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Dred Scott v. Sandford
Dred Scott lived in Illinois, which was a free state by the Missouri Compromise of 1820. He went to visit Missouri and was caught by slavecatchers, who tried to return him to his former master. Scott refuted this saying that because he lived in a free state, he was free in every other part of the country. The Supreme Court disagreed, citing that slaves were property under the Fifth Amendment and that a Black person with ancestors that were imported to be sold as slaves could not be US citizens. -
Affirmative Action
Affirmative action discusses including "quotas" that must be filled by minority groups and under represented people in things like employment and applications in order to bridge possible gaps in payment and diversity. These actions have been hotly contested in Court since its implementation, including in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. Affirmative action is still used in many institutions across America today as a way to keep American businesses equal in opportunity. -
Thirteenth Amendment
This amendment outlawed slavery in the United States unless those individuals were convicted and placed in prison. This amendment came following Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and the Civil War. This amendment was not fully adopted by every state legislature until February 7th, 2013. This amendment helped to free the African Americans in the United States by freeing them and allowing them to enter society as free people, and has been built upon by the Civil Rights Act. -
Fourteenth Amendement
This amendment does several things, but in relation to civil rights, it states that anyone born on on U.S. soil is considered a U.S. citizen. This is referred to as naturalization. This amendment also states that no one in office can stop a person from voting, no one in government is allowed to partake in a rebellion or insurrection, and the government is not obligated to pay back damage caused to insurrectionists who incited rebellion. -
Poll Tax
A poll tax is a tax that people must pay before they are allowed to place a ballot. The poll tax was a rule implemented after the Fifteenth amendment, which allowed African Americans to vote, and before the Twenty Fourth amendment, which ended the poll tax. This tax essentially stopped poor African Americans from being able to vote. This began sometime in the late 1800s, likely in the 1870s, and was not overruled until ratification of the Twenty Fourth amendment on August 27th, 1962 -
Fifteenth Amendement
This amendment states that the United States of America cannot deny someone the right to vote because of the color of that person's skin or because of their racial identity. This comes following the Thirteenth amendment which freed Black people and the Fourteenth amendment which helped many of them claim their citizenship in this country. This amendment is part of what made poll taxes and white primaries unconstitutional, even before the Twenty Fourth Amendment made them so. -
White Primaries
These primaries were implemented in the Southern part of the U.S. where only white voters were permitted to vote. These primaries suppressed the rights of African American voters to vote. This disenfranchisement of voters directly violates the Fifteenth amendment, which stops any disenfranchisement against people of color. White primaries were eventually overturned by the Supreme Court in 1944 with Smith v. Allwright, and remaining issues were addressed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. -
Plessy v. Ferguson
Homer Plessy, a 7/8 Caucasian man was asked by a group who wanted to repeal the Separate Car Act to sit in a "whites only" car (as according to Louisiana law, he was considered black). When told to leave, he refused and was arrested and he appealed the decision saying it violated the Thirteenth and Fourteenth amendment. The court upheld "separate but equal" ideology in a 7-1 vote. The dissent argued that the constitution doesn't have a class system, so this decision is in fact unconstitutional. -
Nineteenth Amendement
This amendment states that the United States of America cannot deny someone the right to vote because of their sex. This comes after nearly a century of protest from women who had helped out on the frontier as the United States expanded westward and later on took on the careers and jobs originally advised to be done by men during World War I. This amendment finally opened up voting for nearly everyone of age by 1920. The Equal Rights amendment would help to enforce this law greatly, if ratified. -
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1)
Several black students across the country had been barred access to certain schools because of segregated education, and so they argued that segregation went against the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth amendment. In a unanimous decision, the Court decided that separate institutions for different races was inherently unequal and that such segregation fostered and enforced the idea that African Americans are somehow inferior to white people just because of the color of their skin. -
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (2)
Following the precedent set in the first Brown v. Board of Education case, the Court ruled on what kind of directives they would include in order to help fully implement the new constitutional decision. The Court identified the issues across the nation and decided that local governments and authorities would be the best to handle the situation, asking that each locality act in compliance with the decision made, and that the decision in Brown I be implemented entirely. -
