Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons^™

Health Care In The Inner City: Asking The Right Question, Sidney D. Watson

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MIAMI-June Kirchik, fifty-eight years old, discovered a large lump in her breast. When she went to a private hospital, she was denied treatment because she was indigent and her case was not considered an emergency. A public hospital performed a biopsy, which was positive, and gave her an appointment for treatment three weeks later. When Mrs. Kirchik arrived for treatment, however, the public hospital turned her away because she had not yet applied for Medicaid. Mrs. Kirchik tried another public hospital, but was turned away because she was not a resident of the hospital's service area. When Mrs. Kirchik's story …

The Age Discrimination In Employment Act, Title Vii, And The Civil Rights Act Of 1991: Three Acts And A Dog That Didn’T Bark, Howard C. Eglit

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Unified Approach To Causation In Disparate Treatment Cases: Using Sexual Harassment By Supervisors As The Causal Nexus For The Discriminatory Motivating Factor In Mixed Motive Cases, Margaret E. Johnson

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This Comment examines a unified approach for disparate treatment mixed motives claims paired with sexual harassment claims under Title VII. The Author argues that because of the policy for nondiscriminatory and desegregated work environments embodied in Title VII, and because of the documented harm resulting from sexual harassment, courts should allow the burden of proof to shift to the defendant if the plaintiff demonstrates that her supervisor sexually harassed her, or condoned the harassment, and that the harassing supervisor made an employment decision that was adverse to her.

Religious Liberty In The Military: The First Amendment Under "Friendly Fire", Kenneth Lasson

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Though freedom of religion remains one of our most cherished values, it is still among the most controversial of constitutional rights. This is especially true in the context of military service. Even those who purposefully enlist in the armed forces, implicitly giving up certain liberties they freely enjoyed as civilians, would not relinquish their freedom of conscience. Yet the right to practice their religious beliefs, unfettered by arbitrary governmental restrictions, is regularly challenged.

Fortunately, however, most western cultures regard religious liberty as so fundamental that their military establishments routinely develop regulations to accommodate specific religious practices.

This principle was of …

Feminism Awry: Excesses In The Pursuit Of Rights And Trifles, Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

Perhaps it is best to begin with the positive. From virtually any perspective, liberal and conservative feminists in the twentieth century have improved the quality of life for many women in a number of noteworthy ways. They have helped win the right to vote, to own property, to make contracts, to serve on juries, to use contraceptives.

They have succeeded in asserting the need for enhanced economic opportunities: equal pay for equal work, maternity leave, flex-time for mothers. They have made significant advancements against both domestic battery and sexual harassment in the workplace. As a consequence of all these efforts, …

Justice Brennan's Gender Jurisprudence, Rebecca Korzec

All Faculty Scholarship

During his thirty-four year tenure on the Supreme Court, Justice William Joseph Brennan, Jr. demonstrated unparalleled sensitivity to the protection of individual rights. Justice Brennan's landmark opinions included Baker v. Carr, Goldberg v. Kelly, and New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. before Brennan, Supreme Court jurisprudence exalted judicial passivity by employing techniques for avoiding constitutional issues, such as abstention, comity, exhaustion of remedies and the political question doctrine.

Against this background, Brennan became an active judicial voice in a series of innovative landmark cases, including decisions requiring federal officials to pay damages for violation of citizens' constitutional rights; authorizing federal …

Our First Televised Genocide, Kenneth Lasson

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It is absolutely appalling that we have come so casually to observe the carnage, so passively to view the starvation over breakfast papers or dinnertime newscasts, so helplessly to watch these totally bereft human beings trudging barefoot over treacherous terrain toward the middle of nowhere.

There are other questions as well, of course, not as easily answered. Where are all their voices now, those demonstrators who so vociferously opposed war, ostensibly out of an overweening reverence for life? Is the latter-day holocaust being systematically perpetrated in northern Iraq any less horrifying than a direct hit on a camouflaged bomb shelter …

To Stimulate, Provoke, Or Incite? Hate Speech And The First Amendment, Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

If protecting freedom of speech is one of mankind's noblest pursuits, then restricting it is the most difficult. Yet limit we must: even the purest civil libertarian will concede that false shouts of fire cannot be countenanced nor broadcasts of wartime troop movements; even those who object to obscenity laws recognize the need for enabling redress of libel; and even those who would protect the right to be insulting do not defend inflammatory words spit out nose-to-nose. Now a spate of "speech codes" on college campuses has once again brought the first amendment to the fore, part of a simmering …

Some Words Are Injurious . . . Some Cause A Raging Storm, Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Free Speech: It's Great For Hate, Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Damages And Corrective Justice: A Different View, Sheldon Nahmod

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No abstract provided.

