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Dred Scott was a slave who sued for his freedom because he was a resident of a free state. He ended up losing because the court held that the Constitution did not intend citizenship for people of African descent, regardless of whether they were enslaved or free, and so the rights and privileges given to American citizens by the Constitution could not apply to them. -
Abolished slavery unless used as criminal punishment. -
Granted citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States,” which included former slaves recently freed. It prohibits the states from depriving “any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” -
“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 race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” -
A tax of a fixed amount per person levied on adults and often linked to the right to vote. The poll tax exemplified “Jim Crow” laws, developed in the post-Reconstruction South, which aimed to disenfranchise black voters and institute segregation. -
Homer Plessy refused to leave a "whites only" car to sit in a car designated for black people and was arrested. Plessy sued and argued that the Separate Car Act violated the 13th and 14th Amendments. The court held that the law was constitutional and upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation under the “separate but equal” doctrine. -
White primaries were primary elections held in the Southern United States in which only white voters were permitted to participate. -
Prohibits denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex. -
African American students had been denied admittance to certain public school based on laws allowing public education to be segregated by race. They argued that this violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th amendment. The Supreme Court held that “separate but equal” facilities are inherently unequal and violate the 14th amendment. -
A set of policies and practices within a government or organization seeking to include particular groups based on their gender, race, sexuality, creed or nationality in areas in which they are underrepresented. First seen in 1961 with JFK's Executive Order which instructed federal contractors to take "affirmative action to ensure that applicants are treated equally without regard to race, color, religion, sex, or national origin,” -
Outlawed the poll tax as a voting requirement in federal elections. -
Outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. -
Prohibits racial discrimination in voting. -
A proposed amendment to the Constitution to guarantee equal legal rights for all citizens regardless of sex.The amendment failed to achieve ratification by three-fourths of the states by the deadline set by Congress. -
The Idaho Probate Code specified that "males must be preferred to females" in appointing administrators of estates. The Court held the administrators of estates cannot be named in a way that discriminates between sexes and that the law's dissimilar treatment of men and women was unconstitutional. (It was also RBG's first case on behalf of the ACLU heard by the Supreme Court <3) -
The court held that a university's admissions criteria which used race as a definite and exclusive basis for an admission decision violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, however a school's use of "affirmative action" to accept more minority applicants was constitutional in some circumstances. -
Michael Hardwick was observed engaging in the act of homosexual sodomy with another adult in the bedroom of his home by a Georgia police officer. After being charged with violating Georgia law, Hardwick challenged the law's constitutionality in Federal District Court. The Court found that there was no constitutional protection for acts of sodomy, and that states could outlaw those practices. -
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. -
Requires states to permit people to register to vote at the same time they apply for their driver's license. -
Houston police entered John Lawrence's apartment and saw him and Tyron Garner engaging in a private, consensual sex. Lawrence and Garner were arrested and convicted of deviate sexual intercourse in violation of a Texas statute forbidding two persons of the same sex to engage in certain intimate sexual conduct.The Court held that the Texas statute making it a crime for two persons of the same sex to engage in certain intimate sexual conduct violates the Due Process Clause. -
Groups of same-sex couples sued their relevant state agencies in Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, and Tennessee to challenge the constitutionality of those states' bans on same-sex marriage or refusal to recognize legal same-sex marriages that occurred in jurisdictions that provided for such marriages.Supreme Court ruled that the fundamental right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples by both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.