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Full-Text Articles in Civil Rights and Discrimination

The Disenfranchisement Of Ex-Felons In Florida: A Brief History, Sarah A. Lewis Dec 2018

The Disenfranchisement Of Ex-Felons In Florida: A Brief History, Sarah A. Lewis

UF Law Faculty Publications

This paper will explore the origins of Florida’s felony disenfranchisement laws in the period from 1865 to 1968. The first part of this paper will review the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which ended slavery, and the Florida Black Code, which sought to return freedmen to a slavery-like status. The second part of the paper will explore Florida’s reaction to the passage of the Reconstruction Act of 1867, which conditioned reentrance into the Union on the writing of new state constitutions by former Confederate states extending the right to vote to all males regardless of race, and ratification of …


The Network For Justice: Pursuing A Latinx Civil Rights Agenda, Luz E. Herrera, Pilar M. Hernández-Escontrías Oct 2018

The Network For Justice: Pursuing A Latinx Civil Rights Agenda, Luz E. Herrera, Pilar M. Hernández-Escontrías

Luz Herrera

This article explores the need to develop a Latinx-focused network that advances law and policy. The Network for Justice is necessary to build upon the existing infrastructure in the legal sector to support the rapidly changing demographic profile of the United States. Latinxs are no longer a small or regionally concentrated population and cannot be discounted as a foreign population. Latinxs reside in every state in our nation and, in some communities, comprise a majority of the population. The goal of the Network for Justice is to facilitate and support local and statewide efforts to connect community advocates to formal …


Is Groton The Next Evenwel?, Paul H. Edelman Oct 2018

Is Groton The Next Evenwel?, Paul H. Edelman

Michigan Law Review Online

In Evenwel v. Abbott the Supreme Court left open the question of whether states could employ population measures other than total population as a basis for drawing representative districts so as to meet the requirement of "one person, one vote" (OPOV). It was thought that there was little prospect of resolving this question soon as no appropriate instances of such behavior were known. That belief was mistaken. In this Essay I report on the Town of Groton, Connecticut, which uses registered voter data to apportion seats in its Representative Town Meeting and has done so since its incorporation in 1957. …


A Conversation On Learning From The History Of The Civil Rights Movement, Walter F. Mondale Jul 2018

A Conversation On Learning From The History Of The Civil Rights Movement, Walter F. Mondale

Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality

Introduction & Abridged Transcript, The Summit for Civil Rights, November 10, 2017


State Court Litigation: The New Front In The War Against Partisan Gerrymandering, Charlie Stewart Jun 2018

State Court Litigation: The New Front In The War Against Partisan Gerrymandering, Charlie Stewart

Michigan Law Review Online

Partisan gerrymandering is the process of drafting state and congressional districts in a manner that gives one political party an advantage over another. The end goal is simple: help your party win more seats or protect existing ones. The tactic is as old as the United States. In 1788, Patrick Henry convinced the Virginia state legislature to draw the 5th Congressional District to pit his rival James Madison against James Monroe. The term “gerrymander” itself is a hybrid: in 1810, democratic Governor Gerry signed a partisan redistricting plan into law—one that contained a district that infamously looked like a salamander. …


Suing For Spanish: Puerto Ricans, Bilingual Voting, And Legal Activism In The 1970s, Ariel Arnau May 2018

Suing For Spanish: Puerto Ricans, Bilingual Voting, And Legal Activism In The 1970s, Ariel Arnau

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines how the legal activism of a Puerto Rican group of activist-lawyers and community members contributed to the reshaping of voting law and language policy during the 1970s. The Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEF) coordinated a series of lawsuits in Chicago, New York City, and Philadelphia during the early 1970s. The decisions in these lawsuits provided the legal framework to rewrite federal voting rights law during the Voting Rights Act (VRA) reauthorization hearings in 1975. These cases resulted in vastly expanded opportunity to vote for all language minorities in the United States. These civil rights …


I Pledge Allegiance To The Party: Reclaiming The Associational Rights Of Independent Voters In Open Primaries, C. Alan Carrillo Apr 2018

I Pledge Allegiance To The Party: Reclaiming The Associational Rights Of Independent Voters In Open Primaries, C. Alan Carrillo

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.


