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Civil Rights and Discrimination

Race discrimination

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Full-Text Articles in Law

Columbia Law School’S Era Project Releases New Policy Paper Demonstrating Race-Based Gap In Who Benefits From Sex Discrimination Laws, Center For Gender And Sexuality Law Feb 2023

Columbia Law School’S Era Project Releases New Policy Paper Demonstrating Race-Based Gap In Who Benefits From Sex Discrimination Laws, Center For Gender And Sexuality Law

Center for Gender & Sexuality Law

New York, New YorkOn February 27, 2023, Columbia Law School’s Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) Project released a new policy paper showing that despite sweeping federal, state, and local laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex in virtually all significant aspects of the U.S. economy and society, white women have been the primary beneficiaries of sex equality laws, leaving women of color significantly behind.


Parading The Horribles: The Risks Of Expanding Religious Exemptions, Law, Rights, And Religion Project Sep 2022

Parading The Horribles: The Risks Of Expanding Religious Exemptions, Law, Rights, And Religion Project

Center for Gender & Sexuality Law

People of faith now have a constitutional right to practice their religion—even when doing so conflicts with a government law or policy — that is more rigorously protected than nearly any other right. Some states have passed bills that provide an even broader right to such “religious exemptions” from the law than provided under the U.S. Constitution. Other religious exemption bills have been introduced and await consideration.


Studying The Relationship Between Ethnic Identity And Resiliency: A Broad Approach, Mary Zheng May 2021

Studying The Relationship Between Ethnic Identity And Resiliency: A Broad Approach, Mary Zheng

Honors Program Theses and Projects

Ethnic minorities in the United States face prejudice and racial discrimination, causing feelings of distress. However, ethnic minorities have shown an ability to overcome these negative experiences. Racial identity has been associated with more adjustments and higher functioning for ethnic minorities. To gain a clearer understanding of this phenomenon, we included White people in this study to gain an accurate picture of how resiliency operates differently for people of color and Whites and if it is indeed distinct between the two groups. The purpose of this project is to find and examine the link between ethnic identity and resiliency in …


Lawyers For White People?, Jessie Allen Jan 2021

Lawyers For White People?, Jessie Allen

Articles

This article investigates an anomalous legal ethics rule, and in the process exposes how current equal protection doctrine distorts civil rights regulation. When in 2016 the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct finally adopted its first ever rule forbidding discrimination in the practice of law, the rule carried a strange exemption: it does not apply to lawyers’ acceptance or rejection of clients. The exemption for client selection seems wrong. It contradicts the common understanding that in the U.S. today businesses may not refuse service on discriminatory grounds. It sends a message that lawyers enjoy a professional prerogative to discriminate against …


While The Water Is Stirring: Sojourner Truth As Proto-Agonist In The Fight For (Black) Women’S Rights, Lolita Buckner Inniss Jan 2020

While The Water Is Stirring: Sojourner Truth As Proto-Agonist In The Fight For (Black) Women’S Rights, Lolita Buckner Inniss

Publications

This Essay argues for a greater understanding of Sojourner Truth’s little-discussed role as a proto-agonist (a marginalized, long-suffering forerunner as opposed to a protagonist, a highly celebrated central character) in the process that led up to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Though the Nineteenth Amendment failed to deliver on its promise of suffrage for black women immediately after its enactment, black women were stalwarts in the fight for the Amendment and for women’s rights more broadly, well before the ratification of the Amendment and for many years after its passage. Women’s rights in general, and black women’s rights in …


Race, Space, And Surveillance: A Response To #Livingwhileblack: Blackness As Nuisance, Lolita Buckner Inniss Jan 2020

Race, Space, And Surveillance: A Response To #Livingwhileblack: Blackness As Nuisance, Lolita Buckner Inniss

Publications

This article is an invited response to an American University Law Review article titled “#LivingWhileBlack: Blackness as Nuisance” that has been widely discussed in the news media and in academic circles.


Genetic Race? Dna Ancestry Tests, Racial Identity, And The Law, Trina Jones, Jessica L. Roberts Jan 2020

Genetic Race? Dna Ancestry Tests, Racial Identity, And The Law, Trina Jones, Jessica L. Roberts

Faculty Scholarship

Can genetic tests determine race? Americans are fascinated with DNA ancestry testing services like 23andMe and AncestryDNA. Indeed, in recent years, some people have changed their racial identity based upon DNA ancestry tests and have sought to use test results in lawsuits and for other strategic purposes. Courts may be similarly tempted to use genetic ancestry in determining race. In this Essay, we examine the ways in which DNA ancestry tests may affect contemporary understandings of racial identity. We argue that these tests are poor proxies for race because they fail to reflect the social, cultural, relational, and experiential norms …


