Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons^™

Procedural Due Process Claims, Erwin Chemerinsky

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Qualified Immunity When Facts Are In Dispute, Leon Friedman

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Section 1983 Custom Claims And The Code Of Silence, Myriam Gilles

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Eleventh Amendment Federalism And State Sovereign Immunity Cases: Direct Effect On Section 1983?, Stephen H. Steinglass

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Recent Supreme Court Employment Law Developments, Olati Johnson, Douglas D. Scherer

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Putting Exclusionary Zoning In Its Place: Affordable Housing And Geographical Scale, Christopher Serkin, Leslie Wellington

Fordham Urban Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Three Out Of Four Economists Recommend Raising The Minimum Wage! A Closer Look At The Debate Surrounding Seattle's Minimum Wage Ordinance, Erica Bergmann

Seattle University Law Review

This Note will discuss the implications of a high minimum wage by examining the debate around the Seattle Ordinance with a particular focus on the IFA lawsuit. To analyze the possible impacts of the Seattle Ordinance, current and historical arguments both in support of and in opposition to minimum wage laws are considered. This Note ultimately concludes that the U.S. District Court rightly denied the IFA’s motion for a preliminary injunction, which would have frustrated Seattle’s experiment before it began. Seattle’s plan to implement a $15 minimum wage, and similar experiments, should be permitted to proceed because the problem of …

Road School: Ada And Title Vi: Remaining Eligible For Funding, Erin L. Hall

Purdue Road School

Compliance with nondiscrimination and accessibility requirements is a contractual and ethical obligation for subrecipients of federal funds. Come learn how to achieve compliance with State and Federal regulations to remain eligible for federal funds, , avoid legal liability and better serve your community by ensuring projects and programs developed with public funds are deigned to benefit all.

Election Law Federalism, Justin Weinstein-Tull

Michigan Law Review

This Article provides the first comprehensive account of non-Voting Rights Act federal voting laws. Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act—long the most effective voting rights law in American history—was disabled by the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is in the crosshairs. As the Supreme Court becomes more hostile to race-based antidiscrimination laws like the Voting Rights Act, Congress will turn to race-neutral, election administration-based reforms to strengthen the right to vote. Indeed, many proposals for reform post-Shelby County have taken this form. The federal laws this Article examines—the National Voter …

Town Of Greece And City Of Saguenay: Non-Establishment Principles With Or Without An Establishment Clause, 14 First Amend. L. Rev. 343 (2016), Donald L. Beschle

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Concept Of The Speech Platform: Walker V. Texas Division, Abner S. Greene

Faculty Scholarship

In Walker, the Court deemed Texas’ specialty license plate program government speech, and thus applied no First Amendment review to the state’s refusal to allow a Confederate battle flag specialty plate, even though the reason for the refusal was that the plate was offensive. The dissent considered this unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination in a limited public forum. This article argues that the Walker result was correct, but for the wrong reason. Government should have the power to forbid hateful or vulgar speech from limited public forums such as specialty or vanity license plates, transit ads, and after-school extracurricular activities, even though …

The Case For Lgbt Equality: Reviving The Political Process Doctrine And Repurposing The Dormant Commerce Clause, Terri R. Day, Danielle Weatherby

Brooklyn Law Review

As a reaction to the Supreme Court’s historic marriage equality decision earlier this summer, many Southern state legislators opposing the trend toward LGBT-protective laws have proposed legislation that would essentially prohibit municipalities from carving out new antidiscrimination protections for the LGBT community. Conservative Senator Bart Hester spearheaded the passing of one of these “anti” antidiscrimination laws in Arkansas, and states like Texas, West Virginia, Michigan, and Oklahoma are not far behind. These “Hester-type laws” are strikingly similar to the Colorado amendment struck down by the Romer v. Evans Court 20 years ago. Both the Colorado amendment and the new wave …

Officiating Removal, Leah Litman

Articles

For the last several years, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has quietly attempted to curtail capital defendants' representation in state postconviction proceedings. In 2011, various justices on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court began to call for federally funded community defender organizations to stop representing capital defendants in state postconviction proceedings. The justices argued, among other things, that the organizations' representation of capital defendants constituted impermissible federal interference with state governmental processes and burdened state judicial resources. The court also alleged the community defender organizations were in violation of federal statutes, which only authorized the organizations to assist state prisoners in federal, but …