Twenty Fourth Amendment
This amendment officially ended the poll tax as a factor for being allowed to vote. Following the Fifteenth amendment, many legislators sought to minimize the voting rights of African Americans through making voters pay in order to place a ballot, as many African Americans were very poor at the time. In order to allow poor white people to vote, legislators included the Grandfather Clause, which allowed people to vote on the basis of if their grandfather could vote, which is a racist practice. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
This act ended segregation in public spaces based on race, color, sex, nationality, and eventually sexual orientation. This act started to take shape under President John F. Kennedy, but was signed into law by Lyndon B. Johnson following JFK's assassination. It followed Martin Luther King, Jr., the NAACP, and other protestors experienced serious violence in Birmingham, Alabama, in the summer of 1963. This act bolstered the Fifteenth Amendment and helped to try to end racial disenfranchisement. -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
This act enforced the Fifteenth Amendment, which protects the rights of people to vote regardless of race or color. It was one of the acts passed in order to combat Jim Crow laws in the southern part of the continental United States. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. This act came after around a century without any legal enforcement from the federal government. This act is considered one of the most far reaching civil liberties legislation to have ever been passed. -
Reed v. Reed
Following the death of their son, Sally and Cecil Reed fought in court over who would receive his estate. There was a Probate Code that declared men superior to women in these court decisions. The Court ruled unanimously that this Probate Code was against the Equal Protection clause and that decisions like these, in which a person becomes the administrator of an estate, and any other decisions should not be decided solely on the "basis of sex." The Equal Rights amendment would help this issue. -
Equal Rights Amendment
This amendment was created to give equal legal rights between the sexes. This amendment was proposed by the National Woman's political party and has yet to be adopted by the Constitution of the United States of America. Several members of both parties have expressed continued support for the passage of the ERA, even if that includes updating it in order to be ratified again by each state legislatures. Many are hoping for the ERA to become the Twenty Eighth Amendment of the Bill of Rights. -
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke
Allan Bakke was rejected from the University of California, which reserved sixteen spots for minorities (affirmative action), despite Bakke having higher test scores than the minorities chosen. Half of the Court ruled that any kind of racial quota violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and even the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth amendment, but the other half stated that affirmative action like this was constitutionally permissible. They voted for Bakke with 8-1 justices in favor. -
Bowers v. Hardwick
Michael Hardwick was found by a policeman to be in a consensual sexual act with another man in the privacy of his own home. The Court disagreed with Hardwick, 5-4, but said that the constitution could not intervene as the actions did not affect ordered liberty or were a part of the nation's history and tradition. Dissenting opinions feared making this a right to be homosexual or otherwise as it might make the court "illegitimate." This case was overruled by Lawrence v. Texas (2003). -
Americans with Disabilities Act
This act aims to stop discrimination against the disabled in employment, transportation, public accommodations, communication, and access to different services. It is similar to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and would be similar to the Equal Right Amendment in its language of protection of a specific demographic from having their legal rights stripped from them by the government. This came following new waves of post-Cold War progress, helping to lessen employment disparities. -
Lawrence v. Texas
John Lawrence and Tyron Garner were caught in intimate consensual intercourse by police who arrested them. The Court ruled several things in this case: in a 6-3 vote, they ruled that stopping two people of the same-sex from having sex violates the Due Process clause; they rules that two consenting adults can do what they please under the Due Process clause; and they overturned Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), as the decision in that case was both very unclear and overreaching on behalf of the Court. -
Obergefell v. Hodges
Several groups of same-sex couples used the Equal Protection clause and the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth amendment to state that not recognizing same-sex marriage across the entire nation and only in states where same-sex marriage is legal is unconstitutional. It was a 5-4 decision in favor of Obergefell and company, who argued the above statement. In the majority opinion, Justice Kennedy states that same-sex marriage is protected by both the Equal Protection and the Due Process clauses.