Brief Of Amici Curiae Employment Law Professors In Support Of Respondents, Sandra F. Sperino Sep 2019

Brief Of Amici Curiae Employment Law Professors In Support Of Respondents, Sandra F. Sperino

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

This Court should not interpret section 1981 to require proof of but-for causation, given that statute’s text, history, and purpose. Although Comcast invokes the canon of statutory construction that Congress intends statutory terms to have their settled common-law meaning, that canon does not apply here. Section 1981 has no statutory text that reflects a common-law understanding of causation. Indeed, in 1866, when Congress enacted the predecessor to section 1981, there was no well-settled common law of tort at all. Rather, just as courts have read 42 U.S.C. § 1982, which shares common text, history and purpose, this Court should read …


'‘Male Chauvinism’ Is Under Attack From All Sides At Present': Roberts V. United States Jaycees, Sex Discrimination, And The First Amendment, Linda C. Mcclain May 2019

'‘Male Chauvinism’ Is Under Attack From All Sides At Present': Roberts V. United States Jaycees, Sex Discrimination, And The First Amendment, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

Today, many take it for granted that discriminating against women in the marketplace is illegal and morally wrong. Roberts v. United States Jaycees (1984) remains a foundational case on government’s compelling interest in prohibiting sex (or gender) discrimination in public accommodations, even in the face of First Amendment claims of freedom of association and expression. Curiously, Jaycees seems comparatively neglected by legal scholars, if measured by the cases included in the various collections of “law stories” or “rewritten opinions” projects. Looking back at the Jaycees litigation reveals the parties wrestling over the reach of public accommodations law and the force …


Slouching Toward Universality: A Brief History Of Race, Voting, And Political Participation, Guy-Uriel E. Charles, Luis E. Fuentes-Rohwer Jan 2019

Slouching Toward Universality: A Brief History Of Race, Voting, And Political Participation, Guy-Uriel E. Charles, Luis E. Fuentes-Rohwer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


The Rhetoric Of Bigotry And Conscience In Battles Over "Religious Liberty V. Lgbt Rights", Linda C. Mcclain Nov 2018

The Rhetoric Of Bigotry And Conscience In Battles Over "Religious Liberty V. Lgbt Rights", Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

Charges, denials, and countercharges of “bigotry” are a familiar feature in debates over the evident conflict between LGBT rights and religious liberty. A frequent claim is that religious individuals who reject the extension of civil marriage to same-sex couples and seek conscience-based exemptions from state public accommodations law that protect against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation are being “branded” as bigots. The rhetoric of bigotry raises a number of puzzles. Is sincerity or the appeal to conscience a defense to charge of bigotry? Is a charge of bigotry inferred simply from asserting that society should learn lessons from …


Employment Discrimination And The Domino Effect, Laura T. Kessler May 2018

Employment Discrimination And The Domino Effect, Laura T. Kessler

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Employment discrimination is a multidimensional problem. In many instances, some combination of employer bias, the organization of work, and employees’ responses to these conditions, leads to worker inequality. Title VII does not sufficiently account for these dynamics in two significant respects. First, Title VII’s major proof structures divide employment discrimination into discrete categories, for example, disparate treatment, disparate impact, and sexual harassment. This compartmentalization does not account for the fact that protected employees often concurrently experience more than one form of discriminatory exclusion. The various types of exclusion often add up to significant inequalities, even though seemingly insignificant when considered …


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.


Valuing Identity, Osamudia R. James Jan 2017

Valuing Identity, Osamudia R. James

Articles

No abstract provided.


When The Customer Is King: Employment Discrimination As Customer Service, Lu-In Wang Jan 2016

When The Customer Is King: Employment Discrimination As Customer Service, Lu-In Wang

Articles

Employers profit from giving customers opportunities to discriminate against service workers. Employment discrimination law should not, but in many ways does, allow them to get away with it. Employers are driven by self-interest to please customers, whose satisfaction is critical to business success and survival. Pleasing customers often involves cultivating and catering to their discriminatory expectations with respect to customer service — including facilitating customers’ direct discrimination against workers.

