Ch 6
CIVIL RIGHTS
Civil Rights
 When is it reasonable for the government to
treat people differently?
 When is unequal treatment a “suspect
classification” and therefore subject to “strict
scrutiny”?
African-Americans and Civil
Rights
 12% of the population
 1789-1865-slavery existed-13th Amendment
 1865-1964-Legalized segregation-Civil Rights
Act of 1964
1882-1946-4715 people lynched in the US
African-Americans not allowed to vote in many
areas despite the 15th Amendment
Plessy v Ferguson (1896)
 Homer Plessy challenged a LA law that
segregated railroad trains in that state
 SCOTUS applied “separate but equal”
doctrine
 14th Amendment guaranteed political and
legal equality, but not social equality
 Segregation is not intrinsically a violation of
the 14th Amendment
NAACP
 National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People
 Court based approach to did not require
changing opinions or forming political
coalitions
Segregation on Law schools
 1938-Gaines v Missouri-Missouri Law School
 1950-Sweatt v Painter-Texas Law School
1954-Brown v Board of
Education
 Court overturns Plessy, and argues that
separate but equal facilities are “inherently
unequal” and are unconstitutional under the
14th Amendment Linda Brown has a
constitutional right to attend white school.
Power of Civil Disobedience
 Montgomery Bus Boycott-MLK and Rosa
Parks
1957-Little Rock Crisis
 Arkansas Governor Orville Faubus used the
state’s National Guard to block integration of
Central High School. Ike sends in 101st
airborne and nationalizes the state’s militia.
1957-Civil Rights Act
 1st Civil Rights Act passes since reconstruction
 1957-Created Civil Rights Commission
1960’s Civil Rights
Movements
 Sit-ins and freedom rides
 1963-March on Washington
Summer of 1964-Freedom
Summer in South
1964 Civil Rights Act
 No discrimination in public accommodations
on basis of race, sex, national origin
 Outlawed discrimination in employment
Selma March for Voting
Rights-50th anniversity
1965 Voting Rights Act
 no literacy tests
 Federal examiners to South to oversee voting
procedures
 Tough penalties for those that interfered with
right to vote
 Preclearance required with DOJ for any
changes in election laws for counties where
less than 50% voted in 1964
Preclearance
Voting registration-The
south
 Voter Registration Rates (1965 vs. 1988)

March 1965
November 1988







Black
Alabama 19.3
Georgia
27.4
Louisiana 31.6
Mississippi 6.7
N.Carolina 46.8
S. Carolina 37.3
Virginia
38.3
White
69.2
62.6
80.5
69.9
96.8
75.7
61.1
Gap
49.9
35.2
48.9
63.2
50.0
38.4
22.8
Black
68.4
56.8
77.1
74.2
58.2
56.7
63.8
White
75.0
63.9
75.1
80.5
65.6
61.8
68.5
Gap
6.6
7.1
-2.0
6.3
7.4
5.1
4.7
Shelby County v. Holder
(2013)
 Preclearance declared to be unconstitutional
because it is based on outdated standards
from 40 years ago
1971-Swann v Charlotte Board
of Education
 Intent to discriminate must be proved
 all white or all black schools in a district
shows an intent to discriminate
 remedies include bussing, redrawn district
lines, and new assignment of teachers
 Not every school must reflect the
composition of the school system as a whole
Seattle School district
 Students could apply to any school in the
district
 District 41%white/59%non-white
 System of tie breakers to break ties among
popular schools
 One of the tie breakers race to maintain racial
diversity within pre ordained ratio
Parents v. Seattle School
District No. 1,(2007),
 1. Involved voluntary school
desegregation/integration efforts in Seattle,
WA and Louisville, KY.
 2. The Court recognized that seeking
diversity and avoiding racial isolation are
compelling state interests.
 3. However, the Court struck down both
school districts’ assignment plans, finding
that the plans were not sufficiently "narrowly
tailored,"
Gender and “equal treatment”
 Key differences between women and African
Americans
 Laws restricting women were part of
“protective paternalism”
1920-Passage of the 19th
Amendment
 No state can deny the right to vote on the
basis of sex
 Congress passes Equal Pay Act in 1963,
prohibited employment discrimination on
basis of Sex, and the Title IX of the Civil Rights
Act
14th Amendment guarantee of
“Equal treatment”
 2 standards to determine when differences in
treatment are allowed
 1. Reasonableness standard-when the
government treats some people differently it
must be reasonable and not arbitrary
 2. Strict scrutiny method-instances of
drawing differences on the basis of sex or
race are inherently suspect and must be
based on a compelling state interest
Illegal forms of sex
discrimination
 1. age that girls and boys become adults
 2. legal age to drive or drink
 3. arbitrary height and weight requirements
for jobs
 4. mandatory pregnancy leaves
 5. barred from Little League baseball games
 6. Pay for coaches of high school basketball
teams the same
Legal forms of sex
differences
 1. Law that punishes male for statutory rape
is permissible, men and women are not
“similarly situated” in sexual relations
 2. All boy or all girl schools where enrollment
is voluntary
 3. Selective service (draft) for men and
women
1996 Virginia v United
States
 Can VMI deny females entrance into a state
supported all –male institution? They
proposed a parallel program at Mary Baldwin
 Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg stated that
because VMI failed to show "exceedingly
persuasive justification" for its sexbased admissions policy, it violated the
Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection
Clause.
Sexual Harassment
 2 basic forms
 1. Sexual favors as a “quid pro quo” as a
condition of employment or promotionemployer is strictly liable
 2. Creating a hostile environment through a
steady stream of obscenity, harassment,
teasing, jokes-employer is liable if negligent
Affirmative Action?
 Make “Equal Opportunity” a reality
 Give minorities a better chance to compete
on an equal footing
 Reverse and compensate for past wrongs of
racism and discrimination
1978 Bakke v U of Cal
Regents Medical School
 U of Cal(Davis) sets up special admissions
program
 Reserves 16 out of 100 places each year for
minority students
 Allan Bakke-34 year old white male-twice
rejected for admission-MCAT scores and
grades higher than average for minorities
Ruling
 Quota systems are illegal
 Race can be a factor among many others for
admission, but not the only factor
2003 Grutter v Bollinger
 Affirmative action point system (Plus point
system) at U of Mich law school
 Plan must remedy past proven discrimination
 Plan must advance diversity as a legitimate
educational goal
 Plan must be narrowly tailored in order to do
a little damage as possible
Schuette v. Coalition to
Defend Affirmative Action
 Michigan voters pass a constitutional
amendment that forbids state public
universities from using race as a factor in
admissions decisions, Court upholds and says
this is not a violation of the 14th Amendment,
does the 14th Amendment guarantee equal
protection require the state to use affirmative
action? It does not.
Plan (how would you decide
based on these three

