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Dred Scott v. Sandford
Dred Scott was and enslaved man from Missouri and from 1833 to the year of 1843 he lived his life in Illinois which was a free state, where slavery was made illegal by the Missouri Compromise of 1820, he came back to Missouri to argue that the land he had in in the free territory made him a free man. Scott's "master" states how no "negro" or descendant of slave could be a citizen under Article III of the constitution. Decision: Struck down parts of Missouri Compromise, treated Scott as property. -
13th Amendment
The 13th Amendment of the United States technically ended slavery, in the United States but in reality it only ended slaver within the north and interesting enough, prisoners are exempt from the protection of the 13th amendment. Long after the Civil War we see an increase of African Americans imprisoned in southern states. -
14th Amendment
The 14th amendment prevented states from taking away privileges and immunities of the United States and from life, liberty, or property, without the due process of law notable cases that about this include: Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education -
15th Amendment
My personally favorite amendment being the 15th is was heavily endorsed by Fredrick Douglass Granted African Americans the right to vote and prohibits states from denying a citizens right to vote "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." although this didn't stop states from enacting black codes to prevent African Americans from voting. -
Plessy v. Ferguson
Around the time of 1892 a man named Homer Plessy decided to challenge Louisiana's Separate Car Act, which required separate railway cars for blacks and whites what was interesting was he was 7/8 white when Plessy was told to leave the whites only car he refused and was later arrested, Plessy pleaded int eh following trial that the Separate Car Act violated the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. What the court set the precedent of is segregation itself constitute unlawful discrimination. -
19th Amendment
This was a large achieve of the woman's struggle for political equality within the United States. This amendment formally extended the right to vote to women. "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." -
Voter ID Laws
Voter ID laws in the United States are laws that require a person to provide some form of official identification before they are permitted to register to vote, receive a ballot for an election, or to actually vote in elections in the United States. Over the last decade, states have enacted voter restrictions that disproportionately disenfranchise racial minorities -
24th Amendment
This is on of the Post Civil rights acts. This was made use to historically southern state making African Americans pay a tax to vote. "The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax." -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
This act prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, race in hiring, promoting and firing(prohibited discrimination in public areas and federal funded programs). It was proposed by JFK. MLK was in attendance when President Johnson signed both that Act and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law. -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
This act provided federal intervention to help aid African Americans to register to vote and help stomp out and ban tactics to keep African American from the polls -
Affirmative Action
Affirmative action, helps to improve employment or educational opportunities for members of minority groups that histrionically been disenfranchised and marginalized in an effort to remedy this mistake of prior discrimination, and prevent such discrimination in the future. -
Bowers v. Hardwick
Funnily enough this case was about the criminalization of the act of sodomy. the U.S. Supreme Court that upheld, in a 5–4 ruling, the constitutionality of a Georgia sodomy law criminalizing oral and anal sex in private. This was later overturned in 2003. -
Equal Rights Amendment
It seeks to end the legal distinctions between men and women in terms of divorce, property, employment, and other matters. But remember this was not societal there was still much work to do in the gaining of the right of women. -
Title IX
This was apart of the larger civil rights struggle it prohibits discrimination based on sex in education programs and activities that receive federal financial assistance. One importance case based on this was Alexander v. Yale which Title IX to argue and establish that the sexual harassment of female students can be considered illegal sex discrimination. -
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke is a 1978 Supreme Court case which held that a university's admissions criteria which used race as a definite and exclusive basis for an admission decision .There was no single majority opinion. Four of the justices contended that any racial quota system supported by government violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr., agreed, casting the deciding vote ordering the medical school to admit Bakke. -
Americans with Disabilities Act
The ADA prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in several areas, including employment, transportation, public accommodations, communications and access to state and local government' programs and services. One effect of the ADA is how they prompted better access to buildings, greater access to transportation, and fuller inclusion in the community. -
Shelby County v. Holder
Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, threw out the standards and process of the VRA, effectively gutting the landmark legislation. This decision effectively pushed decision-making and discretion for election policy in VRA. Basically "gutted" the VRA -
Obergefell v. Hodges
This was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States which ruled that the fundamental right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples. This made it so the 14th Amendment requires all states to license marriages between same-sex couples and to recognize all marriages that were lawfully performed out of state.