Current doctrine allows employers to escape responsibility for customers’ discrimination against workers because it takes an overly narrow view of the employment relationship. The doctrine focuses on the formal lines of …


Brief Of Amici Curiae Professors Of Law In Support Of Petitioner, Barbara Allen Babcock, Jeffrey Bellin, Darryl K. Brown, Robert P. Burns, James E. Coleman Jr., Lisa Kern Griffin, Robert P. Mosteller, Deborah Tuerkheimer, Neil Vidmar, Jessica L. West Jan 2016

Brief Of Amici Curiae Professors Of Law In Support Of Petitioner, Barbara Allen Babcock, Jeffrey Bellin, Darryl K. Brown, Robert P. Burns, James E. Coleman Jr., Lisa Kern Griffin, Robert P. Mosteller, Deborah Tuerkheimer, Neil Vidmar, Jessica L. West

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


The Thirteenth Amendment, Disparate Impact, And Empathy Deficits, Darrell A. H. Miller Jan 2016

The Thirteenth Amendment, Disparate Impact, And Empathy Deficits, Darrell A. H. Miller

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Brief For Amici Curiae Professors Of Law In Support Of Petitioner, Barbara Allen Babcock, Jeffrey Bellin, Robert P. Burns, Sherman J. Clark, James E. Coleman Jr., Lisa Kern Griffin, Robert P. Mosteller, Deborah Tuerkheimer, Neil Vidmar Dec 2015

Brief For Amici Curiae Professors Of Law In Support Of Petitioner, Barbara Allen Babcock, Jeffrey Bellin, Robert P. Burns, Sherman J. Clark, James E. Coleman Jr., Lisa Kern Griffin, Robert P. Mosteller, Deborah Tuerkheimer, Neil Vidmar

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Historical Differences In School Term Length And Measured Blood Pressure: Contributions To Persistent Racial Disparities Among Us- Born Adults, Sze Yan Liu, Jennifer J. Manly, Benjamin D. Capistrant, M. Maria Glymour Jun 2015

Historical Differences In School Term Length And Measured Blood Pressure: Contributions To Persistent Racial Disparities Among Us- Born Adults, Sze Yan Liu, Jennifer J. Manly, Benjamin D. Capistrant, M. Maria Glymour

Department of Public Health Scholarship and Creative Works

Introduction
Legally mandated segregation policies dictated significant differences in the educational experiences of black and white Americans through the first half of the 20th century, with markedly lower quality in schools attended by black children. We determined whether school term length, a common marker of school quality, was associated with blood pressure and hypertension among a cohort of older Americans who attended school during the de jure segregation era.
Methods
National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey I and II data were linked to state-level historical information on school term length. We used race and gender-stratified linear regression models adjusted for …


The Voting Rights In Winter: The Death Of A Superstatute, Guy-Uriel Charles, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer Jan 2015

The Voting Rights In Winter: The Death Of A Superstatute, Guy-Uriel Charles, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer

Faculty Scholarship

The Voting Rights Act (“VRA”), the most successful civil rights statute in American history, is dying. In the recent Shelby County decision, the U.S. Supreme Court signaled that the anti-discrimination model, long understood as the basis for the VRA as originally enacted, is no longer the best way to understand today’s voting rights questions. As a result, voting rights activists need to face up to the fact that voting rights law and policy are at a critical moment of transition. It is likely the case that the superstatute we once knew as the VRA is no more and is never …


Griggs At Midlife, Deborah A. Widiss Jan 2015

Griggs At Midlife, Deborah A. Widiss

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Griggs v. Duke Power, the Supreme Court case that held that policies that disproportionately harm minority employees can violate federal employment discrimination law even without evidence of “intentional” discrimination, recently turned forty. Griggs is generally celebrated as a landmark decision, but disparate impact’s current relevance (and its constitutionality) is hotly debated. Robert Belton’s The Crusade for Equality in the Workplace offers a rich and detailed history of the strategic choices that led to the plaintiffs’ victory in Griggs. This Review uses Belton’s history as a jumping off point to consider the contemporary importance of disparate impact in efforts to challenge …


Language Disenfranchisement In Juries: A Call For Constitutional Remediation, Jasmine Gonzales Rose Apr 2014

Language Disenfranchisement In Juries: A Call For Constitutional Remediation, Jasmine Gonzales Rose

Faculty Scholarship

Approximately thirteen million U.S. citizens, mostly Latinos and other people of color, are denied the right to serve on juries due to English language requirements and despite the possibility (and centuries-old tradition) of juror language accommodation. This exclusion results in the underrepresentation of racial minorities on juries and has a detrimental impact on criminal defendants, the perceived legitimacy of the justice system, and citizen participation in democracy. Yet, it has been virtually ignored. This Article examines the constitutionality of juror language requirements, focusing primarily on equal protection and the fair cross section requirement of the Sixth Amendment. Finding the existing …


State’S Rights, Last Rights, And Voting Rights, Guy-Uriel Charles, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer Jan 2014

State’S Rights, Last Rights, And Voting Rights, Guy-Uriel Charles, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer

