Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons^™

Still Not Equal: A Report From The Red States, Clifford Rosky

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

This chapter considers how the LGBT movement might pursue legal equality — alongside lived equality — now that same-sex couples enjoy the freedom to marry across the United States. In particular, it focuses on the passage of antidiscrimination laws in swing states and red states. While this objective may sound familiar — perhaps even passé — the political dynamics and strategic dilemmas that it presents are unprecedented. As one activist admits, the challenges now facing LGBT people in swing states and red states are “unlike anything we’ve faced before.” The chapter begins by explaining why the LGBT movement is likely …

Post-Ferguson Social Engineering: Problem-Solving Justice Or Just Posturing, Mae C. Quinn

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

"Other Than Honorable" Discrimination, Marcy L. Karin

Journal Articles

The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) is the most comprehensive federal civil rights law that exists related to the workplace. Its goal is to help people who serve in the military reintegrate back into civilian work and remain attached to the workforce. It does so by offering a mix of anti-discrimination protection and labor standards. Despite the promise of robust reemployment rights and post-service assistance, Congress has excluded people with a certain “character of service,” including those with “other than honorable” separations, from these protections. This statutory exclusion has a disparate impact on people with service-connected disabilities, …

The Shelby County Problem, Ellen D. Katz

Book Chapters

Decided on June 23, 2013, Shelby County v. Holder scrapped the coverage formula set forth in Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). Congress first enacted this formula in 1965 and, in it, set forth criteria to identify places with low levels of voter participation that was likely attributable to racial discrimination. Once identified, "covered" jurisdictions needed to obtain federal approval, known as preclearance, before changing any electoral practice. Specifically, they needed to demonstrate to the U.S. Department of Justice or a federal court that proposed changes were not discriminatory in purpose or effect. Shelby County lifted the preclearance …

Are Asian Americans Now White?, Frank H. Wu

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Tools For Change: Boosting The Retention Of Women In The Stem Pipeline, Joan C. Williams, Katherine W. Phillips, Erika V. Hall

Faculty Scholarship

This study details how gender bias plays out in everyday workplace interactions in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). It is based on in-depth interviews with 60 women scientists of color (chiefly professors), and a survey of 557 women scientists (of all races). Different types of gender bias were reported at different rates. Prescriptive gender bias was most common (76.3% of women interviewed reported it), followed by descriptive gender bias (66.7%) and gender bias triggered by motherhood (64.0%); just over half of the women interviewed (55.3%) reported situations in which gender bias against women fueled conflicts among women. The survey …

Said I, 'But You Have No Choice': Why A Lawyer Must Ethically Honor A Client's Decision About Mental Health Treatment Even If It Is Not What S/He Would Have Chosen, Michael L. Perlin, Naomi M. Weinstein

Cardozo Public Law, Policy & Ethics Journal

The article argues that lawyers representing individuals with mental disabilities have an ethical responsibility to prioritize their clients' expressed preferences and autonomy, rejecting the presumption that substituted decisionmaking is acceptable. It critiques the legal system's reliance on paternalistic approaches and highlights the importance of supported decisionmaking, as mandated by international human rights law, particularly under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). The analysis emphasizes the need for legal frameworks and attorney practices to align with therapeutic jurisprudence, which prioritizes psychological well-being and dignity while upholding due process principles.

Address: The Civil Rights Approach To Campus Sexual Violence, Nancy Chi Cantalupo

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

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 Jim Crow Effect: Denial, Dignity, Human Rights, And Racialized Mass Incarceration, 29 J. Civ. Rts. & Econ. Dev 15 (2016), Cecil J. Hunt Ii

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

The overarching theme of this paper is that the racialization of mass incarceration in America, which has been taking place since the latter part of the last century, and continues to this very day, is characterized by what I term, the “Jim Crow effect".

Procedural Justice And Policing: Four New Directions, Rebecca Hollander-Blumoff

Washington University Journal of Law & Policy

This Article, by Professor Rebecca Hollander-Blumoff from Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, analyzes the concept of procedural justice within the frame of contemporary policing. Using the shooting of Michael Brown as a catalyst, Hollander-Blumoff advocates for four potential areas of future development in procedural justice: (1) the interaction between the research on self-control and procedural justice; (2) research on the tools most effective in creating positive perceptions of fairness by police; (3) the implications of treating procedural justice not as a dynamic interchange; and (4) the role of reactive devaluation as it might affect reaction to procedural …

What We Know And Need To Know About Veteran Access To Justice, Elizabeth Chambliss

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Half-Baked: The Demand By For-Profit Business For Religious Exemptions From Selling To Same-Sex Couples, James M. Donovan

