Fourteenth Amendment Commons^™

Oh, What A Truism The Tenth Amendment Is: State Sovereignty, Sovereign Immunity, And Individual Liberties, Sharon E. Rush

UF Law Faculty Publications

The Supreme Court under the late Chief Justice Rehnquist and now Chief Justice Roberts takes the Tenth Amendment and state sovereignty seriously. It also takes the Eleventh Amendment and state sovereign immunity seriously. Moreover, the contemporary Court’s interpretations of Congress’s Article I powers are based on its concomitant interpretations of the Tenth and Eleventh Amendments, which the Court has infused with the idea that an inherent part of a state’s sovereignty is not just its prerogative not to have its treasuries invaded, but also includes its right not to have its dignity assaulted. Protecting the dignity of states and other …

Undignified: The Supreme Court, Racial Justice, And Dignity Claims, Darren Lenard Hutchinson

UF Law Faculty Publications

The Supreme Court has interpreted the Equal Protection Clause as a formal equality mandate. In response, legal scholars have advocated alternative conceptions of equality, such as antisubordination theory, that interpret equal protection in more substantive terms. Antisubordination theory would consider the social context in which race-based policies emerge and recognize material distinctions between policies intended to oppress racial minorities and those designed to ameliorate past and current racism. Antisubordination theory would also closely scrutinize facially neutral state action that systemically disadvantages vulnerable social groups. The Court has largely ignored these reform proposals. Modern Supreme Court rulings, however, have invoked the …

"Not Without Political Power": Gays And Lesbians, Equal Protection, Darren Lenard Hutchinson

UF Law Faculty Publications

The Supreme Court purportedly utilizes the suspect class doctrine in order to balance institutional concerns with the protection of important constitutional rights. The Court, however, inconsistently applies this doctrine, and it has not precisely defined its contours. The political powerlessness factor is especially undertheorized and contradictorily applied. Nevertheless, this factor has become salient in recent equal protection cases brought by gay and lesbian plaintiffs. A growing body of and federal and state-court precedent addresses the flaws of the Court's suspect class doctrine. This Article discusses the inadequacies of the suspect class doctrine and highlights problems within the emerging scholarship and …

Equal Protection And Aesthetic Zoning: A Possible Crack And A Preemptive Repair, Dawn E. Jourdan, Louis G. Tassinary, Russ Parsons

UF Law Faculty Publications

In Village of Willowbrook v. Olech, the property owner alleged "the Village intentionally demanded a 33-foot easement as a condition of connecting her property to the municipal water supply where the Village required only a 15-foot easement from other similarly situated property owners." The complaint further described the village's demand as "irrational and wholly arbitrary." According to the Seventh Circuit, the property owner could allege an equal protection violation by asserting the state's action was motivated solely by a "spiteful effort to 'get' him for reasons wholly unrelated to any legitimate state objective." On appeal, the Supreme Court agreed, …

Sexual Politics And Social Change, Darren Lenard Hutchinson

UF Law Faculty Publications

The Article examines the impact of social movement activity upon the advancement of GLBT rights. It analyzes the state and local strategy that GLBT social movements utilized to alter the legal status of sexual orientation and sexuality following the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bowers v. Hardwick. Successful advocacy before state and local courts, human rights commissions, and legislatures fundamentally shifted public opinion and laws regarding sexual orientation and sexuality between Bowers and the Supreme Court’s ruling in Lawrence v. Texas. This altered landscape created the "political opportunity" for the Lawrence ruling and made the opinion relatively "safe".

Currently, GLBT rights …

School Discipline 101: Students' Due Process Rights In Expulsion Hearings, Melissa Frydman, Shani M. King

UF Law Faculty Publications

Upholding the principle that school districts, as state actors, shall not deprive a student of liberty or property without due process of law, courts have expanded for more than four decades the Fourteenth Amendment's due process protection of public school students. Understanding this principle is essential to representing children in school discipline proceedings. Before presenting a practical guide to representing students in these proceedings, we offer a brief history of due process protection for children.