Faculty Scholarship

There are two ways to read the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County Alabama v. Holder: as a minimalist decision or as a decision that undermines the basic infrastructure of voting rights policy, law, and jurisprudence. In this Article, we present the case for reading Shelby County as deeply destabilizing. We argue that Shelby County has undermined three assumptions that are foundational to voting rights policy, law, and jurisprudence. First, the Court has generally granted primacy of the federal government over the states. Second, the Court has deferred to Congress particularly where Congress is regulating at the intersection of race …


Brief Of Public Law Scholars As Amici Curiae In Support Of Petitioner, Ernest A. Young Jan 2014

Brief Of Public Law Scholars As Amici Curiae In Support Of Petitioner, Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


A Difficult Conversation: Corporate Directors On Race And Gender, Kimberly D. Krawiec, John M. Conley, Lissa L. Broome Jan 2014

A Difficult Conversation: Corporate Directors On Race And Gender, Kimberly D. Krawiec, John M. Conley, Lissa L. Broome

Faculty Scholarship

This symposium essay summarizes our ongoing ethnographic research on corporate board diversity, discussing the central tension in our respondents’ views – their overwhelmingly enthusiastic support of board diversity coupled with an inability to articulate coherent accounts of board diversity benefits that might rationalize that enthusiasm. As their reactions make clear, frank dialogue about race and gender – even a seemingly benign discussion of diversity’s benefits – can be a difficult conversation.


Voting Rights Law And Policy In Transition, Guy-Uriel E. Charles, Luis E. Fuentes-Rohwer Jan 2014

Voting Rights Law And Policy In Transition, Guy-Uriel E. Charles, Luis E. Fuentes-Rohwer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


The Danger Of Difference: Tensions In Directors’ View Of Corporate Board Diversity, Kimberly D. Krawiec, John M. Conley, Lissa L. Broome Jan 2013

The Danger Of Difference: Tensions In Directors’ View Of Corporate Board Diversity, Kimberly D. Krawiec, John M. Conley, Lissa L. Broome

Faculty Scholarship

This Article describes the results from fifty-seven interviews with corporate directors and a limited number of other persons (including institutional investors, search firm personnel, and the like) regarding their views on corporate board diversity. It highlights numerous tensions in these views. Most directors, for instance, proclaim that diverse boards are good, but very few directors can articulate their reasons for this belief. Some directors have suggested that diverse boards work better than non-diverse boards, but gave relatively few concrete examples of specific instances where a female or minority board member made a special contribution related to that director’s race or …


Lifting The Fog: Ending Felony Disenfranchisement In Virginia, Dori Elizabeth Martin Nov 2012

Lifting The Fog: Ending Felony Disenfranchisement In Virginia, Dori Elizabeth Martin

Law Student Publications

This comment explores how Virginia's disenfranchisement law originated, how it has managed to survive throughout Virginia's history, and whether it may be vulnerable to various legal challenges. Part II outlines the history of felony disenfranchisement in Virginia. Part III analyzes common policy justifications for the current law and discusses the widely held beliefs about the role of race in the law's inception. Part IV examines legal challenges to similar laws in the federal courts and evaluates the potential for success of comparable challenges in Virginia. Part V looks to recent attempts at enacting solutions at the state level. Part VI …


"If The Plaintiffs Are Right, Grutter Is Wrong": Why Fisher V. University Of Texas Presents An Opportunity For The Supreme Court To Overturn A Flawed Decision, Brooks H. Spears May 2012

"If The Plaintiffs Are Right, Grutter Is Wrong": Why Fisher V. University Of Texas Presents An Opportunity For The Supreme Court To Overturn A Flawed Decision, Brooks H. Spears

Law Student Publications

The constitutionality of affirmative action in America's public higher education institutions ("HEIs") gained prominence in the late 1970s with the Supreme Court's decision in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. The Bakke decision was less than clear, but it provided the framework in which HEls formulated their admission policies regarding the use of race. Nevertheless, the law regarding affirmative action remained unsettled, and the circuits remained split.


The Realism Of Race In Judicial Decision Making: An Empirical Analysis Of Plaintiffs' Race And Judges' Race, Pat K. Chew, Robert E. Kelley Jan 2012

The Realism Of Race In Judicial Decision Making: An Empirical Analysis Of Plaintiffs' Race And Judges' Race, Pat K. Chew, Robert E. Kelley

Articles

American society is becoming increasingly diverse. At the same time, the federal judiciary continues to be predominantly White. What difference does this make? This article offers an empirical answer to that question through an extensive study of workplace racial harassment cases. It finds that judges of different races reach different conclusions, with non-African American judges less likely to hold for the plaintiffs. It also finds that plaintiffs of different races fare differently, with African Americans the most likely to lose and Hispanics the most likely to be successful. Finally, countering the formalism model’s tenet that judges are color-blind, the results …