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Dred Scott v Sandford
Scott was a slave that escaped from a slave state into a free state. He was eventually forced back into the slave state and consequently slavery. He argued that because he was no longer in a slave state, he was a free citizen of the United States. The Supreme Court ruled otherwise, and added that Congress had no authority to ban slavery in the territories. -
13th Amendment
The constitutional amendment passed after the Civil War that officially ended slavery and involuntary servitude. The legal version of the Emancipation Proclamation. -
14th Amendment
A constitutional amendment that states, “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” -
Poll Taxes
It was means of preventing African Americans from voting. After the 15th Amendment was passed, white constituents of the South wanted to keep their former slaves from voting. Other measures, such as literacy tests and the grandfather clause, were also employed to keep them from voting. Poll taxes were explicitly prohibited by the 24th amendment in 1964. -
15th Amendment
An amendment passed to extend suffrage to African Americans, the 15th amendment officially grants the right to vote to citizens no matter their “race, color, or previous state of servitude.” It did not extend this right to women. -
White Primaries
One of the means the Democratic South used to discourage African Americans from voting. It excluded African Americans from primary elections. The Supreme Court ruled white primaries unconstitutional in their 1944 ruling of Smith v Allwright. -
Plessy v Ferguson
A Supreme Court ruling that gave a constitutional justification for segregation, saying that "equal but separate accommodations" were not unconstitutional. Irocincally, it was later overturned in Brown v Board of Education using the same constitutional amendment that was used in Plessy to uphold it. -
19th Amendment
The Constitutional Amendment that gives women the right to vote. It ends the long fight for women’s suffrage. It applies at both state and national levels. -
Brown v Board of Education
Supreme Court case that essentially overturned the constitutionality of Plessy v Ferguson and the “separate but equal” mentality. It ruled that segregation in schools was unconstitutional under the 14th amendment’s equal protection guarantee. -
Affirmative Action
A policy designed to give special attention to members of some previously disadvantaged group. The most mentioned applications are in universities, where the colleges attempt to give minorities advantages in the admissions process in order to rectify previous and ongoing discrimination. See Regents of the University of California v Bakke. -
24th Amendment
Constitutional amendment abolishing poll taxes for federal elections. Local and state poll taxes were legal until the 1966 Supreme Court decision on Harper v Virginia State Board of Elections, where they held that poll taxes for state elections were illegal under the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
A law prohibiting racial discrimination. It states that racial discrimination is not allowed in hotels, motels, public education and restaurants under the commerce clause. It also creates the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Committee) in an attempt to prevent racial discrimination in the workplace. -
Voting Rights Act
A law designed to help end formal and informal barriers to African American suffrage. It prohibts any government from using voting procedures such as white primaries, literacy tests and poll taxes to deny a person the right to vote on the basis of race or color. The passage of this law saw a huge increase in the number of African Americans registered to vote and the number of African Americans elected. -
Reed v Reed
The first time a gender discrimination case was upheld by the Supreme Court. There is no constitutional amendment formally prohibiting discrimination based on sex (see Equal Rights Amendment), however the Supreme Court upheld their ruling based on the Equal Protection clause of the 14th amendment. -
Regents of the University of California v Bakke
A Supreme Court decision holding that a state university could not admit less qualified individuals solely because of their race. The Supreme Court, however, didn't rule that affirmative action policies were unconstitutional, just that they had to be formulated differently. See affirmative action. -
Equal Rights Amendment
An amendment originally proposed in 1923 and passed by Congress in 1972, this amendment failed to receive the necessary support of state legislatures to become a true amendment. It prevented discrimination based on sex, stating that “equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” -
Bowers v Hardwick
A Supreme Court decision ruling that upheld a Georgia law prohibiting homosexual intercourse in private between two consenting adults. It was overturned in 2003 in Lawrence v Texas. -
Americans with Disbilities Act
An example of an underfunded mandate, this law requires employers and public facilities to make reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities and prohibits discrimination against these individuals in employment. It forced public institutions to provide programs and physical access accommodations without supplying money to assist these accommodations. -
Lawrence v Texas
A Supreme Court case that overturned Bowers v Hardwick. It made same-sex sexual activity legal in the United States under the due process clause of the 14th Amendment. It said that intimate consensual sexual conduct between adults was protected. -
Fisher v University of Texas
A Supreme Court case where the Court upheld the accusation that the University discriminated against white students in its admissions decisions.