Section 2 After Section 5: Voting Rights And The Race To The Bottom, Ellen D. Katz Apr 2018

Section 2 After Section 5: Voting Rights And The Race To The Bottom, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

Five years ago, Shelby County v. Holder released nine states and fifty-five smaller jurisdictions from the preclearance obligation set forth in section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). This obligation mandated that places with a history of discrimination in voting obtain federal approval—known as preclearance—before changing any electoral rule or procedure. Within hours of the Shelby County decision, jurisdictions began moving to reenact measures section 5 had specifically blocked. Others pressed forward with new rules that the VRA would have barred prior to Shelby County.


The Network For Justice: Pursuing A Latinx Civil Rights Agenda, Luz E. Herrera, Pilar M. Hernández-Escontrías Mar 2018

The Network For Justice: Pursuing A Latinx Civil Rights Agenda, Luz E. Herrera, Pilar M. Hernández-Escontrías

Faculty Scholarship

This article explores the need to develop a Latinx-focused network that advances law and policy. The Network for Justice is necessary to build upon the existing infrastructure in the legal sector to support the rapidly changing demographic profile of the United States. Latinxs are no longer a small or regionally concentrated population and cannot be discounted as a foreign population. Latinxs reside in every state in our nation and, in some communities, comprise a majority of the population. The goal of the Network for Justice is to facilitate and support local and statewide efforts to connect community advocates to formal …


Disparate Impact And Voting Rights: How Objections To Impact-Based Claims Prevent Plaintiffs From Prevailing In Cases Challenging New Forms Of Disenfranchisement, Jamelia Morgan Jan 2018

Disparate Impact And Voting Rights: How Objections To Impact-Based Claims Prevent Plaintiffs From Prevailing In Cases Challenging New Forms Of Disenfranchisement, Jamelia Morgan

Faculty Articles and Papers

As this article will show, the reluctance of courts to accept evidence of "impact plus" stems in part from a concern that the remedies required by impact-based claims under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act will involve essentialism and an affront to individual dignity. These concerns are animated in the vote dilution context where, in cases challenging the dilution of the minority vote, and not involving intentional vote dilution, objections have centered on the notion that Section 2's results test requires courts to make essentialist claims regarding minority and non-minority voting patterns and election choices. Such objections are misplaced …


Judicial Intervention As Judicial Restraint, Guy-Uriel Charles, Luis E. Fuentes-Rohwer Jan 2018

Judicial Intervention As Judicial Restraint, Guy-Uriel Charles, Luis E. Fuentes-Rohwer

Faculty Scholarship

This paper examines the Court's decision in Gil v. Whitford. It advances two claims. First, it provides a comprehensive account of the Court's skepticism of judicial supervision of democratic politics, an account that we call the narrative of nonintervention. It situates Gill within that account and argues that the Court's reluctance to intervene is a function of the Court's institutional calculus that it ought to protect its legitimacy and institutional capital when it engages in what look like political fights. Second, the paper provides an instrumentalist account for judicial intervention. It argues that the Court should intervene to prevent partisan …


Race And Representation Revisited: The New Racial Gerrymandering Cases And Section 2 Of The Vra, Guy-Uriel Charles, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer Jan 2018

Race And Representation Revisited: The New Racial Gerrymandering Cases And Section 2 Of The Vra, Guy-Uriel Charles, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Race And Representation Revisited: The New Racial Gerrymandering Cases And Section 2 Of The Vra, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer, Guy-Uriel E. Charles Jan 2018

Race And Representation Revisited: The New Racial Gerrymandering Cases And Section 2 Of The Vra, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer, Guy-Uriel E. Charles

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This article explores the Supreme Court's new racial gerrymandering cases and argue that those cases are on a collision course with Section 2 of the VRA. We revisit the Shaw line of cases and explain that the Shaw cases were more sympathetic to the representational rights of voters of color than are the new racial gerrymandering cases. This is primarily because the Shaw cases made room within the doctrine for the state to pursue descriptive representation for voters of color. We argue that new racial gerrymandering cases are inimical to descriptive representation. To the extent that voting rights scholars and …