of whether adherence to them (alternative versions consider conformity or acceptance) will maximize happiness or not, but we should not try to judge individual acts themselves on utilitarian grounds....

Several serious objections make rule-utilitarianism a questionable foundation for rights. Given any particular contemplated action, we can never know whether we ought to do it because a rule we think contributes to overall happiness tells us always to do so, or not to do it because a different rule claiming that it contributes to overall happiness (the rule might be one specifying exceptions) tells us not to. We could only know which rule to adopt by judging particular cases such as the case over which we are pondering. If in this case happiness would be increased by doing it, that supports the first rule. If in this case happiness would be increased by not doing it, that supports the different rule. To decide which rule to adopt, we have to judge particular cases, so we are back with act-utilitarianism....

Another large difficulty with utilitarianism of any kind as a theory of rights is that it seems unconcerned with how the aggregate of goods it aims to maximize is distributed. Justice, fairness, and equality seem to require that we pay attention to how the goods are divided up and not just to increasing their sum total. [Virginia Held, Rights and Goods, p. 15-17.]