Law Commons^™

Courting Prom Night Voters, Spencer Ryan Lockwood

Texas A&M Law Review

A creature of state law, voter registration is a point of national contention and a subject that frequents partisan debate. Federal legislation—meant to unsew a patchwork quilt of discriminatory practices against voters—complicated the voter registration process. States have changed their voter registration laws in the wake of Supreme Court opinions and prolonged litigation. But an opportunity endures for states to take further accountability for their younger voting-age populations without more federal intervention. By amending their election codes to require that high school graduates choose whether to register to vote, states can act as legislative laboratories and court their prom night …

A Critical Jeffersonian Mind For A Community Reinvestment Bind, Chaz D. Brooks

Marquette Benefits and Social Welfare Law Review

The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 ("CRA") primarily sought to remedy decades of government sanctioned disinvestment in so-called “redlined communities.” Through the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation and later the Federal Housing Administration, the United States of America created from whole cloth a structure that encouraged and subsidized the explosion of homeownership in white American households. Following decades of racialized wealth generation, the United States had a change of heart. Congress determined that financiers needed a gentle push to invest fairly. Additionally, Congress wanted one thing clear in the drafting of this remedy— it must not allocate credit. This essay considers …

Perceived Discrimination, Coping Styles, And Internalizing Symptoms Among A Community Sample Of Hispanic And Somali Adolescents, Myriam Forster, Timothy Grigsby, Christopher Rogers, Jennifer Unger, Stephanie Alvarado, Bethany Rainisch, Eunice Areba

Social & Behavioral Health Faculty Publications

Purpose: Perceived discrimination, perceptions of receiving differential treatment due to negative attitudes, and stereotypes about one's racial/ethnic group can increase vulnerability to depression and anxiety. Although ethnic minority youth now represent over half of the U.S. youth population, few studies have investigated potential protective factors in the relationship between perceived discrimination and mental health across diverse ethnic minority immigrant youth from different cultural backgrounds. Methods: We examined the association between perceived discrimination and past week symptoms of depression and anxiety and whether patterns of problem and emotion-focused coping moderate these relationships among Somali and Hispanic immigrant youth (N = 353) …

Hb 128: Prohibition Of Discrimination Against Potential Organ Transplant Recipients, Sarah Beach, Anne Marie Simoneaux

Georgia State University Law Review

The Act functions to prohibit discrimination by health care providers and insurers against potential organ transplant recipients due to physical or mental disabilities. Also known as Gracie’s Law, the Act provides a pathway through local courts to enforce compliance, and an affected individual may bring a civil action for injunctive and other equitable relief. In addition, the Act incorporates Simon’s Law, which provides that an order to not resuscitate a minor child can only be issued with the consent of the minor’s parents.

Random Justice, Girardeau A. Spann

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

As recent Senate confirmation practices suggest, the Supreme Court is best understood as the head of a political branch of government, whose Justices are chosen in a process that makes their ideological views dispositive. Throughout the nation’s history, the Supreme Court has exercised its governing political ideology in ways that sacrifice the interests of nonwhites in order to advance the interests of Whites. In the present moment of heightened cultural sensitivity to structural discrimination and implicit bias, it would make sense to use affirmative action to help remedy the racially disparate distribution of societal resources that has been produced by …

An Unfulfilled Promise: Section 1557'S Failure To Effectively Confront Discrimination In Healthcare, Majesta-Doré Legnini

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

When the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act passed, it offered a broad promise to provide access to quality care on a nondiscriminatory basis. To achieve nondiscrimination, Congress included Section 1557, which integrated the nondiscrimination protections granted under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the Education Amendments, Section 504, and the Age Discrimination Act. The language of the statute has proved that the section cannot achieve its broad promise. Covering only intentional discrimination and usually interpreted to divide the standard so that intersectional discrimination cannot be redressed, Section 1557 fails to address discrimination in …

Bias And Sexism: The Racial And Gender Wage Gap Affecting Black Women

Florida A & M University Law Review

The objective of this Article is to address the racial wage gap between Black and White women and provide a solution. Part I of this Article will discuss the history of Black women and White women in the workforce. Part II will discuss the gender wage gap as it applies to Black and White women in the 21st century. Part III will discuss how Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Pay Act has failed to address the gender and race issues that Black women face when it comes to work wages. Part IV will …

