AFRICAN-AMERICAN RIGHTS
Strauder v. West Virginia: (1880) the Supreme Court invalidated a law barring
African Americans from jury service, but refused to extend the amendment to
remedy more subtle kinds of discrimination.
Dred Scott v. Sandford: (1857) Chief Justice Taney bluntly announced that a black
man, slave or free, was "chattel" and had no rights under a white man's
government and that Congress had no power to ban slavery in the western
territories.
Plessy v. Ferguson: (1896) The Supreme Court provided a constitutional
justification for segregation.
SUFFRAGE
Guinn v. United States: (1915) Bans the grandfather clause that had been used to
prevent African Americans from voting. The Supreme Court calls the grandfather
clause blatantly unfair and unconstitutional.
Smith v. Allwright: (1944) Bans all-white primaries.
Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections: (1966) holds that the Fourteenth
Amendment forbids making payment of a tax a condition of voting in any election.
The Supreme Court voided poll taxes in state elections.
INTEGRATION
Sweatt v. Painter: (1950) finds the "separate but equal" formula generally
unacceptable in professional schools.
Brown v. Board of Education: (1954) the Supreme Court set aside its precedent in
Plessy and held that school segregation was inherently unconstitutional because it
violated the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection. Legal
segregation comes to an end because of this decision.
Alexander v. Board of Education: (1969) 15 years after its first ruling that school
segregation was unconstitutional and in the face of continued massive resistance,
the Supreme Court withdrew its earlier grant of time to school authorities and
declared that "Delays in desegregating school systems are no longer tolerable."
Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenberg County Schools: (1971) the Supreme Court
upholds (but does not require) the busing of students to achieve racially balanced
schools.
Missouri v. Jenkins: (1995) the Supreme Court indicated that it would not look
favorably on continued federal control of the district after spending years and $1.5
billion under federal court orders to attract white students from the city's suburbs
with little success.
Jones v. Mayer: (1968) the decision and the Civil Rights Act of 1968 make all racial
discrimination in the sale or rental of housing illegal.
Dayton Board of Education v. Brinkman: (1979) upholds school busing to remedy
Northern school segregation.
Grove City College v. Bell: (1984) forbids the federal government from withholding
all federal funds from a college that refuses to file forms saying that it does not
discriminate. (Only a specific program risked its federal funds.)
Thornburg v. Gingles: (1986) the Supreme Court upholds the principle of avoiding
discriminatory results and not just discriminatory intent.
Shaw v. Reno: (1993) the Court decried the creation of districts based solely on
racial composition, as well as the district drawers' abandonment of traditional
redistricting standards such as compactness and contiguity. Thus, the Court gave
legal standing to challenges to any congressional map with an oddly shaped
majority-minority district that may not be defensible on grounds other than race
(such as shared community interest or geographical compactness).
Johnson v. DeGrandy: (1994) the Court ruled that a state legislative redistricting
plan does not violate the Voting Rights Act if it does not create the greatest possible
number of districts in which minority group votes would make up a majority.
Miller v. Johnson: (1995) the Court rejected the efforts of the Department of Justice
to achieve the maximum possible number of minority districts.
Bush v. Vera, Shaw v. Hunt: (1996) the Supreme Court voided three convoluted
districts in Texas and one in North Carolina on the grounds that race had been the
primary reason for abandoning compact district lines and that the state legislatures
had crossed the line into unconstitutional racial gerrymandering.
OTHER MINORITY GROUPS
Korematsu v. United States: (1944) the Supreme Court upheld the internment of
Japanese-Americans as constitutional.
WOMEN'S RIGHTS? (MEN'S RIGHTS TOO)
Reed v. Reed: (1971) the Court ruled that any "arbitrary" gender-based classification
violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court
invalidated a state law preferring men to women in court selection of an estate's
administrator. This was the first time the Court declared any law unconstitutional
on the basis of gender discrimination.
Craig v. Boren: (1976) established a "medium scrutiny" standard: Gender
discrimination would be presumed to be neither valid nor invalid. The Court voided
a law that set a higher age for drinking for men than for women.
Kirchberg v. Feenstra: (1981) the Court voided laws giving husbands exclusive
control over family property.
