Chapter 5 Notes

Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)

Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)

A slave who had escaped to a free state enjoyed no rights as a citizen and that Congress had no authority to ban slavery in the territories

Strauder v. West Virginia (1880)

Voided a law barring African Americans from serving on juries

Civil Rights Cases (1883)

The Fourteenth Amendment did not prohibit racial discrimination by private businesses and individuals

Pless v. Ferguson (1896)

Provided a constitutional justification of segregation by ruling that a Louisiana law requiring "equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races" was constitutional

McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents (1950)

A public institution of higher learning may not provide different treatment to a student solely because of his or her race

Sweatt v. Painter (1950)

Found the separate but equal formula generally unacceptable for professional schools

Brown v. Board of Education (1954)

Segregation is inherently unconstitutional because it violates the Fourteenth Amendents guarantee of equal protection

Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education (1969)

Delays in desegregating school systems are no longer tolerable

Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenberg County Schools (1971)

Ordered busing of students to achieve racially balanced schools

Jones v. Mayer (1968)

To prevent racial discrimination Congress could regulate the sale of private property, and Congress passed the Fair Housing Act oof 1968 to forbid discrimination in the sale or rental of housing

Loving v. Virginia (1967)

struck down laws prohibiting interracial marraiges

Guinn v. United States (1915)

Deemed the grandfather clause unconstitutional

Smith v. Allwright (1944)

declared White primaries unconstitutional

Harper v. Virginia State Board of Election (1966)

Voided poll taxes in state elections

Thornburg v. Gingles (1986)

governments at all levels had to draw district boundaries to avoid discriminatory results and not just discriminatory intent

Shaw v. Reno (1993)

Decried the creation of districts based solely on racial composition and the district drawers abandonment of traditional redistricting standards such as compactness and contiguity

Hunt v. Cromartie (1999)

Concious consideration of race is not automatically unconstitutional if the states primary motivation is potentially political rather than racial

Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez (1978)

Stregnthened the tribal power of individual tribe members and furthered self-government by Indian tribes

Hernandez v. Texas (1954)

Extended protection against discrimination to Latinos

Plyer v. Doe (1982)

Declared that the law banning undocumented children from attending public schools as unconstitutional

Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886)

Voided a law requiring all laundries in wooden buildings to obtain permit from the city because 90% of laundries were owned by Asians

Korematsu v. United States (1944)

Upheld as constitutional the internment of more than 100,000 Americans of Japnese descent in encampments during WWII

Reed v. Reed (1971)

The landmark case in 1971 in which the Supreme Court for the first time upheld a claim of gender discrimination

Craig v. Boren (1976)

Established the "intermediate scrutiny" standard for determining gender discrimination

Dothard v. Rawlinson (1977)

Voided laws and rules barring women from jobs through arbitrary height and weight requirements unless it was necessary for the job

Harris v. Forklift Systems (1993)

Reinforced the broad principle that 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

Reeves v. Sanderson (2000)

A plaintiffs evidence of an employers bias, combined with sufficient evidence to find that the employers asserted justification is false, may permit juries and judges to conclude that an employer unlawfully discriminated

Meacham v. Knolls Atomic Power Labroatory (2008)

It is up to the employer to show that action against a worker stems from reasonable factors other than age

Bowers v. Hardwick (1986)

states could ban homosexual relations

Romer v. Evans (1996)

Voided a state constitutional amendment approved the voters of Colorado that denied gay men and lesbians protection against discrimination, finding that the Colorado amendment violated the US Constitutions guarantee of equal protection of the law

Lawrence v. Texas (2003)

overturned Bowers v. Hardwick when it voided a Texas anti-sodomy law on the grounds that such laws are unconstitutional intrusions on the right to privacy

Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia (2020)

held that the 1964 Civil Rights Acts prohibition of discrimination "because of sex" includes LGBTQ+ employees

Obergefell v. Hodges (2015)

Requires states to license a marriage between two people of the same sex and to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out of state

Regents of the University of California v. Bakke

A 1978 Supreme Court decision holding that a state university may weight race or ethnic background as one element in admissions but may not set aside places for members of particular racial groups

Adarand Constructors v. Pena (1995)

Federal programs that classify people by race, even for an ostensibly benign purpose such as expanding opportunities for minorities, should be presumed to be unconstitutional

Ricci v. DeStefano (2009)

held that if an emplyes uses a hiring or promoting test, it generally has to accept the test results unless the employer has strong evidence that the test was flawed and improperly favored a particular group

Grutter v. Bollinger (2003)

upheld the UMichs law schools use of race as one of many factors in admission

Gratz v. Bollinger (2003)

struck down UMichs system of undergraduate admissions in which every applicant from an underrepresented racial or ethnic minority group was awarded 20/100 points needed to guarantee admission

Fisher v. UT Austin (2016)

upheld the system where UTA offers admission to the top 10% then fills the rest by combining an applicants academic performance with the applicants "Personal Achievement Index," a holistic review containing numerous factors, including race

Parents involved in community schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 (2007)

the school districts use of race in their voluntary integration plans, even for the purpose of preventing resegregation, violated the equal protection guarantee and therefore was unconstitutional