The Majoritarian Difficulty: Affirmative Action, Sodomy, And Supreme Court Politics, Darren Lenard Hutchinson

UF Law Faculty Publications

Contemporary debates over recent Court decisions provide a rich context to weigh claims of judicial countermajoritarianism against the work of constitutional theorists, critical legal scholars, and political scientists who view the Court as a majoritarian body. In particular, the Court's decisions in Lawrence v. Texas, Gratz v. Bollinger, and Grutter v. Bollinger have reignited arguments concerning the propriety of judicial review. Prominent judicial commentators have described the decisions as important, and unexpected, civil rights victories from a markedly conservative Court. Liberal and conservative scholars and activists seem to agree with this description: mainline civil rights organizations and liberal scholars view …

Is "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" Unconstitutional After Lawrence? What It Will Take To Overturn The Policy, Diane H. Mazur

UF Law Faculty Publications

There can be a certain politeness to legal challenges to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," the congressional policy that attempts - fitfully, incompletely, and arbitrarily - to exclude gay citizens from both the responsibilities and privileges of military service.' We consider whether the military has articulated a "rational basis" for the policy – some explanation of the military's belief that it is at least rational (as opposed to irrational) to classify servicemembers as straight or gay and accept or reject them accordingly, all in the interest of military effectiveness. We accept the fact that judges assume there is a need for …

The Logic And Experience Of Law: Lawrence V. Texas And The Politics Of Privacy, Danaya C. Wright

UF Law Faculty Publications

The U.S. Supreme Court's June 2003 decision in Lawrence v. Texas may prove to be one of the most important civil rights cases of the twenty-first century. It may do for gay and lesbian people what Brown v. Board of Education did for African-Americans and Roe v. Wade did for women. While I certainly hope so, my enthusiasm is tempered by the fact that discrimination on the basis of race or gender has not disappeared. Will Lawrence signal meaningful change, or will its revolutionary possibilities be stifled by endless cycles of excuse and redefinition? The case is important, but I …

"Unexplainable On Grounds Other Than Race": The Inversion Of Privilege And Subordination In Equal Protection Jurisprudence, Darren Lenard Hutchinson

UF Law Faculty Publications

In this article, Professor Darren Hutchinson contributes to the debate over the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause by arguing that the Supreme Court has inverted its purpose and effect. Professor Hutchinson contends that the Court, in its judicial capacity, provides protection and judicial solicitude for privileged and powerful groups in our country, while at the same time requires traditionally subordinated and oppressed groups to utilize the political process to seek redress for acts of oppression. According to Professor Hutchinson, this process allows social structures of oppression and subordination to remain intact.

First, Professor Hutchinson examines the various …

“Gay Rights” For “Gay Whites”?: Race, Sexual Identity, And Equal Protection Discourse, Darren Lenard Hutchinson

UF Law Faculty Publications

While the resolution of the problem of gay and lesbian inequality will ultimately turn on a host of social, legal, political, and ideological variables, this Article argues that the success or failure of efforts to achieve legal equality for gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered individuals will depend in large part on how scholars and activists in this field address questions of racial identity and racial subjugation. Commonly, these scholars and activists currently discuss race by use of analogies between “racial discrimination” and “sexual orientation discrimination,” or between “people of color” and “gays and lesbians.” On one level, the “comparative approach” …

Accommodating Outness: Hurley, Free Speech, And Gay And Lesbian Equality, Darren Lenard Hutchinson

UF Law Faculty Publications

In this article I explore two important questions raised by the Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston decision. First, although the Supreme Court did not analyze the case under the Roberts framework, it suggested at the conclusion of the opinion that the case would have the same outcome under that test. The Court's dictum concerning the Roberts trilogy thus raises the question whether Hurley indicates that the Court might disturb the Roberts doctrine if presented with the opportunity. Second, the Hurley Court, in rejecting GLIB's claim, found that the parade organizers were not attempting to exclude …

Diversity: The Red Herring Of Equal Protection, Sharon E. Rush

UF Law Faculty Publications

Couching the constitutional inquiry in cases like Bakke and VMI in the context of integration also puts in perspective the diversity justification. Affirmative action policies are constitutional because they integrate state programs. Integration on the basis of race and sex also diversifies state programs. In contrast, attempts to justify sex-segregation in state programs by arguing the policy promotes diversity is irrelevant to an equal protection analysis. Voluntarily created all-female schools should be constitutional because they promote the equal citizenship of women without damaging the equal citizenship stature of men. This is true for voluntarily race-segregated programs for minorities; as well. …

Rights Held Hostage: Race, Ideology And The Peremptory Challenge, Kenneth B. Nunn

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article addresses the Supreme Court's application of the Equal Protection Clause to the selection of juries in criminal trials. Focusing on Black-white relations, it takes the position that efforts to eliminate racial discrimination in jury selection are successful only to the extent that they also eliminate the result of the discrimination- racial subjugation of Blacks through the criminal justice process. By this measure, the Supreme Court's recent jury selection cases are an abject failure.