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Dred Scott v. Sanford
In the year 1857, Dred Scott, an enslaved man from Missouri, sued for his freedom in the Supreme Court. He had travelled to Illinois, which was a free state at the time, and used that as grounds to attempt to gain freedom, arguing that he ought to have been freed upon entering a state in which slavery was outlawed. The Supreme Court ruled that he could not become a citizen of the United States because he was black and descended from slaves, deferring the issue back to the Missouri Courts. -
Ratification of the 13th amendment
One of the amendments added during reconstruction following the Civil War, this amendment made slavery illegal everywhere in the United States. -
Ratification of the 14th Amendment
Again, one of the reconstruction-era post-war amendments. This amendment redefined and created a solid outline for citizenship within the United states, making it so that all people born or naturalized within the United States were citizens, and affording them with all rights that come with citizenship. Also included important due process and equal protections clauses, which afforded all citizens equality in the legal process. -
Ratification of the 15th Amendment
The final of the three amendments which were considered to have come directly out of the Civil War and reconstruction, the fifteenth amendment prohibited the states or the federal government from refusing any citizen the right to vote based on their race. This effectively gave all black men the right to vote. -
Plessy v. Ferguson
Leading up to this case, a Louisiana Law was created which enforced “Separate but Equal” accommodations for black and white people in trains. Homer Plessy sat in the “Whites Only” car, and refused to leave when asked to do so. The issue finds its way all the way to the supreme court, which ruled that the Louisiana law was constitutional, and did not violate the equal protections clause of the fourteenth amendment. -
Ratification of the 19th Amendment
Following a very long suffrage movement which advocated for the rights of women to vote, the nineteenth amendment was passed, which said that the state will not be allowed to deny somebody the right to vote based on their sex, giving the right to vote to all female citizens. -
White Primaries
White primaries one example of the many discriminatory voting practices, instituted in the south especially, following reconstruction and the fifteenth amendment in an attempt to reduce the voice of black voters. These were primary elections in which only white voters were allowed to vote, and they had gotten past the fifteenth amendment due to the fact that they were primary elections rather than state or national elections. Smith v. Allwright effectively ended white primaries in 1944 -
Brown v. Board of Education
In the year 1954, a variety of court cases from around the nation came together into one Supreme Court case which questioned the constitutionality of the "Separate but Equal" clause in schools. In opposition to the ruling in the Dred Scott case, the Supreme Court ruled that the idea of Separate but Equal violated the equal protections clause of the fourteenth amendment, and required that the schools be integrated. -
Poll Taxes
A major issue in the 1960's which ultimately led to the addition of the 24th amendment to the constitution, poll taxes were a measure used to prevent poor voters, which often specifically targeted black voters, from voting in elections by requiring voters to pay a tax upon submitting their ballot. -
Ratification of the 24th amendment
The twenty-fourth amendment was the culmination of an ongoing political fight over the constitutionality and morality of poll taxes which was taking place during the early civil rights era. This amendment banned the practice of taking poll taxes all together. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
In the years leading up to the passage of this act in 1964 by the Johnson administration, it was not illegal for employers to discriminate against immigrants, people of other races, religions, etc. when hiring, choosing employees for promotions, or firing specific employees. This act made that type of discrimination illegal for all employees nationwide -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
This law, also passed by the Johnson Administration, put and end to many of the discriminatory voting practices which had come to popularity in the south during the reconstruction era, most prominent of which ere the literacy tests which were required for many polls. -
Affirmative Action
Shortly after the other important Civil Rights legislation of the Johnson administration was passed, affirmative action legislation was passed in September of 1965. In simple terms, affirmative action aimed to give special treatment to people who belonged to groups which had been historically discriminated against in order to make up for those historical wrongs in areas such as college applications and hiring processes. -
Reed v. Reed
In Idaho law at the time, males were to be preferred to females when choosing the owner of an estate. The son of two divorced parents died, the Reed family, both parents wanted to be the owner of the estate of the son. The court came to the conclusion that preferring a male to a female violates the fourteenth amendment, and is thus unconstitutional. -
Equal Rights Amendment
Originally proposed in 1972, this proposed amendment to the constitution would have made discrimination on basis of sex illegal under the law. The amendment passed both houses of congress, but didn’t meet the requirements to be passed by the states (thirty-eight states are required) by June 1982, and the amendment died before being added. There are attempts to this day to revive the amendment, but its future is questionable as of now. -
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke
A 35 year old white man, by the name of Allan Bakke, applies to the University of California for medical school, but is rejected. Allan sees this as unfair, as the school only accepts 100 students per year, and 16 of those spots are reserved for "Qualified Minorities" as part of affirmative action. Allan's test scores and grades were higher than those many of the “Qualified minorities”, and he sued the school. The court ruled in favor of Allan, using the 14th amendment's equal protection clause. -
Bowers v. Hardwick
Michael Hardwick, a gay man, was caught engaging in sodomy by a Police officer in Georgia, which broke Sodomy laws at the time. He challenged the constitutionality of such a law in court, and the lawsuit made its way all the way to the supreme court. The court upheld that the anti-sodomy laws in Georgia were constitutional. This was later overturned by Lawrence v. Texas in 2003. -
Americans with disabilities act
This act, passed in 1990, prohibited discrimination against people with physical and mental disabilities. This means that employers and other such people cannot legally fire somebody solely for a disability that they have, allowing for those people to have much easier times finding and keeping jobs, as previously employers would see them as more of a hassle than a benefit. -
The Motor Voter Act
This act required states to allow people an opportunity to register to vote at a motor vehicle agency upon receiving identification such as a drivers license from said institution. This would hopefully allow more people to become registered to vote and would make it easier for many people who had previously been unfamiliar with the process to vote. -
Lawrence v. Texas
Texas police entered the home of John Lawrence and discovered him and another man engaging in sexual activity, which was illegal under Texas law. Eventually, the case reached the Supreme Court, where it was decided that the creation of anti-sodomy laws and the like was unconstitutional due to the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment. -
Obergefell v. Hodges
A number of different same-sex couples from around the country in states where same-sex marriage was not yet recognized as an institution by the government came forward and sued their respective states using the due process and equal protections clause of the fourteenth amendment, hoping to make same-sex marriage a recognized institution throughout the country. The Supreme court ruled in favor of Obergefell, making Same-sex marriage legal throughout the country