Arizona Governing Committee for Tax Deferred Annuity and Deferred
Compensation Plans v. Norris: (1983) the Court voided employers' rules that
denied women equal monthly retirement benefits because they live longer than
men.
Orr v. Orr: (1979) the Court voided laws that provide for alimony payments to
women only.
Mississippi v. Hogan: (1982) the Court voided laws that close a state's nursing
school to men.
Stanton v. Stanton: (1975) the Court voided laws that set a higher age for reaching
legal adult status for men than for women.
Michael M. v. Superior Court: (1981) the Court upheld a statutory rape law
applying only to men.
Kahn v. Shevin: (1974) the Court allowed a Florida law giving property tax
exemptions only to widows, not to widowers.
Dothard v. Rawlinson: (1977) Supreme Court voids arbitrary height and weight
requirements for employees.
United Automobile Workers v. Johnson Controls: (1991) protects women from
being denied a job because of an employer's concern for harming a developing
fetus.
Rostker v. Goldberg: (1981) the Supreme Court displays its typical deference to the
elected branches in the area of national security. It ruled that male-only
registration for the draft bore a substantial relationship to Congress' goal of
ensuring combat readiness and was constitutionally acceptable.
United States v. Virginia et al.: the Supreme Court declares categorical exclusion of
women from state-funded colleges (i.e. Virginia Military Institute) unconstitutional.
Cleveland Board of Education v. LaFleur: (1974) protects women from being
required to take mandatory pregnancy leaves from their jobs
SEXUAL HARASSMENT
Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson: Sexual harassment that is so pervasive as to
create a hostile or abusive work environment is a form of gender discrimination,
which is forbidden by the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Harris v. Forklift Systems: (1993) Supreme Court lowers the threshold for proving
sexual harassment in the workplace. No single factor, the Court said, is required to
win a sexual harassment case under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The law
is violated when the workplace environment "would reasonably be perceived, and is
perceived, as hostile or abusive."
GAY AND LESBIAN RIGHTS
Bowers v. Hardwick: (1986) allowed states to ban homosexual relations.
Romer v. Evans: (1996) the Supreme Court voided a state constitutional amendment
approved by the voters of Colorado that denied homosexuals protection against
discrimination.
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
California Board of Regents v. Bakke: (1978) forbids rigid racial quotas for
medical school admissions but does not forbid considering race as a factor when
deciding admissions.
United Steelworkers of America, AFL-CIO v. Weber: (1979) permits an
affirmative action program to favor African Americans if the program is designed to
remedy past discrimination.
Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co.: (1989) the Court found a Richmond, Virginia plan that
reserved 30 percent of city subcontracts for minority firms to be unconstitutional
Fullilove v. Klutznick: (1980) the Court upheld a federal rule setting aside 10
percent of all federal construction contracts for minority-owned firms.
Metro Broadcasting Inc. v. Federal Communications Commission: (1990) the
Court agreed that Congress may require preferential treatment for minorities to
increase their ownership of broadcast licenses. This event marked the first time the
Supreme Court upheld a specific affirmative action program that was not devised to
remedy past discrimination.
Adarand Constructors v. Pena: (1995) holds that affirmative action programs must
undergo strict scrutiny to determine that they are narrowly tailored to serve a
compelling governmental interest.
Local Number 93 v. Cleveland, United States v. Paradise: (1986, 1987) the
Court has approved preferential treatment of minorities in promotions.
Local 28 of the Sheet Metal Workers v. EEOC: (1986) the Court ordered quotas
for minority union memberships.
Johnson v. Transportation Agency, Santa Clara County: (1987) the Supreme
Court held that public employers may use carefully constructed affirmative action
promotion plans, designed to remedy specific past discriminations, to counter
women's and minorities' under-representation in the workplace. In a stinging
dissent, Justice Scalia complained that the Court was "converting [the law] from a
guarantee that race or sex will not be a basis for employment determeinations, to a
guarantee that it often will."
Firefighters v. Stotts: (1984) the Court has ruled that affirmative action does not
exempt recently hired minorities from traditional work rules specifying the "last
hired, first fired" order of layoffs.
Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education: (1986) the Court found unconstitutional
an effort to give preference to African-American teachers in lay-offs, because this
policy punished innocent white teachers and the African-American teachers had not
been the actual victims of past discrimination.