In looking at civil rights, let’s begin with a definition, the definition

In looking at civil rights, let’s begin with a definition, the definition goes like this The role of civil rights is to provide policies that extend basic rights to groups historically subject to discrimination. Now we need to remember that civil liberties guarantees individual rights, where civil rights protects groups, whole groups of people.

There are some necessary amendments that promote the civil rights, the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, the 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal protection under the law and due process under the law. The 15th Amendment extends the right to vote to all males collectively. The 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments are referred to as the Civil War Amendments as each of the civil rights of African-Americans coming out of slavery. The last one is the 19th Amendment, which extends the right to vote to all women.

Let’s go back at the 14th Amendment. We talked about this when we talked about the US Constitution a few weeks back, but this is a refresher slide. The 14th Amendment guarantees equal protection under the law and due process under the law. This amendment defines citizenship. It restricts the power of the states in the relationship with its inhabitants, forbids states from depriving any person of life, liberty and property without due process of the law. It also obligates states in their relations with one another and that citizens cannot be discriminated by any state they enter. It is interpreted to apply to individuals by virtue of their national citizenship. Such privileges include the right to travel, engage in interstate commerce, access to elected officials out of state residents may not have the right to vote or receive lower tuition rates while attending universities. Now citizenship can be defined either by right or soil. A right of blood due solely is right of soil. If you were born on American territory, any one of the 50 states a military establishment in another country or an American embassy, you automatically have American citizenship because you were born on American property. Too sanguine is the right of blood. If one of your parents is already an American citizen, their citizenship is passed down to you.

A couple of cases involving civil rights, the first one is Plessy vs. Ferguson, a Bakhtin ninety six. This is the case that established the separate but equal doctrine, which basically says that any public institutions can separate based on race as long as accommodation accommodations are equal for all involved. However, that’s never been the practice of racial segregation has always existed in this country up until the 1950s, and the accommodations were rarely equal. In the 1950s, we started seeing some additional Supreme Court rulings, including the very famous Brown vs. Board of Education in nineteen fifty four, which ended the segregation in public schools. There was a group of African-American families in Topeka, Kansas, that sued the local school district simply because they’re African-American children were not allowed to attend the nearest elementary schools that they live near. Well, the US Supreme Court, in a nine to nothing ruling, ruled in favor of the families and instructed all public schools to open the doors to all students, regardless of skin color or ethnic background. Also, what was happening in the 1950s and 60s was the beginnings of the civil rights movement that was led by Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.. We also one of the things that made him famous was the Montgomery bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. Now, Rosa Parks was a woman who was living in Montgomery, Alabama. She was a seamstress, but she was also active with the NAACP and she often took the bus to and from wherever she needed to go in the bus system in Montgomery, the white people got to sit in front, but the black people had to sit in the back. Well, one day she got on the bus and proceeded to sit in the section earmarked for African-American people. Well, the white section filled up and one more white person got on and she was instructed by the bus driver to relinquish her seat to a white male. She refused. She was arrested and and had to pay a fine for disturbing the peace. And it was at that moment where the African-American community, led by Martin Luther King Jr. to boycott the bus system and force a bus system to eliminate the segregation policies. It took about 14 months and a couple of lawsuits, one of which was held by her by the US Supreme Court. And it was overturned. And she got to sit in the front of the bus. OK, so what can we learn from the civil rights movement or any type of social movement, what makes them successful, having experienced leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and energized members like Rosa Parks and other activists who are willing to show up and take the risk having a cause worth fighting for? Use media and social media frequently during the Montgomery bus boycott, they printed up flyers and spread them across the city and so that instructing people to not ride the bus, it was effective. Of course, today we have social media platforms. It’s easier than creating flyers to get the word out, use collective action to gain popular support. One of the things that the civil rights movement did was they did protests and demonstrations. They used to go into restaurants where they had a counter where people could eat at and they would sit at the counter and order only water and they would get arrested because they were disturbing the peace and not ordering food. And there were African-American people sitting in a whites only restaurant. That was what we call a civil disobedience. You also have to act outside the normal channels of government and politics. This is where you need to get the public involved, get the public to pay attention to what you’re doing in the hopes that they will overwhelmingly support you. This is what we call the outside game. You also have to act inside the normal channels of government by way of lobbying and fundraising for elected officials, what we call the inside game. Loving versus Virginia. Nineteen sixty seven, the US Supreme Court that struck down all state laws banning interracial marriage as violations of the Equal Protection and Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution. Lawrence versus Texas, two thousand three. The US Supreme Court ruled that a Texas state law that criminalized certain intimate sexual conduct between two consenting adults of the same sex was unconstitutional. Though the sodomy laws that considered such an activity is criminal in a dozen other states were also invalidated. Overfill versus Hodges, twenty fifteen, the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of gay marriage in the case, citing that due process and equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment applied. The Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four, this law makes illegal racial discrimination in areas of public accommodations and in employment on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, gender and sexual orientation. The sexual orientation language was added in nineteen ninety one and the gender identity language is added in twenty fifteen. The Americans with Disabilities Act, the ADA, was written to provide for reasonable accommodations for persons with physical or emotional disabilities.

