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Dred Scott v. Sandford
Dred Scott, an African American slave who had been taken by his owners to free states and territories attempted to sue. Dred Scott v. Sandford, (1857), was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court held that African Americans, whether slave or free, could not be American citizens and therefore had no standing to sue in federal court, and that the federal government had no power to regulate slavery in the western territories acquired after the creation of the United States. -
13th amendment
Adopted on the 16th of December in 1865, this is the first of the three amendmeds passsed after the Civil War upon the union victory. This constitutional amendment forbids slavery and involuntary servitude. The promises implicit in this amendment and the other two Civil War amendments introduced the era of reconstruction and resegregation in which these promises were first honored and then broken. -
14th amendment
The 14th amendmen which was adopted on the 9th of July in 1868 is the first and only place in which the idea of equality appears in the Constitution. This amendment addresses citizenship rights and equal protection of the laws, and was proposed in response to issues related to former slaves following the American Civil War. The amendment was bitterly contested, particularly by Southern states, which were forced to ratify it in order for them to regain representation in the Congress. -
15th amendment
Ratified on February 3, 1870, as the third and last of the Reconstruction Amendments. This amendment states prohibits the federal and state governments from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude". -
Plessy v. Ferguson
This Supreme Court provided a constitutional justification for segregation in the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson. The Louisiana legislature required "equal, but separate accommodations for the White and colored races" in railroad transportation. The Court upheld the law, saying that segregation in public facilities was not unconstitutional as long as the separate facilities were equal. -
Nineteenth amendment
Adopted in 1920, this amendment guarantees women the right to vote. The Constitution allows the states to determine the qualifications for voting, and until the 1910s most states disenfranchised women. The amendment was the culmination of the women's suffrage movement in the United States, which fought at both state and national levels to achieve the vote. It overruled Minor v. Happersett, in which a unanimous Supreme Court ruled that the 14th amendment did not give women the right to vote. -
White Primaries
This was a device that permitted political parties in the heavily Democratic South to exclude African American from voting in primary elections, thus depriving them of a voice in the most important contests and letting them vote only when it matter least. The Supreme Court declared White primiaries unconstitutional in 1944 in Smith v. Allwright. -
Brown vs. Board of Education
The Supmere Court set aside its precedent in Plessy and held that school segregation was inherently unconstitutional because it violated the Fourteenth amendment's equal protection caluse. This made legal segregation, de jure, come to an end. -
Affirmative Action
The concept of affirmative action was introduced in the early 1960s in the United States, as a way to combat racial discrimination in the hiring process and, in 1967, the concept was expanded to include sex. Affirmative action was first created from an Executive Order, which was signed by President John F. Kennedy on March 6, 1961 and required that government employers "not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, creed, color, or national origin". -
Poll Taxes
A tax to be paid as a prerequisite to voting. Used in the South at the turn of the 20th century in combination with other measures as a means of disfranchisement to bar poor people, especially blacks, from voter registration and voting. Were small taxes levied on the rights to vote that often fell due at a time of year when poor sharecroppers had the least cash on hand. -
24th amendment
The 24th amendment, ratified on the 23rd of January in 1964. This prohibited poll taxes in federal elections. Two years later, the Supreme Court voided poll taxes in state elections in Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
Enacted the 2nd of July in 1964, this made racial discrimination illegal in public accommodations. Forbids discrimination in employment on the basis of race, color, notional origin, religion, or gender. Created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to monitor and enforce protections agaisnt job discrimination. Provided for withholding federal grants from state and local government that practiced racial discrimination and strengthened voting rights legislation. -
Reed v. Reed
In Reed v. Reed, the Court ruled that any "arbitary" gender-based classification violatred the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment. This was the first time the Court declared any law unconstitutional on the basis of gender discrimination. -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
To combat the use of discriminatory voter registration test, the Voter ights Act of 1965 prohibited any government from using voting procedures that denied a person the vote on the basis of race or color and abolished the use of literacy requirements for anyone who had completed the sixth grade. -
Equal Rights Amendment
A constitutional amendment originally introduced in Congress in 1923 and passed by Congress in 1972, stating that "equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any states on account of sex." Despite public support, the amendment failed to acquire the necessary support from three-fourths of the state legislatures. -
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke
A 1978 Supreme Court Decision holding that a state university could not admit less qualified individuals solely because of their race. It upheld affirmative action, allowing race to be one of several factors in college admission policy. However, the court ruled that specific quotas, such as the 16 out of 100 seats set aside for minority students by the University of California, Davis School of Medicine, were impermissible. -
Bowers v. Hardwick
In 1986 the Supreme Court, allowed states to ban homosexual relations, overturned in 2003, that upheld, in a 5-4 ruling, the constitutionality of a Georgia sodomy law criminalizing oral and anal sex in private between consenting adults when applied to homosexuals. -
Americans with Disabilities Act
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 strengthened these protections, requiring employers and administrtors of public facilities to make "reasonable accommodations" and prohibiting employment discrimination against people with disabilities. -
Lawrence v. Texas
Lawrence v. Texas, is a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court. In the 6–3 ruling, the Court struck down the sodomy law in Texas and, by extension, invalidated sodomy laws in thirteen other states, making same-sex sexual activity legal in every U.S. state and territory. The Court overturned its previous ruling on the same issue in the 1986 case Bowers v. Hardwick, where it upheld a challenged Georgia statute and did not find a constitutional protection of of sexual privacy. -
Texas v. Fisher
Fisher v. University of Texas is a United States Supreme Court case concerning the affirmative action admissions policy at the University of Texas at Austin. The Supreme Court voided the lower court's ruling in favor of the University and remanded the case, holding that the lower court had not applied the standard of strict scrutiny, made in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, to the University admissions program. The Supreme Court pointed the case back to the 5th Circuit Court.