Reinvigorating Title Vi: Defending Health Care Discrimination—It Shouldn’T Be So Easy, Sidney D. Watson

All Faculty Scholarship

... Mrs. Carolyn Payne, a 21-year-old black resident of Holly Springs, Mississippi, delivered her own baby in the front seat of a truck after the emergency room of the Marshall County Hospital had refused admission.'¹

... Ysidro Aguinagas, an 1 1-month-old Hispanic baby, died... after being denied admission to a public hospital in Dimmitt, Texas, despite the fact that the hospital was ... publicly financed. The baby would not be admitted without a $450 deposit.²

... an Hispanic man, conscious and speaking Spanish, arrived at an emergency room at 7 p.m. for treatment of stab wounds suffered in …

The Making Of A Law Teacher, Odeana R. Neal

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At a meeting of the Northeast Corridor in October, 1990, Paulette Caldwell wondered aloud whether black women law teachers might be carrying on a cultural tradition of teaching. Her inquiry struck a chord with me that I hadn't heard in a long time. When I was very young, I wanted to be a teacher. I tutored younger children when I was in elementary school and commandeered a math class in junior high school after the teacher challenged me to "get up here and teach the class if you think you can do it better than I can." I thought I …

Remedying The Irremediable: The Lessons Of Gautreaux, A. Dan Tarlock

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No abstract provided.

Government Liability Under Section 1983: The Present Is Prologue, Sheldon Nahmod

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No abstract provided.

Section 1983 Discourse: The Move From Constitution To Tort, Sheldon Nahmod

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No abstract provided.

Decertification Of Police: An Alternative To Traditional Remedies For Police Misconduct, Roger L. Goldman, Steven Purro

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This article is the first in-depth examination of revocation of peace officer licenses for citizen abuse. Unlike the more familiar remedy of terminating the officer’s employment, license revocation, more commonly called decertification, has the advantage of disabling the officer from continuing to work in other departments within the state, just as occurs for myriad other professions and occupations. To determine what type of misconduct led to revocation, a file search was made of all revocations by the Florida Criminal Justices Standards and Training Commission during the time period October 1976 – October 1983. Florida was selected because it has been …

Racism In Great Britain: Drawing The Line On Free Speech, Kenneth Lasson

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On any given Sunday in Hyde Park, London's huge urban sanctuary of tailored ponds and manicured gardens, one is likely to hear outrageous and provocative public utterances about race and religion. A few of those venting their spleen here are practicing rhetoricians, a few are clearly acting-but others are absolutely sincere in their hatemongering and passionate in their vilification. All of them are focal points for assembled spectators of varying classes, many of whom are professional hecklers. The police, milling about to put down possible disturbances of the peace, are seldom called upon to quell roused rabble. Thus is this …

The Age Discrimination In Employment Act's Forgotten Affirmative Defense: The Reasonable Factors Other Than Age Exception, Howard C. Eglit

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No abstract provided.

Racial Defamation As Free Speech: Abusing The First Amendment, Kenneth Lasson

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The traditional view of the first amendment's free speech guarantee as absolute, allowing few and narrow exceptions, reflects the Constitution's dedication to an open and unfettered exchange of ideas. Those thoughts that are abhorrent to a free society, the argument goes, will wither when aired but fester if suppressed. Moreover, who is to decide which ideas are offensive? The interests of the state may well be inferior to those of the people, the wisdom of public servants often suspect in quality and motivation. But freedom of speech is so precious and delicate a liberty it must be preserved at great …

The Voting Rights Amendment Act Of 2014: A Constitutional Response To Shelby County, Gilda R. Daniels, William Yeomans, Nicholas Stephanopoulos, Gabriel J. Chin, Samuel Bagenstos

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This Issue Brief from the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy begins by explaining the Voting Rights Act, Shelby County v. Holder, and the Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2014 (VRAA). The remaining sections then explain the four specific ways the VRAA attempted to counter the holding from the Shelby County decision.

Civil Liberties For Homosexuals: The Law In Limbo, Kenneth Lasson

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This article will examine the recent surge in litigation arising from assertions by homosexuals of their constitutional rights - cases that reflect the law in flux and conflict - and will demonstrate that both constitutional principles and social philosophy generally require resolution of the conflicts in favor of equality, without regard to sexual preference.

In Defense Of Group-Libel Laws, Or Why The First Amendment Should Not Protect Nazis, Kenneth Lasson

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The author discusses group libel laws, and the underlying problems when free speech is used as a defense by those who would defame specific racial or ethnic groups and/or minorities. The topic is further explained in reference to various state laws, and the subsequent court cases extant at the time of the article's writing which defined the issue in terms of law. References are also made to such laws in countries other than the United States for the sake of comparison.

Due Process, State Remedies And Section 1983, Sheldon Nahmod

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No abstract provided.

Group Libel Versus Free Speech: When Big Brother Should Butt In, Kenneth Lasson

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The year 1984 may not have fulfilled Orwellian prophecies of governmental totalitarianism, but citizens of the world remain no less concerned about the quality of their civil liberties. If people could live peacefully and productively together under a strict caste system, or blissfully in enslavement, there would be little impetus to identify 'natural rights' nor insistence upon what we know as 'freedom.' But human experience has amply demonstrated the universal yearning for personal liberty, as well as the need to legislate against its deprivation.

Thus Big Brother has been the enemy from long before the Magna Carta and long since …

Backing Off Bivens And The Ramifications Of This Retreat For The Vindication Of First Amendment Rights, Joan E. Steinman

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No abstract provided.

Constitutional Wrongs Without Remedies: Executive Official Immunity, Sheldon Nahmod

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No abstract provided.

Damages And Injunctive Relief Under Section 1983, Sheldon Nahmod

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No abstract provided.

The Section 1983 Damage Action: An Overview, Sheldon Nahmod

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No abstract provided.

Privacy Of Association: A Burgeoning Privilege In Civil Discovery, Joan E. Steinman

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.