The Voting Rights Act of nineteen sixty five, this act protects your right to vote by prohibiting the use of any registration procedures that could deny a person the right to vote. This also allows the federal government to appoint federal voting examiners in areas in any area where there was a probable cause to suspect discrimination. These body examiners would guarantee that everyone would have their right to vote and the right to register to vote. And if any local governments or the officials get the way, they could be punished in federal courts. What’s not allowed anymore under the voting rights of nineteen sixty five is the poll tax expecting people to pay a fee in order to exercise their right to vote. The grandfather clause has said that if you can prove that your grandfather voted, then you’ll be able to vote too. But how are you going to prove that your grandfather voted? You can’t. So and the idea about this one, what’s so insidious is that if your grandfather couldn’t vote, you can’t vote and neither will your children and grandchildren into the future. Not allowed the literacy test. Well, the idea of making people take a test to prove that they’re educated enough to vote. Now, the voting rights law says you have to be 18 and a citizen. You do not have to take any type of a test. Back in twenty thirteen, Texas decided to change its voter ID laws that prevented women voting while married because when a woman gets married, she often takes her husband’s name. And so her name goes from middle first middle name to first middle married name. And that’s that name would show up on her driver’s license, credit card, Social Security cards, passports and other formal forms of ID. But the Texas voter ID card that gets distributed would show the woman’s first name, maiden name and then married name. So women in twenty, thirteen and twenty fourteen, when they went to go to vote, they had their driver’s license and a voter ID card that conflicted on what her middle name is. And women across the board in Texas, Republicans, Democrats, judges, legislators, nurses, doctors, teachers, cafeteria workers, all were denied their right to vote. Why? Because women tend to be a little bit more liberal than men. Well, they vote or at least more moderate. The last on the list is the Wisconsin case from twenty sixteen, where the state of Wisconsin told students that in order for them to vote, they had to not only have a government government issued ID like a driver’s license or passport, plus the voter ID card given to them. But when they registered to vote, but they also had to prove that they were college students, which meant they had to find and get their college photo ID and a printout of the classes they were taking that semester to prove that they were legitimately college students. Shelby vs. Holder, twenty 13, reversing portions of the Voting Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was enacted as a response to the nearly century long history of voting discrimination. Section five prohibits eligible districts from enacting changes to their election laws and procedures without gaining official authorization. Section five was originally enacted for five years, but has been continually renewed since that time. Section four requires that voting districts must prove to the attorney general or a three judge panel of a Washington, D.C., district court that the change neither has the purpose nor will have the effect of negatively impacting any individual’s right to vote based on race or minority status. So the question to the US Supreme Court is, does the renewal of Section five of the Voting Rights Act under the constraints of Section four, b exceed Congress’s authority under the 14th and 15th Amendments and therefore violate the 10th Amendment and Article four of the Constitution? Remember the 10th Amendment in order for deals with states rights?

The court held that Section four of the Voting Rights Act imposes current burdens that are no longer responsive to the current conditions, the voting districts in question, although the constraints of section places on specific states made since the 1960s and 70s, they do not any longer and now represent an unconstitutional violation of the power to regulate elections that the Constitution reserves for the states. The court also held that the formula for determining whether changes to a state’s voting procedure should be federally reviewed is now outdated and does not reflect the changes that have occurred in the last 50 years in narrowing the voting turnout gap in the states in question. The results have been predictable voter ID laws, which experts suggest will make voting harder, especially for poorer people, people of color and elderly people have advanced in several states and that some voting laws that make it easier to register and cast ballots have been destroyed. For many of the jurisdictions formerly under preclearance, voting became rapidly more difficult after the Shelby County decision, particularly for poor and elderly black people and Latinos.

Right to privacy, the constitutional right to privacy was established by the Supreme Court when the court addressed cases regarding reproductive rights cases include Griswold versus Connecticut nineteen sixty five that allows the use of birth control by married couples Eisenstat versus Bear nineteen seventy two affirms the right for unmarried couples to use contraception based on the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Roe versus Wade. Nineteen seventy three allows the right to obtain an abortion. Planned Parenthood vs. Casey nineteen ninety two originally prevented states from banning abortion before fetal viability, generally within the first twenty four weeks on the basis that a woman’s choice for abortion during that time is protected by rights to privacy under the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution.

Dobbs versus Jackson Women’s Health Organization Twenty Twenty two is a decision of the US Supreme Court in which the court held that the Constitution of the United States does not confer a right to abortion. The court’s decision overruled both the Roe v. Wade case and the Planned Parenthood vs. Casey case. This case was about the constitutionality of a twenty eighteen Mississippi state law that ban most abortion operations after the first 15 weeks of pregnancy. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Mississippi’s only abortion clinic, had sued Thomas E. DOBs, the state health officer with the Mississippi State Department of Health, in March. Twenty eighteen lower courts had prevented enforcement of the law with preliminary injunctions. The injunctions were based on the ruling in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, which had prevented states from banning abortion before viability. The court also ruled that the right, affirmed by the Planned Parenthood case, must be balanced with possible government interests and may be affected by medical advancements that allow premature babies to survive at younger gestational ages.