Law Commons^™

Apartheid Baltimore Style: The Residential Segregation Ordinances Of 1910-1913, Garrett Power

Garrett Power

On May 15, 1911, Baltimore Mayor J. Barry Mahool signed into law an ordinance for “preserving the peace, preventing conflict and ill feeling between the white and colored races in Baltimore City.” This ordinance provided for the use of separate blocks by African American and whites and was the first such law in the nation directly aimed at segregating black and white homeowners. This article considers the historical significance of Baltimore’s first housing segregation law.

Recent Decisions, Phoebe A. Haddon

Phoebe A. Haddon

No abstract provided.

Should Race Matter When Rectifying Past Errors?, Alan E. Garfield

Alan E Garfield

No abstract provided.

The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act Of 2008: A Case Study Of The Need For Better Congressional Responses To Federalism Jurisprudence, Harper Jean Tobin

Harper Jean Tobin

The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (GINA) is the first new civil rights statute enacted since the “federalism revolution” of 1995-2001, in which the Supreme Court announced new limitations on congressional authority. Among other things, these decisions invalidated civil rights remedies against states, declaring that Congress had failed to amass sufficient evidence of the need for legislation. Although passed in the shadow of these decisions, GINA’s limited legislative history makes it vulnerable to attack – potentially limiting its protections for millions of state employees. States will likely attack GINA on two grounds: first, that Congress relied only on its …

How The Diversity Rationale Lays The Groundwork For New Discrimination: Examining The Trajectory Of Equal Protection Doctrine, Michael Helfand

Michael A Helfand

This Article advocates differentiating between two distinct categories of equal protection cases. The first-what I have termed indicator cases-are instances where courts consider whether there are sufficient factual indications to demonstrate the existence of aprimafacie equal protection violation. The second-violation casesare instances where courts consider, having already determined the existence of an equal protection violation, whether there is a good enough justification for a prima facie equal protection violation. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has not differentiated between these two different types of cases. This has led to a string of decisions where the Supreme Court has erroneously looked for justifications …

Abolishing The Time Tax On Voting, Elora Mukherjee

Elora Mukherjee

A “time tax” is a government policy or practice that forces one citizen to pay more in time to vote compared with her fellow citizens. While few have noticed the scope of the problem, data indicate that, due primarily to long lines, hundreds of thousands if not millions of voters are routinely unable to vote in national elections as a result of the time tax, and that the problem disproportionately affects minority voters and voters in the South. This Article documents the problem and offers a roadmap for legal and political strategies for solving it. The Article uses as a …

Cumulative Jurisprudence And Hate Speech: Sexual Orientation And Analogies To Disability, Age And Obesity, Eric Heinze

Prof. Eric Heinze, Queen Mary University of London

Non-discrimination norms in human rights instruments generally enumerate specified categories for protection, such as race, ethnicity, sex or religion, etc. They often omit express reference to sexual minorities.

Through open-ended interpretation, however, sexual minorities subsequently become incorporated. That ‘cumulative jurisprudence’ yields protections for sexual minorities through norms governing privacy, employment, age of consent, or freedoms of speech and association.

Hate speech bans, too, are often formulated with reference to traditionally recognised categories, particularly race and religion. It might be expected that the same cumulative jurisprudence should therefore be applied to include sexual minorities. In this article, that approach is challenged. …

Safford Unified School District No. 1 V. Redding, And The Future Of School Strip Searches, Lewis R. Katz

Faculty Publications

Each year in America an unknown number of children in primary and secondary schools are strip searched by teachers and/or school administrators, forced to remove pants and shirts down to their underwear and sometimes forced to expose their breasts and genitals. In Safford Unified School District No. 1 v. Redding, 129 S.Ct. 2633 (29), the Supreme Court weighed in on the issue, finding that school officials violated the child’s Fourth Amendment rights during a strip search but reversing the Ninth Circuit and awarding the school officials qualified immunity not withstanding the ineptitude of the investigation. The Court purported to apply …

Social Movements And Judging: An Essay On Institutional Reform Litigation And Desegregation In Dallas, Texas, Darren Hutchinson

Darren L Hutchinson

No abstract provided.

Racial Exhaustion, Darren Hutchinson

Darren L Hutchinson

This Article examines historical and contemporary race discourse contained in political and juridical sources in order to illustrate how opponents to racial egalitarian measures have frequently contested such policies on the grounds that they are redundant, unnecessary, or too burdensome or taxing. Racial exhaustion rhetoric has operated as a persistent discursive instrument utilized to contest claims of racial injustice and to resist the enactment of racial egalitarian legislation. Racial exhaustion rhetoric has enjoyed particular force during and immediately following periods of mass political mobilization by antiracist social movements and institutional political actors, and it retains potency in contemporary racial discourse. …

The Usual Suspect Classifications: Criminals, Aliens And The Future Of Same-Sex Marriage, Michael A. Helfand

Michael A Helfand

In this Article, I argue for a new understanding of the immutability factor employed by courts in determining which classifications ought to receive suspect status under the Equal Protection Clause. Drawing on the process-based foundations of the Equal Protection Clause, this new understanding defines immutable traits not as traits that cannot be changed, but as traits that are in the words of the Supreme Court in Frontiero v. Richardson, mere "accident[s] of birth." In contrast, courts and scholars typically center the immutability inquiry on an individual’s technical ability to exit a particular class, which has led to inconsistencies in …