Off-White: Al-Khazraji And Shaare Tefila's Potential To De-Essentialize Antidiscrimination Law

Florida A & M University Law Review

The figure of the Arab Jew has historically occupied a space at the margins of Jewish life, rendered peripheral or even invisible by a lens trained on the experiences of Jews of European descent. Drawing in part from the academic lineage of Kimberl´e Kimberle Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality, American Jews of Arab and Middle Eastern descent (“Mizrahi Jews”) are increasingly joining their Israeli counterparts and Jews of color in the United States in challenging the naturalization of Jewish whiteness in the popular imagination. In a striking parallel between this groundswell of community theorizing and legal strategy, the Supreme Court in …

How The American Taxation System Unduly Affects The Black Community

Florida A & M University Law Review

This article provides evidence that the American taxation system disproportionately impacts the Black community due to long-term tax policy implications, racial disparities in income, and the overall accumulation of wealth. Part I of this article will provide a brief synopsis of the start of the American taxation system and the first instances of tax implementation. Part II of this article will discuss the income disparities among the Black and White races and the interplay with gender. Part III of this article will expound on the effect that income inequalities, tax policies, and tax breaks have on wealth accumulation between Black …

The Color Of Pain: Racial Bias In Pain And Suffering Damages, Maytal Gilboa

Georgia Law Review

For more than half a century, our legal system has formally eschewed race-based discrimination, and nearly every field of law has evolved to increase protections for minority groups historically burdened by racial prejudice. Yet, even today, juries in tort actions routinely consider a plaintiff’s race when calculating compensatory tort damages, and they do so in a manner that systematically results in lower awards to Black plaintiffs than to White. This Article examines this problem, zeroing in on the specific issue of racial bias in calculations of tort damages for pain and suffering.

The severity of a plaintiff’s injury is commonly …

The Role Of Truth-Telling In Indigenous Justice, Sara L. Ochs

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

40 Acres And A Mule, Plus Interest: A Survey On Emerging Reparation And Racial Equity Measures, Danielle D. Rogers, Michael A. Lawrence

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Evolving Beyond Reasonable Accommodations Towards "Off-Shelf Accessible" Workplaces And Campuses, Karla Gilbride

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

One of the hallmarks of the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”), which prohibits discrimination in the workplace on the basis of disability, is that it defines “discrimination” to include “not making reasonable accommodations to the known mental or physical limitations of an otherwise qualified individual with a disability.” This concept of reasonable accommodation was seen as innovative in two ways. It recognized that employers must sometimes take affirmative steps or make adaptations to afford individuals with disabilities an equal opportunity to apply for and perform jobs. And it identified the failure to take such affirmative steps as a type of …

The War On Drugs And Its Legal Effects On Black Americans, Alexia L. Howard-Mullins

2022 Symposium

The differences in treatment between Black and white Americans in the past fifty years has been a topic of thought in the minds of political and sociological scholars since the inception of the War on Drugs in 1971. These differences in treatment may lead to discrimination legally, resulting in longer prison sentences and a higher proportion of Black Americans in prison. This study analyzes the results of the War on Drugs that led to disproportionate imprisonment of Black Americans, including mandatory sentencing laws, drug classifications, and discrimination within law enforcement and the legal system. This study will use primary sources …

Perspectives Of Religious Faith Leaders On Hate Crime Policies, Alphonso Manns

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

AbstractPrejudice and discrimination stigmatize members of the lesbian gay bisexual transgender and queer (LGBTQ) community as abnormal, which has been attributed to religious opposition and the exercise of ministerial privileges or religious liberty within the law. Religious organizations may indirectly contribute to the public legal rights of members of the LGBTQ community. But little is known about the perspectives of religious faith leaders (RFLs) and how they influence the development and implementation of pro-equality and hate crime policies. The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of RFLs from one community in a midwestern state. The narrative policy …

Algorithmic Decision-Making And Discrimination In Developing Countries, Cecil Abungu

Journal of Law, Technology, & the Internet

This article seeks to investigate how developing countries can ensure that algorithmic decision-making does not leave protected groups in their jurisdictions exposed to unlawful discrimination that would be almost impossible to prevent or prove. The article shows that universally, longstanding methods used to prevent and prove discrimination will struggle when confronted with algorithmic decision-making. It then argues that while some of the proposed solutions to this issue are promising, they cannot be successfully implemented in a vast majority of developing countries because these countries lack the necessary institutional foundation. The key features of this institutional foundation include: (i) a wellrooted …

