Chapter 5: Civil Rights and Public Policy

Civil Rights

Polices designed to protect people against arbitrary or discriminatory treatment by government officials or individuals.

fourteenth amendment

The constitutional amendment adopted after the Civil War that states, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Equal Protection of the Law

Part of the Fourteenth amendment emphasizing that the laws must provide equivalent "protection" to all people.

Scott v. Sandford

The 1857 Supreme Court decision ruling that 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.

Thirteenth Amendment

The constitutional amendment ratified after the Civil War that forbade slavery and involuntary servitude.

Plessy v. Ferguson

An 1896 supreme court decision that provided a constitutional justification for segregation by ruling that a Louisiana law requiring "equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races."

Brown v. Board of Education

The 1954 Supreme Court decision holding that school segregation was inherently unconstitutional because it violated the Fourteenth amendment's guarantee of equal protection. This case marked the end of legal segregation in the United states.

civil rights act of 1962

The law making racial discrimination in hotels, motels, and restaurants illegal and forbidding many forms of job discrimination.

Suffrage

The legal right to vote. extended to African Americans by the Fifteenth Amendment, to Women by the Nineteenth amendment, and to people over the age of 18 by the twenty-sixth amendment.

Fifteenth Amendment

The constitutional amendment adopted in 1870 to extend suffrage to African Americans.

Poll Taxes

Small Taxes levied on the right to vote. This method was used by most Southern states to exclude African Americans from voting. Poll taxes were declared void by the Twenty-Fourth in 1964.

White Primary

Primary elections from which African Americans were exclude, an exclusion that, in the heavily democratic south, deprived African Americans of a voice in the real contest. The Supreme Court declared white primaries unconstitutional in 1944.

Twenty-Fourth Amendment

The constitutional amendment passed in 1964 that declared poll taxes void in federal elections.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

A law designed to help end formal and informal barriers to African American suffer age. under the law, hundreds of thousands of African Americans were registered, and the number of African Americans elected officially increase dramatically.

Hernandez v. Texas

A 1954 supreme court decision that tended protection against discrimination to Hispanics.

Korematsu v. United States

A 1944 Supreme Court decision that upheld as constitutional the internment of more than 100,000 Americans of Japanese descent in encampments during World War 2.

Nineteenth Amendment

The constitutional amendment adopted in 1920 that guarantees women the right to vote.

Equal Rights Amendment

A constitutional amendment originally introduced in Congress in 1923 and Passed by Congress in 1972, stating that "equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the united states or any taste on account of sex." Despite public support, the amendment fell short of the three-fourths of state legislatures required for passage.

Reed v. Reed

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

Craig v. Boren

In the 1976 ruling, the Supreme Court established the "intermediate scrutiny" standard for determining gender discrimination.

Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990

A law passed in 1990 that requires employers and public facilities to make "reasonable accommodations" for people with disabilities and prohibits discrimination against these individuals in employment.

Affirmative Action

A policy designed to give special attention to or compensatory treatment for members of some previously disadvantaged groups.

Regents of the University of California v. Bakke

A 1978 Supermen Court decision holding that a state university could weigh race or ethnic backgammon as one element in admissions but could not set aside places for members of particular racial groups.

Adarand Constructors v. Pena

A 1995 Supreme Court decision holding that 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.