questions?)





A Louisville case filed by a mother of a kindergarten class who was
denied a transfer to his chosen kindergarten class because the school he
wanted to leave needed to keep its white students to stay within the
programs racial guidelines.
A Seattle program that limited transfer to schools on the basis of race
using race as a “tiebreaker” for admission into particular schools.
A Texas school lays off a non-minority faculty member in order to
maintain a racially diverse faculty.
The University of Texas adopts a plan that automatically accepts the top
10% of each high school graduation class, and denies entrance to two
white students who failed to score in the top 10% of their class.
A federal government program that gave financial incentives for
contractors to employ subcontractors from “socially and economically
disadvantaged individuals,” which it presumed would include different
racial classifications
State Police Power
 All laws passed to promote public order and
secure the safety and morals of the citizens
 Right to restrict abortion
 Right to restrict obscenity and define deviant
sexual behavior
 Right to define marriage standards
Right to Privacy
 1965- Griswold v Connecticut
 Connecticut state law restricting
contraception declared unconstitutional
 There are “zones of privacy” created by
penumbras cast off by various provisions of
the Bill of Rights
 WTH is a “penumbra”
Roe v Wade-1973
 Right to privacy included a general right for a
women to receive a abortion
 1st Trimester-unlimited right to abortion
 2nd Trimester-state can limit
 3rd Trimester-state can ban
Pro Life versus Pro Choice!
Casey v Planned Parenthood1992
 Court explicitly refused to overturn Roe but
upheld a series of Penn State restrictions
including waiting periods, parental consent,
etc as long as they did not present a undue
burden on the mother
 Undue Burden Standard
developments
 Stenberg v Carhart-(2000) Court struck down
Nebraska law banning partial birth abortion
because there was no exemption to same life
of mother
 Gonzales v Carhart-(2003) Court upheld
federal law banning certain forms of partial
birth abortion
Gay rights
 Police Power-Georgia banned sodomy
 Bowers v Hardwick (1986) SCOTUS upheld the
Georgia sodomy ban
 Romer v Evans-(1996) Scotus overturned a
Colorado amendment that said gays could not
benefit from special legal protections
 Lawrence v Texas -(2003) court strikes down a
Texas state sodomy law
1996-DOMA
 Defense of Marriage Act passed
 No state would have to give legal status to
the same sex marriage passed in another
state
 Federal law marriage defined between a man
and a woman
 2013-DOMA declared unconstitutional
BSA v Dale
 The Boy Scouts as a private organization can
ban gays from its membership and its
leadership
ADA
 American with Disabilities Act
 Sweeping law that extends civil rights
protections to the disabled in regards to
employment, transportation, and public
accommodations and mandates “reasonable”
accommodations