White Vigilantism And The Racism Of Race-Neutrality, Christian Sundquist

Articles

Race-neutrality has long been touted in American law as central to promoting racial equality while guarding against race-based discrimination. And yet the legal doctrine of race-neutrality has perversely operated to shield claims of racial discrimination from judicial review while protecting discriminators from liability and punishment. This Article critiques the doctrine of race-neutrality by examining the law’s response to white vigilantism in the much-publicized criminal trials of Kyle Rittenhouse and that of Ahmaud Arbery’s assailants.

Reframing Hate, Lu-In Wang

Articles

The concept and naming of “hate crime,” and the adoption of special laws to address it, provoked controversy and raised fundamental questions when they were introduced in the 1980s. In the decades since, neither hate crime itself nor those hotly debated questions have abated. To the contrary, hate crime has increased in recent years—although the prominent target groups have shifted over time—and the debate over hate crime laws has reignited as well. The still-open questions range from the philosophical to the doctrinal to the pragmatic: What justifies the enhanced punishment that hate crime laws impose based on the perpetrator’s motivation? …

Deflect, Delay, Deny: A Case Study Of Segregation By Law School Faculty Before Brown V. Board Of Education, Briana Lynn Rosenbaum

Tennessee Law Review

Many histories of school desegregation litigation center on the natural protagonists, such as the lawyers and plaintiffs who fought the status quo. Little attention is paid to the role that individual faculty members played in the perpetuation of segregated legal education. When the antagonists in the historiographies do appear, it is usually as anonymous individuals and groups. Thus, "the Board of Regents" refused to change its policy and "the University" denied a person's application.

But recently discovered and rarely accessed historic documents provide proof of the direct role that some law school faculty members played in the perpetuation of segregation. …

Decitizenizing Asian Pacific American Women, Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, Margaret Hu

Journal Articles

The Page Act of 1875 excluded Asian women immigrants from entering the United States, presuming they were prostitutes. This presumption was tragically replicated in the 2021 Atlanta Massacre of six Asian and Asian American women, reinforcing the same harmful prejudices. This Article seeks to illuminate how the Atlanta Massacre is symbolic of larger forms of discrimination, including the harms of decitizenship. These harms include limited access to full citizenship rights due to legal barriers, restricted cultural and political power, and a lack of belonging. The Article concludes that these harms result from the structure of past and present immigration laws …

Cause For Concern Or Cause For Celebration?: Did Bostock V. Clayton County Establish A New Mixed Motive Theory For Title Vii Cases And Make It Easier For Plaintiffs To Prove Discrimination Claims?, Terrence Cain

Faculty Scholarship

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 makes it unlawful for an employer to discriminate against an employee “because of” race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. This seems simple enough, but if an employer makes an adverse employment decision partly for an impermissible reason and partly for a permissible reason, i.e., if the employer acts with a mixed motive, has the employer acted “because of” the impermissible reason? According to Gross v. FBL Financial Services, Inc. and University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center v. Nassar, the answer is no. The Courts in Gross and Nassar held that …

Discrimination, Trump V. Hawaii, And Masterpiece Cakeshop, Christopher C. Lund

Georgia Law Review

This short symposium piece is a comment on two of the Supreme Court’s recent religion cases. The first is Trump v. Hawaii, the travel ban case, where the Court rejected the claim of unconstitutional religious discrimination against Muslims.1 The second is Masterpiece Cakeshop, the case about the baker who refused to make a cake for a gay wedding, where the Court accepted the claim of unconstitutional religious discrimination against a conservative Christian.2 One case finds discrimination, while the other rejects it. Yet more fundamentally, the pairing suggests differences in how we perceive or react to evidence of discrimination. Both on …

Does U.S. Federal Employment Law Now Cover Caste Discrimination Based On Untouchability?: If All Else Fails There Is The Possible Application Of Bostock V. Clayton County, Kevin D. Brown, Lalit Khandare, Annapurna Waughray, Kenneth G. Dau-Schmidt, Theodore M. Shaw

