• Protections against the government

• Civil rights reflect

  • Who can partcipate

  • How they can participate

  • How much they can participate

• Civil rights reflect government’s collective decisions on the treatment of individuals

The Equal Protection Clause

• 14th Amendment

• “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall… deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”

• Protection for a person rather than a citizen

Guidelines for Civil Rights

• Evolved throughout history

  • Universal

  • Equal

• Residency— who gets to be here?

• Political— who gets to participate?

• Legal— due process

• Others— Property, education, healthcare

Plessy v Ferguson

• “Separate but equal”

• Established Jim Crow laws as legal

• 14th Amendment did not abolish segregation

Brown v Board of Education

• In the field of education, separate but equal is inherently unequal

• Initially started out as only for desegregating schools, spread over time

• Problems:

  • Local officials had to enforce Brown and would delay in doing so

  • Brown only attacked de jure segregation (segregation by law), not de facto segregation (customary/private segregation)

  • Brown did not directly address discrimination in employment, voting, etc.

• Brown gave the SCOTUS a lot of moral capital but did little initial change

Civil Rights Act of 1964

• Segregation on the grounds of race, religion, or national origin was banned in all public places

• Barred race, religious, national origin, or gender discrimination by employers and unions

• Created Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

The Right to Vote

• The right to vote is not included in the Constitution

• Initially, states restricted voting based on religion, property, gender, and race

• Voting Rights Act of 1965

Continued Challenges

• Voter ID

• Voter roles purged after someone does not vote for a long time

• Shelby County v. Holder— “Preclearance” removed requiring states with past history of voter suppression to have voting changes approved by the federal government

Discrimination in Employment

• Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

• Fair Pay Act of 2009 (Ledbetter case)

  • Equal pay for male and female employees

• ERA— Equal Rights Amendment

  • Originally didn’t pass— 3 states short

  • Expiration date passed

  • 38th state ratified after the expiration date

  • Currently in question of whether or not it should be an amendment

• Intermediate Scrutiny

  • Gov has a substantial/important interest in a narrowly tailored way

  • Connected to gender/sex

  • Different from strict scrutiny, easier for the government to prove its case

Title IX of the 1972 Education Act

• No person in the US can be denied participation in education programs or activities based on sex or gender

• Increased girls’ participation in sports

Expansion of Civil Rights

• Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990

  • More accessible public and private spaces for people with disabilities

  • Equal employment rights

  • Equal access

• LGBTQ+ rights

  • DOMA (1996)— marriage is between one man and one woman

  • Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (1994)— the military could discharge people for being openly gay, but closeted people could

  • Lawrence v. Texas (2003)— two consenting adults engaging in sexual activity in the home is not the business of the government

  • United States v. Windsor (2013)— Windsor’s wife died but she was unable to inherit without paying taxes, sued because if her spouse was male she wouldn’t have had to

  • Obergefell v. Hodges (2015)— 🙂

  • Bostick v. Clayton (2020)— trans woman fired after transitioning, sued for discrimination and won

• Native American Civil Rights Movement

Affirmative Action

• University of CA v Bakke

• Gratz v Bollinger

• Grutter v Bollinger

• Students for Fair Admissions v Harvard (2023)

• Students for Fair Admissions v UNC (2023)