The Long Road to Equality:
14th Amendment Equal Protection
Landmark Cases
From 1880 to 2011
A Wikipedia primer compiled
On September 18, 2011
100 U.S. 303 (1880), was a United States
Supreme Court case about racial
discrimination.
At the time, West Virginia excluded AfricanAmericans from juries. Strauder was an Black
man who, at trial, had been convicted of
murder by an all-white jury.
Strauder appealed his conviction, contending
that West Virginia exclusionary policy
violated the Equal Protection Clauseof
the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356 (1886), was the first case
where the United States Supreme Court ruled that a law that is
race-neutral on its face, but is administered in a prejudicial
manner, is an infringement of the Equal Protection Clause in
the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
In 1880, the city of San Francisco passed an ordinance that
persons could not operate a laundry in a wooden building
without a permit from the Board of Supervisors. Although most
of the city's wooden building laundry owners applied for a
permit, none were granted to any Chinese owner.
Yick Wo (益和, Americanization: Lee Yick), who had lived in California and had operated a
laundry in the same wooden building for many years and held a valid license to operate his
laundry issued by the Board of Fire-Wardens, continued to operate his laundry and was fined
$10.00 for violating the ordinance. He sued for a writ of habeas corpus after he was imprisoned
in default for having refused to pay the fine.
Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), is a landmark United
States Supreme Court decision in the jurisprudence of
the United States, upholding the constitutionality of state laws
requiring racial segregation in private businesses (particularly
railroads), under the doctrine of "separate but equal". "Separate
but equal" remained standard doctrine in U.S. law until its repudiation in the 1954 Supreme
Court decision Brown v. Board of Education.
Buchanan v. Warley, 245 U.S. 60 (1917) was a unanimous United
States Supreme Court decision addressing civil government
institutedracial segregation in residential areas. The Court held that
a Louisville, Kentucky, city ordinance prohibiting the sale of real
property toAfrican Americans violated the Fourteenth Amendment,
which protected freedom of contract. Unlike prior state court rulings
that had overturned racial zoning ordinances on takings clause
grounds due to those ordinances' failures to grandfather land owned
prior to enactment, the Court in Buchanan ruled that the motive for
the Louisville ordinance, race, was an insufficient purpose to make the prohibition
constitutional.
Skinner v. State of Oklahoma, ex.
rel. Williamson, 316 U.S. 535 (1942), was
the United States Supreme Court ruling which held
that compulsory sterilization could not be imposed
as a punishment for a crime, on the grounds that
the relevant Oklahoma law excluded white-collar
crimes from carrying sterilization penalties.
Under Oklahoma's Habitual Criminal Sterilization
Act of 1935, the state could impose a sentence of compulsory sterilization as part of their
judgment against individuals who had been convicted three or more times of crimes
"amounting to felonies involving moral turpitude". The defendant, Jack T. Skinner, had been
convicted once for chicken-stealing and twice for armed robbery.
Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944), was a
landmark United States Supreme Court case upholding the
constitutionality of Executive Order 9066, which ordered Japanese
Americans into internment camps during World War II.
The 6-3 decision, written by Supreme Court justice Hugo Black, held
that the need to protect against espionage outweighed Fred
Korematsu's individual rights, and the rights of Americans of Japanese descent. During the
case, Solicitor General Charles Fahy suppressed a report from the Office of Naval
Intelligence indicating that "there was no evidence Japanese Americans were disloyal, were
acting as spies or were signaling enemy submarines."
Korematsu's conviction for evading internment was overturned on November 10, 1983. The US
District Court for the Northern District of California voided Korematsu's original conviction
because in Korematsu's original case, the government had knowingly submitted false
information to the Supreme Court that had a material effect on the Supreme Court's decision.
Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948), is a United States Supreme
Court case which held that courts could not enforce racial covenants on
real estate. The Court considered two questions. First, are racially-based
restrictive covenants legal under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United
States Constitution? Secondly, can they be enforced by a court of law?
The United States Supreme Court held that racially-based restrictive
covenants are, on their face, valid under the Fourteenth
Amendment. Private parties may voluntarily abide by the terms of a
restrictive covenant but may not seek judicial enforcement of such a covenant because
enforcement by the courts would constitute State action. Since such state action would
necessarily be discriminatory, the enforcement of a racially-based restrictive covenant in a state
court would violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The court noted that the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed individual rights, and equal
protection of the law is not achieved with the imposition of inequalities.
Hernandez v. Texas, 347 U.S. 475 (1954), was
a landmark United States Supreme Court case that decided
that Mexican Americans and all other racial groups in the United
States had equal protection under the 14th Amendment of
the U.S. Constitution.
Pete Hernandez, a Mexican agricultural worker, was convicted
for the murder of Joe Espinosa. Hernandez's legal team set out
to demonstrate that the jury could not be impartial unless
members of non-Caucasian races were allowed on the juryselecting committees; no Mexican American had been on a jury
for more than 25 years in the Texas county in which the case
was tried. Hernandez and his lawyers appealed to the Texas Supreme court, and appealed again
to the United States Supreme Court.
Chief Justice Earl Warren and the rest of the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of
Hernandez, and required he be retried with a jury composed without regard to ethnicity. The
Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment protects those beyond the racial classes of white or
negro, and extends to other racial groups, such as Mexican American in this case.
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483
(1954), was a landmark decision of the United States
Supreme Court that declared state laws establishing
separate public schools for black and white students
unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v.
Ferguson decision of 1896 which allowed statesponsored segregation. Handed down on May 17, 1954,
the Warren Court's unanimous (9–0) decision stated
that "separate educational facilities are inherently
unequal." As a result, de jure racial segregation was
ruled a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of
the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. This ruling paved the way
for integration and the civil rights movement.
Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), was a landmark civil
rights case in which the United States Supreme Court, in a
unanimous decision, declared Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute,
the "Racial Integrity Act of 1924", unconstitutional, thereby
overturning Pace v. Alabama (1883) and ending all race-based legal
restrictions on marriage in the United States.
The court ruled that Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute violated
both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
“Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and
survival.... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial
classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of
equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of
liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of
choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the
freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot
be infringed by the State.”
The Supreme Court concluded that anti-miscegenation laws were racist and had been enacted
to perpetuate white supremacy:
“There is patently no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious racial
discrimination which justifies this classification. The fact that Virginia prohibits only interracial
marriages involving white persons demonstrates that the racial classifications must stand on
their own justification, as measures designed to maintain White Supremacy.”
Reed v. Reed, 404 U.S. 71 (1971), was an Equal Protection case in
the United States in which the Supreme Court ruled that the
administrators of estates cannot be named in a way that discriminates
between sexes. After the death of their adopted son, Sally and Cecil
Reed sought to be named the administrator of their son's estate; the
Reeds were separated. The Idaho Probate Court specified that "males
must be preferred to females" in appointing administrators of estates, so Cecil was appointed
administrator. In a unanimous decision, the Court held that the law's dissimilar treatment of
men and women was unconstitutional. From Chief Justice Burger's opinion:
To give a mandatory preference to members of either sex over members of the other, merely to
accomplish the elimination of hearings on the merits, is to make the very kind of arbitrary
legislative choice forbidden by the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment; and
whatever may be said as to the positive values of avoiding intrafamily controversy, the choice in
this context may not lawfully be mandated solely on the basis of gender.
Examining Board v. Flores de Otero, 426 U.S. 572 (1976), was
a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States that
invalidated a state law that excluded aliens from the practice
of civil engineering. The Court invalidated the law on the basis
of equal protection using a strict scrutiny standard of review.
Mississippi University for Women v. Hogan, 458 U.S. 718 (1982) was a case
decided 5-4 by the Supreme Court of the United States. The court held that
the single-sex admissions policy of the Mississippi University for
Women violated the Equal Protection Clause of theFourteenth Amendment to
the United States Constitution.
Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996), is a landmark United
States Supreme Court case dealing with civil rights and state
laws. It was the first Supreme Court case to deal with LGBT
rights since Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), when the Court had
ruled that a law criminalizing homosexual sex was
constitutional.
An amendment to the Colorado state constitution
("Amendment 2") that would have prevented any city, town
or county in the state from taking any legislative, executive, or judicial action to recognize gay
and lesbian citizens as a protected class was passed by Colorado voters in a referendum. A state
trial court issued a permanent injunction against the amendment, and upon appeal, the
Colorado Supreme Court ruled that the amendment was subject to "strict scrutiny" under
the Equal Protection Clause. The state trial court, upon remand, concluded that the
amendment could not pass strict scrutiny, which the Colorado Supreme Court agreed with upon
review. Upon appeal to the United States Supreme Court, the Court ruled in a 6-3 decision that
the amendment did not even pass the rational basis test, let alone strict scrutiny. The decision
in Romer set the stage for Lawrence v. Texas (2003), where the Court overruled its decision
in Bowers.
Rejecting the state's argument that Amendment 2 merely blocked gay people from receiving
"special rights", Kennedy wrote:
To the contrary, the amendment imposes a special disability upon those persons alone.
Homosexuals are forbidden the safeguards that others enjoy or may seek without
constraint.
Perry v. Schwarzenegger (also known as Perry v.
Brown on appeal) is a federal lawsuit filed in the United
States District Court for the Northern District of
California challenging the
federal constitutionality of Proposition 8, a 2008 ballot
initiative that amended the California Constitution to
provide that "only marriage between a man and a woman
is valid or recognized in California." In effect, it prohibited
the recognition of same-sex marriages performed on or
after November 5, 2008. The suit sought to strike down
Proposition 8 as unconstitutional.
On August 4, 2010, Chief Judge Vaughn Walker ruled that Proposition 8 violated the Due
Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States
Constitution. On August 16, 2010, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the
judgmentstayed pending appeal.[2]
The case is widely regarded as a landmark case that will likely reach the Supreme Court on
appeal.[3][4][5] The plaintiffs' attorneys, Theodore Olson and David Boies, were listed on the
2010 Time 100 for their nonpartisan and strong legal approach to challenging Proposition 8.[6]
On August 4, 2010, Walker announced his ruling in favor of the plaintiffs, overturning
Proposition 8 based on the Due Process andEqual Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.[77] Walker concluded that California had no rational
basis or vested interest in denying gays and lesbians marriage licenses:[78]
An initiative measure adopted by the voters deserves great respect. The considered views and
opinions of even the most highly qualified scholars and experts seldom outweigh the
determinations of the voters. When challenged, however, the voters’ determinations must find
at least some support in evidence. This is especially so when those determinations enact into
law classifications of persons. Conjecture, speculation and fears are not enough. Still less will
the moral disapprobation of a group or class of citizens suffice, no matter how large the
majority that shares that view. The evidence demonstrated beyond serious reckoning that
Proposition 8 finds support only in such disapproval. As such, Proposition 8 is beyond the
constitutional reach of the voters or their representatives.
He further noted that Proposition 8 was based on traditional notions of opposite-sex marriage
and on moral disapproval of homosexuality, neither of which is a legal basis for discrimination.
He noted that gays and lesbians are exactly the type of minority that strict scrutiny was
designed to protect.