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Dred Scott v. Sandford
Dred Scott was a slave in Missouri, but from 1833 to 1843 he lived in Illinois a free state due to the Missouri Compromise of 1820. After returning to Missouri he filed a lawsuit that since he lived in a free territory he was a free man but the court said that even if an African American, whose ancestors were imported into the US and sold as a slave and the person is free they are not counted as a free man and not an American citizen. Therefore he had no standing to sue in a federal court. -
13th Amendment
ratified
- bans slavery from the USA
- however, the confederates countered with the Black Codes
limited the freedoms and civil rights on black -
14th Amendment
Granted citizenship to all persons "born or naturalized in the United States," including formerly enslaved people, and provided all citizens with “equal protection under the laws,” -
15th Amendement
Granted African Americans men the right to vote
Women are not mentioned -
Poll Taxes
Legal way to keep African Americans from voting in southern states. Eligible voters were required to pay their poll tax before they could cast a ballot -
White primaries
Primary elections were held in the Southern United States in which only white voters were permitted to participate. -
Plessy v. Furgeson
Louisiana enacted the Separate Car Act, which required separate railway cars for blacks and whites. In 1892, Homer Plessy – who was seven-eighths Caucasian – agreed to participate in a test to challenge the Act. They asked Plessy, who was technically black under Louisiana law, to sit in a "whites only" car of a Louisiana train. The Court held that the state law was constitutional. -
19th Amendment
The 19th amendment legally guarantees American women the right to vote. Achieving this milestone required a lengthy and difficult struggle—victory took decades of agitation and protest. -
Brown v. Board of Education
Relating to the segregation of public schools on the basis of race. In each of the cases, African American students had been denied admittance to certain public schools based on laws allowing public education to be segregated by race. They argued that such segregation violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Separate but equal educational facilities for racial minorities are inherently unequal, violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment -
24th Amendment
Citizens of the United States will not be denied the to vote by their reason to fail to pay a poll tax -
Civil Rights of 1964
Prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex,or national origin -
Voting Rights of 1965
Outlawed the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states after the Civil War, including literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting. -
Affirmative Actions
Affirmative action, also known as positive discrimination, involves sets 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 such groups are underrepresented - such as education and employment. -
Reed v. Reed
The Idaho Probate Code specified that "males must be preferred to females" in appointing administrators of estates. After the death of their adopted son, both Sally and Cecil Reed sought to be named the administrator of their son's estate (the Reeds were separated). According to the Probate Code, Cecil was appointed administrator and Sally challenged the law in court. In a unanimous decision, the Court held that the law's dissimilar treatment of men and women was unconstitutional. -
Equal Rights Amendment
A proposed amendment to the United States Constitution designed to guarantee equal legal rights for all American citizens regardless of sex. -
Bowers v. Hardwick
Michael Hardwick was observed by a Georgia police officer while engaging in the act of consensual homosexual sodomy with another adult in the bedroom of his home. After being charged with violating a Georgia statute that criminalized sodomy, Hardwick challenged the statute's constitutionality in Federal District Court. The divided Court found that there was no constitutional protection for acts of sodomy and that states could outlaw those practices. -
Americans with Disabilities Act
The ADA is a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all areas of public life, including jobs, schools, transportation, and all public and private places that are open to the general public. The purpose of the law is to make sure that people with disabilities have the same rights and opportunities as everyone else -
Motor Voter Law
Commonly referred to as the Motor Voter Act, the National Voter Registration Act allows American citizens to register to vote when they are issued a driver’s license. Intended to boost the number of Americans who register, the law also requires states to create mail-in registration forms and to accept national registration forms created by the Federal Elections Commission. In the first full year after implementation, more than 11 million new voters had registered to vote. -
Regents of University of California v. Bakke
John Doe sued the University of California alleging that it had agreed to employ him at a laboratory it operated according to a contract with the federal Department of Energy (DOE) and that it had wrongfully breached its agreement upon determining that he could not obtain a required security clearance. The university argued that it was immune from liability under the Eleventh Amendment. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote, stated that the California university could not be sued by Doe -
Lawrence v. Texas
Responding to a reported weapons disturbance in a private residence, Houston police entered John Lawrence's apartment and saw him and another adult man, Tyron Garner, engaging in a private, consensual sexual act. Lawrence and Garner were arrested and convicted of deviate sexual intercourse in violation of a Texas statute. 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. -
Obergefell v. Hodges
Groups of same-sex couples sued their relevant states 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. The Court held that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees the right to marry as one of the fundamental liberties it protects and that analysis applies to same-sex couples in the same manner as it does to opposite-sex couples.