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Dred Scott v. Sandford
Dred Scott was a slave from Missouri who lived in Illinois before returning to Missouri, where he filed for freedom under the justification that he had resided in the free state Illinois. The Supreme Court dismissed the case because Justice Taney said that African Americans could not be an American citizen and thus had no standing to sue. They also held that slaves were property under the Fifth Amendment and thus it would be unconstitutional to take away a slave owner's property. -
Thirteenth Amendment
The Thirteenth Amendment formally made slavery and involuntary servitude unconstitutional, giving Congress the power to enforce this. This was a significant abolitionist win, but it was not until later amendments were passed that African Americans guaranteed citizenship and voting rights. Unpaid labor in the prison system was protected with the Thirteenth Amendment and this system disproportionally impacts minorities--the Thirteenth Amendment did not immediately improve the minority experience. -
Fourteenth Amendment
The Fourteenth Amendment has been used in a multitude of court cases that protect and/or expand civil rights. This is primarily because of Section I, which includes the due process and equal protection clauses. These have allowed the Supreme Court to apply the Bill of Rights beyond the federal level to the states. Another important aspect of the Fourteenth Amendment is that all persons born or naturalized in America--including African Americans--are citizens. -
Fifteenth Amendment
The Fifteenth Amendment prevented citizens from being denied the right to vote on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. This theoretically improved democracy by allowing black voices to be heard, though states put legislation into place that reduced the impact. Voting is one of the most important civic duties in America so this should have expanded liberty significantly if not for racist policies that prevailed into the late 1900s--and arguably into today. -
White Primaries
White primaries were used to decrease the sway of African Americans in elections because, by not allowing African Americans to vote in primary elections--which have a large impact on who wins the actual election--their voice was diminished. This practice was heavily used in the democratic south, though the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in Smith v. Allwright (1944). White primaries were one of many efforts to suppress the power of racial minorities after legal equality was established. -
Poll Taxes
Poll taxes are a fixed sum that every adult must pay regardless of their ability to do so, and they were used to prevent African Americans from voting after the Fifteenth Amendment was passed because the tax had to be paid prior to voter registration. In order to protect white Americans that were poor, some poll tax legislation had grandfather clauses that exempted those whose father or grandfather voted in an election. This reduced African Americans' voting rights, threatening liberty. -
Plessy v. Ferguson
Louisiana's Separate Car Act was challenged by Plessy, who sat in a "whites only" car and was arrested when he did not move. The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments were used to argue that the act was unconstitutional, but the Supreme Court upheld racial segregation. They argued that the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protections clause was not fundamentally broken by creating separate spaces for blacks and whites so long as the two were not unequal in a meaningful way. -
Nineteenth Amendment
The Nineteenth Amendment gave women the right to vote by disallowing any state to deny suffrage on the basis of sex. It is important to note that several amendments deal with the expansion of voting rights and thus provide the opportunity for a representational democracy to closer resemble the will of the people rather than the will of the white, rich, and land-owning people. The Nineteenth Amendment is also the only amendment that mentions protecting the rights of women. -
Brown v. Board of Education
This decision overturned the one made in Plessy v. Ferguson, stating that separate but equal educational spaces are inherently unequal, which is unconstitutional under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The NAACP purposefully sought out white and black schools that were mostly equal in terms of quality and funding, which allowed the social science studies to prove that segregation was the cause of the sense of inferiority instilled in black children--not any other reason. -
Affirmative Action
Affirmative Action is is when a previously discriminated group is favored because of that past discrimination. This impacted things such as employment with President John F. Kennedy's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity, and higher education. Regents of the University of California v. Bakke addressed the latter and demonstrated how white Americans were angry that minorities were given more opportunities than said minorities had in the past, thus impacting white Americans. -
Twenty-Fourth Amendment
The Twenty-Fourth Amendment barred the denial of voting rights because of a failure to pay a poll or other tax. This addressed racist and classist legislation that attempted to prevent minorities from voting by tying financial requirements to it. As American minorities are often forced into poverty, this impacted them at a high rate and thus abridged their right to vote unfairly. Again, voting rights were addressed by the constitution to protect people from being denied their right as citizens. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was an important step towards equality as it ended public segregation and made employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin illegal. Employment rights are incredibly important because they create a sense of job security and allow for economic advancement--something notoriously difficult for black individuals in Jim Crow's America. This act was a cornerstone for civil rights legislation, and the movement built up from here. -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 made discriminatory practices such as poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses illegal. It drastically improved the ability of African Americans to vote because it removed obstacles put into place after the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified so that reality more closely resembled the Fifteenth Amendment's statement barring voting right infringement on the basis of race. This act counteracted legislation that deliberately worked against civil rights. -
Reed v. Reed
The Idaho Probate Code meant that, after their adopted son died, his estate was to be administered by Mr. Reed rather than Mrs. Reed based solely on sex. When Mrs. Reed challenged the law in court, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that it was unconstitutional because it violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This decision provided a measure of legal protection to women. -
Equal Rights Amendment
The Equal Rights Amendment was proposed to make men and women equal in regards to divorce, property, employment, etc. and was passed by the Senate before failing to be ratified by the requisite 38 states. A group of conservative women mobilized to prevent its ratification because some sexist laws work to the advantage of women like with alimony and custody, and some employed women backed them up because of labor laws. The amendment has yet to pass, so women are not constitutionally equal to men. -
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke
Bakke applied to UC Davis SOM twice, and was rejected both times despite having a higher GPA and test scores that all minority students admitted. The school had a minority quota, and Bakke argued that he was rejected solely based on race. The Supreme Court ruled in Bakke's favor, saying that a racial quota system was illegal under the Civil Rights Act of 1964; however, they also asserted that race could be a factor in higher education admissions. Thus, a partial victory for both sides resulted. -
Bowers v. Hardwick
A police officer in Georgia witnessed Hardwick engaging in consensual homosexual sodomy in his home and arrested him based on a statute that criminalized sodomy. The Court of Appeals held that the statute was unconstitutional, but the Supreme Court reversed the decision. They argued that there were no clear constitutional protections for sodomy and that it did not fall under conditions necessary to protect it, meaning that sodomy is not necessary for liberty or an American tradition. -
Americans with Disabilities Act
The Americans with Disabilities Act worked to provide those with disabilities the same legal protections as those provided to citizens on the basis of race, color, sex, etc. One of the key results of the act was to protect employment opportunities for the disabled, which allowed such Americans to provide for themselves in an environment conducive to their needs. Public accommodations were also improved, creating accessibility equality that increased equality among Americans. -
Lawrence v. Texas
Lawrence v. Texas served to overrule Bowers v. Hardwick, and began with a nearly identical situation: two men were found engaging in a consensual sexual act for which they were arrested for because of a Texas statute forbidding it. In this case, the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was used to argue that the government may not intervene in the private sexual conduct of individuals. This afforded homosexual Americans some modicum of protection from the state. -
Obergefell v. Hodges
A group of same-sex couples sued for their marriage rights and, when the case made it to the Supreme Court, the Fourteenth Amendment was used to protect their right to marry. The due process clause states that the right to marry is a fundamental liberty and, because legal protections would not differ in a same-sex marriage, it would be unconstitutional to prohibit it. The equal protections clause supports this because it would be unequal to only allow opposite-sex couples marriage rights.
