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Civil Rights and Discrimination

Selected Works

2012

Civil rights

Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Law

Equality Standards For Health Insurance Coverage: Will The Mental Health Parity And Addiction Equity Act End The Discrimination?, Ellen M. Weber Oct 2012

Equality Standards For Health Insurance Coverage: Will The Mental Health Parity And Addiction Equity Act End The Discrimination?, Ellen M. Weber

Ellen M. Weber

Congress enacted the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act in 2008 to end discriminatory health insurance coverage for persons with mental health and substance use disorders in large employer health plans. Adopting a comprehensive regulatory approach akin to other civil rights laws, the Parity Act requires “equity” in all plan features, including cost-sharing, durational limits and, most critically, the plan management practices that are used to deny many families medically necessary behavioral health care. Beginning in 2014, all health plans regulated by the Affordable Care Act must also comply with parity standards, effectively ending the second-class insurance status of …


Conceptualizing Constitutional Litigation As Anti-Government Expression: A Speech-Centered Theory Of Court Access, Robert L. Tsai Aug 2012

Conceptualizing Constitutional Litigation As Anti-Government Expression: A Speech-Centered Theory Of Court Access, Robert L. Tsai

Robert L Tsai

This Article proposes a speech-based right of court access. First, it finds the traditional due process approach to be analytically incoherent and of limited practical value. Second, it contends that history, constitutional structure, and theory all support conceiving of the right of access as the modern analogue to the right to petition government for redress. Third, the Article explores the ways in which the civil rights plaintiff's lawsuit tracks the behavior of the traditional dissident. Fourth, by way of a case study, the essay argues that recent restrictions - notably, a congressional limitation on the amount of fees counsel for …


Inside The Civil Rights Ring: Statutory Jabs And Constitutional Haymakers, Aaron J. Shuler Dec 2011

Inside The Civil Rights Ring: Statutory Jabs And Constitutional Haymakers, Aaron J. Shuler

Aaron J Shuler

Civil rights litigators use statutory and constitutional attacks to combat inequality. Each approach has its advantages and drawbacks developed through interpretation by U.S. courts. The first major decision that shaped modern civil rights was the Civil Rights Cases that dodged a constitutional attack to withdraw most private acts of discrimination out of reach until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed and validated in Heart of Atlanta v. U.S. In addition to the coupling of statutory attacks with private discrimination and constitutional challenges to state biases, statutory attacks have proven to be more adept at addressing disparate impacts as …


The Long And Winding Road From Monroe To Connick, Sheldon Nahmod Dec 2011

The Long And Winding Road From Monroe To Connick, Sheldon Nahmod

Sheldon Nahmod

In this article, I address the historical and doctrinal development of § 1983 local government liability, beginning with Monroe v. Pape in 1961 and culminating in the Supreme Court’s controversial 2011 failure to train decision in Connick v. Thompson. Connick has made it exceptionally difficult for § 1983 plaintiffs to prevail against local governments in failure to train cases. In the course of my analysis, I also consider the oral argument and opinions in Connick as well as various aspects of § 1983 doctrine. I ultimately situate Connick in the Court’s federalism jurisprudence which doubles back to Justice Frankfurter’s view …