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Should bakers be required to make cakes for same-sex weddings? With the announcement of a constitutional right to same-sex marriage in Obergefell, one of the next confrontations in the struggle for expanded equality will involve the demand for religious exemptions from nondiscrimination laws in the public marketplace. The present discussion unravels the eclectic arguments that are repeatedly offered in support of such an exemption. The initial feint invokes a fundamental right to exclude, which fails for two reasons. First, the right to exclude is a fundamentally racist rule devised to prevent African-Americans from participating in free society. Rather than attempt …

Keynote Remarks, Vanita Gupta

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In communities across America today, from Ferguson, Missouri, to Flint, Michigan, too many people—especially young people and people of color—live trapped by the weight of poverty and injustice. They suffer the disparate impact of policies driven by, at best, benign neglect, and at worst, deliberate indifference. And they see how discrimination stacks the deck against them. So today, as we discuss the inequality that pervades our criminal justice system—a defining civil rights challenge of the 21st century—we must also acknowledge the broader inequalities we face in other segments of society. Because discrimination in so many areas—from the classroom, to the …

Police Impunity In Mexico: Creating Openings For Justice In A New Democracy, Emily Boyce

Honors Theses

In this project, I investigate why police impunity has persisted in Mexico, and why the application of justice, when it does occur, happens unequally. Mexico has undergone a democratic transition with a specific focus on increasing accountability in the judiciary. These persistent trends of police impunity and unequal application of justice are especially puzzling in the face of these recent shifts. Existing literature argues that the institutional changes that occur as a result of democratization should yield changes that further the individual rights of citizens. A majority of the scholarly work regarding police impunity and justice in Mexico focuses on …

Contested Citizenship In Bosnia And Herzegovina, Elena Cirkovic

Osgoode Legal Studies Research Paper Series

According to Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the right to nationality and citizenship can be considered as a universal human right: ‘(1) everyone has the right to nationality’ and ‘(2) no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality’. However, the qualifications of the bearer of ‘universal’ rights are unspecified. Equating nationality with citizenship has contributed to a situation where people(s) have to fit the category of being a ‘national’ in order to obtain citizenship. The question of access to national and international rights remains the question …

"State Inaction," Equal Protection, And Religious Resistance To Lgbt Rights, James M. Oleske, Jr.

University of Colorado Law Review

Now that the Supreme Court has held that states must recognize same-sex marriages, a new issue looms on the horizon: Must states also protect against sexual-orientation discrimination in the private marketplace? This Article contends that the answer under the Equal Protection Clause is "yes" for the forty-five-plus states that protect against marketplace discrimination on the basis of race, religion, national origin, and sex.

In the course of reaching that conclusion, this Article offers much-needed clarification of the Court's unsettled "state inaction" doctrine. Under that doctrine, a state's failure to act may be immunized from challenge on the ground that the …

The Global Struggle For Lgbtq Rights: Legal, Political, And Social Dimensions, Macarena Saez

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Effective Litigation Strategies To Improve State Education And Social Service Systems, Albert H. Kauffman

Faculty Articles

Texas border area Latino plaintiffs brought state court litigation, the Lulac case, to improve higher education opportunities in the Texas- Mexico borderlands. Plaintiffs successfully parlayed their trial court judgment into a massive influx of resources and permanent improvement in higher education in the Texas border. The Article describes the history of the Lulac case and includes an original analysis of the improvement of higher education in the Texas border area. The Article then develops a model for the successful integration of litigation, legislation, public advocacy and community involvement, and applies this model to the Lulac case and the Texas school …

The Development Of Legal Rights In The American Legal System, Roberto Rosas

Faculty Articles

This article takes a snapshot of some of the most controversial topics in American society today and the juridical response to these topics by individual states, the United States Congress, and the United States Supreme Court. Although there are numerous legal topics that deserve mention and analysis, this article is limited to the discussion of nine fairly new rights created by state and federal laws. The rights discussed in this article include the following: 1) The right to open carry a firearm; 2) The right to consume marijuana; 3) The right to marry or to civil unions between same-sex couples; …

Can Dna Be Speech?, Jorge R. Roig

Scholarly Works

DNA is generally regarded as the basic building block of life itself. In the most fundamental sense, DNA is nothing more than a chemical compound, albeit a very complex and peculiar one. DNA is an information-carrying molecule. The specific sequence of base pairs contained in a DNA molecule carries with it genetic information, and encodes for the creation of particular proteins. When taken as a whole, the DNA contained in a single human cell is a complete blueprint and instruction manual for the creation of that human being. In this article we discuss myriad current and developing ways in which …