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This article discusses the issue of whether a victim of caste discrimination based on untouchability can assert a claim of intentional employment discrimination under Title VII or Section 1981. This article contends that there are legitimate arguments that this form of discrimination is a form of religious discrimination under Title VII. The question of whether caste discrimination is a form of race or national origin discrimination under Title VII or Section 1981 depends upon how the courts apply these definitions to caste discrimination based on untouchability. There are legitimate arguments that this form of discrimination is recognized within the concept …

Developments In The Laws Affecting Electronic Payments And Financial Services, Sarah Jane Hughes, Stephen T. Middlebrook, Tom Kierner

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The past year proved to be a busy period for the regulation of electronic payments and financial services. In this year’s survey, we discuss rulemakings, enforcement actions, and other litigation that has significantly impacted the law governing payments and financial services. Part II addresses the ongoing fight between federal and state authorities over which should properly regulate Fin- Tech entities and describes some new steps the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (“OCC”) has taken to assert its authority in this area. Part III details an enforcement action that California regulators took against a FinTech company they determined had …

Racial Rhetoric Or Reality? Cautious Optimism On The Link Between Corporate #Blm Speech And Behavior, Lisa Fairfax

All Faculty Scholarship

The summer of 2022 marks the two-year anniversary of the dramatic rekindling of the #BlackLivesMatter movement because of the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other unarmed Black people at the hands of police. The summer of 2020 saw cities in the United States and around the world erupt in protest, with calls to dismantle racist policies and practices both in the criminal system and within the broader society, with a particular emphasis on policies and practices impacting Black people. The summer of 2022 also marks the two-year anniversary of the visible and somewhat surprising avalanche of corporate statements …

Tax And Time: On The Use And Misuse Of Legal Imagination, Anthony C. Infanti

Book Chapters

In daily life and in tax law, time is taken for granted as something that is ever present but beyond our control. Time moves endlessly and relentlessly forward, constantly slipping from our grasp. But what if life were more like science fiction? What if we could, at will, move through time to alter its course? Or what if we could harness time by turning it into an exchangeable commodity, truly using time as money? In fact, there is no need to open a novel or watch a movie to experience time travel or to see time used as a medium …

Racial Justice And Administrative Procedure, Sophia Z. Lee

All Faculty Scholarship

This article argues that commemorating the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) should involve accounting for the role it has played in both advancing and thwarting racial justice, as well as the role racial justice advocates have played in shaping its interpretation. The APA was not designed to advance racial justice; indeed, its provisions insulated some of the mid-twentieth century's most racially pernicious policies from challenge. Yet racial justice advocates have long understood that administrative agencies could be a necessary or even uniquely receptive target for their efforts and the APA shaped those calculations. Along the way, racial justice advocates left their …

The Color Of Property And Auto Insurance: Time For Change, Jennifer B. Wriggins

Faculty Publications

Insurance company executives issued statements condemning racism and urging change throughout society and in the insurance industry after the huge Black Lives Matter demonstrations in summer 2020. The time therefore is ripe for examining insurance as it relates to race and racism, including history and current regulation. Two of the most important types of personal insurance are property and automobile. Part I begins with history, focusing on property insurance, auto insurance, race, and racism in urban areas around the mid-twentieth century. Private insurers deemed large areas of cities where African Americans lived to be “blighted” and refused to insure all …

Filing While Black: The Casual Racism Of The Tax Law, Steven Dean

Faculty Scholarship

The tax law's race-blind approach produces bad tax policy.' This Essay uses three very different examples to show how failing to openly and honestly address race generates bias, and how devastating the results can be.² Ignoring race does not solve problems; it creates them. ProPublica has shown, for example, that because of the perils of filing income taxes while Black, the five most heavily audited counties in the United States are Black and poor.

The racial bias long tolerated-and sometimes exploited-by tax scholars and policymakers affects all aspects of the tax law. In 1986, Sam Gilliam was denied tax …

Bias And Biometrics: Regulating Corporate Responsibility And New Technologies To Protect Rights, Erika George

Faculty Scholarship

A growing body of literature has documented the ways in which algorithms and new technology are being deployed in ways that discriminate and violate human rights. The regulatory environment is still evolving, but not as rapidly as new technologies are being introduced by private corporations and implemented in public settings. Governments are using AI in immigration and asylum determinations and law enforcement, arenas where racism and xenophobia can often arise. In the aftermath of the racial justice uprisings following the murder of George Floyd, some technology firms pledged to reconsider providing surveillance technology to police without protections in place. This …