Unequal Access To Justice: Solla V. Berlin And The Unprincipled Evisceration Of New York’S Eaja, Armen H. Merjian

Pace Law Review

Solla is noteworthy not merely in light of the baleful effects of its ruling, but because of its reasoning: it is categorically wrong. The decision wholly elides a cornerstone and settled principle of New York welfare law, namely, that in the administration of public assistance, the municipalities act as the agents of the State, while blatantly violating the most fundamental of agency principles, namely, that a principal is vicariously liable for the actions of its agent acting within the scope of its authority. Indeed, this principal/agent relationship is established both by statute and by decades of uniform state and federal …

Incorporation, Total Incorporation, And Nothing But Incorporation?, Christopher R. Green

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

Kurt T. Lash’s The Fourteenth Amendment and the Privileges and Immunities of American Citizenship (2014) defends the view that the Fourteenth Amendment’s “privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States” cover only rights enumerated elsewhere in the Constitution. My own book, however, Equal Citizenship, Civil Rights, and the Constitution: The Original Sense of the Privileges or Immunities Clause (2015), reads the Clause to guarantee equality broadly among similarly situated citizens of the United States. Incorporation of an enumerated right into the Fourteenth Amendment requires, I say, national consensus such that an outlier state’s invasion of the right would produce …

It's Not Just Ferguson: Missouri Supreme Court Should Consolidate The Municipal Court System, Thomas Harvey, John Mcannar, Michael-John Voss, Joshua Feinzig, Chris Mcallister

All Faculty Scholarship

The Missouri Supreme Court's unprecedented decision to take control of Ferguson's Municipal Court was based primarily on issues raised during sustained protest following the killing of Mike Brown and reports published by ArchCity Defenders and the Department of Justice. These reports highlighted racial disparity in traffic stops, excessive revenue generation, and excessive warrants and arrests and confirmed the lived experiences of poor and Black people in St. Louis: there is a racially discriminatory and profit-driven approach to law enforcement made possible only by the collaborative efforts of local government, police, and courts.

These condemned practices are not unique to Ferguson. …

Standing; Assertion Of Jus Tertii; Sex Discrimination; Equal Protection; Twenty-First Amendment; Craig V. Boren, Anthony Sadowski

Akron Law Review

"A PPELLANTS brought an action in the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma seeking declaratory and injunctive relief. The complaint charged that the operation of two Oklahoma statutes, which prohibited the sale of 3.2% beer to males under the age of 21 while allowing females over the age of 18 to purchase the commodity, violated the fourteenth amendment to the Federal Constitution. The three-judge court held that the gender-based classification did not violate the equal protection clause. In Craig v. Boren, on direct appeal, the United States Supreme Court reversed, finding that the gender-based classification could …

Free, But Still Behind Bars: Reading The Illinois Post-Conviction Hearing Act To Allow Any Person Convicted Of A Crime To Raise A Claim Of Actual Innocence, 35 B.C. J. L. & Soc. Just. 1 (2015), Hugh Mundy

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

As the number of wrongfully convicted prisoners who are subsequently exonerated continues to rise, the importance of access to post-conviction relief also increases. Under the Illinois Post-Conviction Hearing Act, this access is restricted to petitioners who are currently imprisoned or otherwise facing a restraint on their liberty. Persons convicted of a crime who have completed their sentence are barred from pursuing post-conviction relief under the Act, regardless of the existence of exculpatory evidence that supports their innocence. Removing this procedural roadblock and interpreting the Act broadly to allow any person convicted of a crime to raise a claim of actual …

Laissez Fair:The Case For Alternative Litigation Funding And Assignment Of Lawsuit Proceeds In Georgia, David T. Adams

Georgia Law Review

This Note discusses the value of alternative litigation funding (ALF) and the legal challenges affecting the ALF industry in Georgia. More specifically, it identifies a way to maximize ALF's benefits for plaintiffs with personal tort and employment discrimination claims. Tort victims who are rendered incapable of working, and employees who have lost jobs because of workplace discrimination or retaliation,face immediate financial burdens-they may be unable to afford food, housing, health care, transportation, and other necessities. This economic pressure often forces plaintiffs to settle quickly for less than the value of the harm inflicted. But ALF companies offer a workable solution …

Administering Section 2 Of The Voting Rights Act After Shelby County, Christopher S. Elmendorf, Douglas M. Spencer