Dismantling The School-To-Prison Pipeline: Tools For Change, Jason P. Nance

UF Law Faculty Publications

The school-to-prison pipeline is one of our nation’s most formidable challenges. It refers to the trend of directly referring students to law enforcement for committing certain offenses at school or creating conditions under which students are more likely to become involved in the criminal justice system, such as excluding them from school. This article analyzes the school-to-prison pipeline’s devastating consequences on students, its causes, and its disproportionate impact on students of color. But most importantly, this article comprehensively identifies and describes specific, evidence-based tools to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline that lawmakers, school administrators, and teachers in all areas can immediately …

Black Boys Matter: Developmental Equality, Nancy E. Dowd

UF Law Faculty Publications

The life course of Black boys is a stark reminder of the realities of inequality. While recent attention to policing and high profile deaths of Black youth and adults has raised consciousness of life-threatening situations, this focus exposes the most visceral and deadly aspect of a much larger set of issues. Those issues begin at birth, and are powerfully framed before adulthood, creating inequality particularly when the individual is most vulnerable, in childhood. This Article confronts the inequalities of Black boys and their subordination, as a vehicle to expose inequalities more generally based on children’s identities.

The life course of …

The Dynamics Of Excessive Force, Daria Roithmayr

Publications

No abstract provided.

"Lord Forgive Me, But He Tried To Kill Me": Proposing Solutions To The United States’ Most Vexing Racial Challenges, André Douglas Pond Cummings

Law Faculty Scholarship

While great progress has been made in the United States in the past fifty years in connection with race relations, three critical issues continue to vex our nation. The United States, despite its progress, continues to struggle mightily with (a) the police killing of unarmed black men; (b) racially disproportionate mass incarceration; and (c) violent homicides of black men and boys. Nightly newscasts detail seemingly weekly killings of unarmed African American men by law enforcement officers. Mass incarceration, while plateauing in the last several years, continues to see millions of United States citizens incarcerated at rates unmatched by any other …

Unifying Antidiscrimination Law Through Stereotype Theory, Stephanie Bornstein

UF Law Faculty Publications

Has litigation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 reached the limit of its utility in advancing workplace equality? After four decades of forward progress on antidiscrimination law in the courts, Supreme Court decisions in the last decade have signaled a retrenchment, disapproving of key theories scholars and advocates had pursued to address workplace discrimination in its modern, more subtle and structural forms. Yet sex and race inequality at work endure, particularly in pay and at the top of organizations.

Notably, while the Roberts Court majority appears skeptical that discrimination persists and resistant to recognizing the role …

Once We're Done Honeymooning: Obergefell V. Hodges, Incrementalism, And Advances For Sexual Orientation Anti-Discrimination, Jeremiah A. Ho

All Faculty Scholarship

Undoubtedly, the Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision in Obergefell v. Hodges is the watershed civil rights decision of our time. Since U.S. v. Windsor, each recent victory for same-sex couples in the federal courts evidenced that the legal recognition of same-sex marriages in the U.S. was becoming increasingly secure. Meanwhile, momentum was growing for the visibility of sexual minorities nationally. Yet, is marriage equality the last stop in the pro-LGBTQ movement, or should we expect sexual minorities to advance in other legal arenas? Should we expect that the recent strides in marriage equality from Windsor to Obergefell can somehow leverage …

Race Based Medicine, Color Blind Disease: How Racial Preferences In Violation Of The 14th Amendment Are Killing Us All, Ruqaiijah Yearby

All Faculty Scholarship

Disease is color blind, but medicine is not. For example, sickle cell disease is often discussed in terms of a Black disease; however, people of all different races suffer from sickle cell. Moreover, sickle cell is found in a number of places that have little to no Blacks, such as Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burma, and Honduras. Nevertheless, health care providers often provide people of different races different levels of care justifying their disparate treatment based on scientific claims. However, not only are these scientific claims baseless, but also the explicit use of race to determine what medical treatment is provided patients …

Integrate And Reactivate The 1968 Fair Housing Mandate, Courtney L. Anderson

Faculty Publications By Year

No abstract provided.

Hidden From View: Disability, Segregation And Work, Elizabeth Pendo

All Faculty Scholarship

The employment provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 were intended to bring working-age people with disabilities into the workplace by providing options for them to seek and gain meaningful, integrated employment. Although the ADA has made significant gains, the rate of progress in employment has been disappointing. While the lack of progress of people with disabilities in the traditional workplace has received attention, the work done by many, especially those with severe disabilities in segregated workplaces, remains hidden in sheltered workshops. This chapter explores the intersection of the concepts of disability, invisibility, and work and identifies the …