San Diego Student
Speech case
La Jolla High Senior Benches
Q. Do you think students have
the right to paint a political
message on a school bench?
Q. Do you think administrators
have the right or responsibility
to protect students from
negative or controversial
subjects?
Stratford High School
Goose Creek, SC
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwDOlLFCZuk
Case of Savana Redding
Redding v. Safford Unified School District
• Do you think school administrators were right
to search Savana, even including searching
inside her underwear?
• Do you think there was enough proof that
Savana might be carrying contraband?
• What would you do if you found yourself in
Savana’s situation?
A punishment that is by its severity degrading
to human dignity (torture)
Obviously inflicted in a wholly arbitrary fashion
Clearly and totally rejected throughout society
Patently unnecessary
Photo of Protestors Simulating Water-Boarding
In 1958, it was a crime in Virginia and 15 other states for
a white person to marry a black person.
Richard and Mildred Loving married in Washington, D.C.
and tried to return to their home state of Virginia.
They were arrested and sentenced to 1 year in jail for
getting married if they stayed in Virginia. The ACLU took
their case.
In 1967, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled the law
was unconstitutional.
•
Edie Windsor was forced to pay almost $400,000 in federal estate taxes when her beloved
spouse, Thea Spyer, died in 2009. They’d been together for 44 years, and were legally
married. If “Thea” had been “Theo,” Edie would not have had to pay any estate taxes.
•
Edie challenged the “Defense of Marriage Act” that caused this disparity. Passed by Congress
in 1996, DOMA treated the marriages of straight people one way and the marriages of gay
people another way. Edie thought this was discrimination that the U.S. government couldn’t
justify.
•
In a historic civil rights ruling this June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that DOMA was
unconstitutional, and that the federal government cannot discriinate against married lesbian
and gay couples in determining federal benefits and protections.
Compare Loving v. Virginia with Windsor v. United States.
Windsor v.
United States (2013)
All 27 amendments, including the Bill of
Rights have been added through the first
method of Congress proposing
amendments.
The Constitution has never been amended
using the second process of the states
proposing amendments.
While over 10,000 have been proposed, only 17
amendments to the Constitution have been
adopted since final ratification of the Bill of
Rights.
What do you think?
Why is it so difficult to add an amendment?
Should it be easier?
What amendment would you add?