Publications

Until the Supreme Court put an end to it in Shelby County v. Holder, section 5 of the Voting Rights Act was widely regarded as an effective, low-cost tool for blocking potentially discriminatory changes to election laws and administrative practices. The provision the Supreme Court left standing, section 2, is generally seen as expensive, cumbersome, and almost wholly ineffective at blocking changes before they take effect. This Article argues that the courts, in partnership with the Department of Justice, could reform section 2 so that it fills much of the gap left by the Supreme Court's evisceration of section …

Fixing Hollingsworth: Standing In Initiative Cases, Karl Manheim, John S. Caragozian, Donald Warner

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

In Hollingsworth v. Perry, the Supreme Court dismissed an appeal filed by the “Official Proponents” of California’s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California. Chief Justice Roberts’ majority opinion held that initiative sponsors lack Article III standing to defend their ballot measures even when state officials refuse to defend against constitutional challenges. As a result, Hollingsworth provides state officers with the ability to overrule laws that were intended to bypass the government establishment—in effect, an “executive veto” of popularly-enacted initiatives.

The Article examines this new “executive veto” in depth. It places Hollingsworth in context, discussing the initiative process …

Lawrence V. Texas: The Decision And Its Implications For The Future, Martin A. Schwartz

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Archcity Defenders: Municipal Courts White Paper, Thomas Harvey, John Mcannar, Michael-John Voss, Megan Conn, Sean Janda, Sophia Keskey

All Faculty Scholarship

ArchCity Defenders represents St. Louis' indigent on a pro bono basis in criminal and civil legal matters while working closely with social service providers to connect clients with services. Our primary goal is to remove the legal barriers preventing our clients from accessing the housing, job training, and treatment they need to get on with their lives.

In the five years we have been doing this work, we have primarily focused on representation in the municipal courts that have jurisdiction over infractions for mostly traffic-related offenses. Our direct representation of clients in these courts and the stories they shared of …

License To Discriminate: How A Washington Florist Is Making The Case For Applying Intermediary Scrutiny To Sexual Orientation, Kendra Lacour

Seattle University Law Review

Over the past few decades, the debate over sexual orientation has risen to the forefront of civil rights issues. Though the focus has generally been on the right to marriage, peripheral issues associated with the right to marriage—and with sexual orientation generally—have become more common in recent years. As the number of states permitting same-sex marriage—along with states prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation—increases, so too does the conflict between providers of public accommodations and those seeking their services. Never is this situation more problematic than when religious beliefs are cited as the basis for denying services to …

Grandparents Act As The National Guard Of Their Facilities - All Eager And Ready To Respond When In Need: A Call For Expansion Of Grandparent Visitation Rights In North Carolina, Tricia V. Argentine

North Carolina Central Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Joyful Heart Is Good Medicine: Sexuality Conversion Bans In The Courts, Wyatt Fore

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Led by California and New Jersey, states have begun to ban Sexual Orientation Change Efforts (SOCE) for minors. States have targeted SOCE, also called ‘gay conversion therapy,’ by regulating state licensure requirements for mental health professionals. Conservative legal groups have challenged these bans in federal court, alleging a variety of constitutional violations sounding in the First and Fourteenth Amendments. More specifically, these legal groups propose theories claiming that the bans infringe upon individuals’ freedom of speech, free exercise, and parental rights. In this Note, I survey the history of these bans, as well as court decisions that have rejected constitutional …

Official, National, Common Or Unifying: Do Words Giving Legal Status To Language Diminish Linguistic Human Rights?, Paul C. Hale

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Addressing The Tension Between The Dual Identities Of The American Prostitute: Criminal And Victim; How Problem-Solving Courts Can Help, Brynn N.H. Jacobson

Seattle University Law Review

This Comment focuses on the sexual exploitation of both adult women and girls in the life of prostitution. The primary purpose is to explore the difficulties faced by American citizens who are exploited in prostitution (as opposed to foreign nationals who are subject to exploitation). This Comment focuses only on state and local prostitution laws, as opposed to global or federal laws on prostitution. It takes the position that prostitution is not a chosen profession for the vast majority and that prostitution is sexual exploitation. This Comment discusses the experiment of legalization and decriminalization in the Netherlands and Sweden as …

Gay Marriage And State Constitutional Provisions, Nicholas Goddard

Undergraduate Research Conference

No abstract provided.

North Carolina's Declaration Of Rights: Fertile Ground In A Federal Climate, Grant E. Buckner

North Carolina Central Law Review

No abstract provided.