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Plessy v Ferguson
Justice John Marshall Harlan, issued the Court's sole dissent. In a scathing opinion, Harlan refuted Brown's assertion that the Louisiana law discriminated equally against both blacks and whites. "Everyone knows that the statute in question had its origin in the purpose, not so much to exclude white persons from railroad cars occupied by blacks, as to exclude colored people from coaches occupied by or assigned to white persons." -
Brown v Board
unanimously held that the racial segregation of children in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. -
Gideon v Wainwright
the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution requires the states to provide defense attorneys to criminal defendants charged with serious offenses who cannot afford lawyers themselves. -
Reynolds v Sims
the Supreme Court ruled that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires that the legislative districts across states be equal in population. -
Griswold v Connecticut
the Supreme Court ruled that a state's ban on the use of contraceptives violated the right to marital privacy. -
Roe v Wade
ruled unconstitutional a state law that banned abortions except to save the life of the mother. The Court ruled that the states were forbidden from outlawing or regulating any aspect of abortion performed during the first trimester of pregnancy, could only enact abortion regulations reasonably related to maternal health in the second and third trimesters, and could enact abortion laws protecting the life of the fetus only -
US v Lopez
the Supreme Court ruled that Congress had exceeded its constitutional authority under the Commerce Clause when it passed a law prohibiting gun possession in local school zones. The case arose out of the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990, which made it a federal offense. -
Bush v Gore
a divided Supreme Court ruled that the state of Florida's court-ordered manual recount of vote ballots in the 2000 presidential election was unconstitutional. The case proved to be the climax of the contentious presidential race between Vice President Al Gore and Texas Governor George W. Bush. -
Lawrence v Texas
the Supreme Court ruled that state laws banning homosexual sodomy are unconstitutional as a violation of the right to privacy. The case began with the arrest of John Geddes Lawrence, a Houston resident, by the Houston Police, dispatched to Lawrence's apartment complex in response to a reported weapons disturbance. When the police entered Lawrence's apartment unit, they found him engaged in a sexual act with another man, Tyron Garner. -
Hamdan v Rumsfeld
the Supreme Court ruled that the Bush administration's use of military commissions to try terrorist suspects violated the U.S. Code of Military Justice and Geneva Conventions, and were not specifically authorized by any act of Congress. The case began with the capture of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemenese citizen who had been the personal driver of Osama bin Laden, a wanted terrorist, on a farming project developed by bin Laden.