Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons^™

Toward A Fundamental Right To Evade Law? The Rule Of Power In Shelby County And State Farm, Martha T. Mccluskey

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Unmistakably Clear: Human Rights, The Right To Representation, And Remedial Voting Rights Of People Of Color, Matthew H. Charity

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

The Blinding Color Of Race: Elections And Democracy In The Post-Shelby County Era, Sahar F. Aziz

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Backward: How The Supreme Court’S Decision In Shelby County V. Holder Eviscerated The Voting Rights Act And What Civil Rights Advocates Should Do About It, Pamela Edwards

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Unseen Exclusions In Voting And Immigration Law, César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Shelby, Race, And Disability Rights, Ravi Malhotra

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Preferential Judicial Activism, Sudha Setty

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Frederick Douglass On Shelby County, Olympia Duhart

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Shelby County V. Holder: A Critical Analysis Of The Post-Racial Movement’S Relationship To Bystander Denial And Its Effect On Perceptions Of Ongoing Discrimination In Voting, Abra S. Mason

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Demography And Democracy, Phyllis Goldfarb

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Elimination Dance, Sarah Jane Forman

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Eviscerating The Voting Rights Act And Moral Authority: Freedom To Discriminate Comes With A Price, Patricia A. Broussard

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

The Empirical Irony Of The Conflict Between Antidiscrimination And Religious Freedom, Nathan B. Oman

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Classifying Obesity As A Disability Under The Americans With Disabilities Act: How Seff V. Broward County Is Incongruent With Recent Ada Litigation, Maura Flaherty Mccoy

Catholic University Law Review

This Note discusses how employer wellness programs are potential breeding grounds for Americans with Disabilities Act discrimination claims in light of recent ADA cases relating to obesity and how courts’ treatment of the safe harbor provision of the ADA is incongruent with the broadening of ADA claims. It looks at the provisions of the ADA and how courts have traditionally defined “disability” in obesity cases, describes the ADA safe harbor provision, and discusses the advent of corporate wellness programs. This Note then analyzes Seff v. Broward County, the most notable wellness program case to-date, and how the court’s decision …

The Need For A Law Of Church And Market, Nathan B. Oman

Faculty Publications

This Essay uses Helfand and Richman’s fine article to raise the question of the law of church and market. In Part I, I argue that the question of religion’s proper relationship to the market is more than simply another aspect of the church-state debates. Rather, it is a topic deserving explicit reflection in its own right. In Part II, I argue that Helfand and Richman demonstrate the danger of creating the law of church and market by accident. Courts and legislators do this when they resolve questions religious commerce poses by applying legal theories developed without any thought for the …

The Disability-Employability Divide: Bottlenecks To Equal Opprotunity, Bradley A. Areheart, Michael Ashley Stein

Michigan Law Review

Equal opportunity might appear to comprise a relatively simple question: Do similarly situated persons have an equal chance to attain a particular goal, or do obstacles irrelevant to their qualifications or to the desired goal preclude achievement? But equal opportunity is complicated.1 There are descriptive and prescriptive dimensions to this question. Nuances exist when determining who is similarly situated, whether those individuals have the same opportunity, what goals we care about equalizing, and whether the ultimate aspiration is equality of opportunity or equality of outcome. Moreover, what means should we employ to remove obstacles, are these means likely to be …

Griggs At Midlife, Deborah A. Widiss

Michigan Law Review

Not all Supreme Court cases have a midlife crisis. But it is fair to say that Griggs v. Duke Power Co., which recently turned forty, has some serious symptoms. Griggs established a foundational proposition of employment discrimination law known as disparate impact liability: policies that significantly disadvantage racial minority or female employees can violate federal employment discrimination law, even if there is no evidence that the employer “intended” to discriminate. Griggs is frequently described as one of the most important decisions of the civil rights era, compared to Brown v. Board of Education for its “momentous social consequences.” In 1989, …

A Battle Of The Amendments: Why Ending Discrimination In The Courtroom May Inhibit A Criminal Defendant’S Right To An Impartial Jury, Gina M. Chiappetta

Fordham Law Review

    Since the U.S. Supreme Court began limiting the exercise of peremptory challenges to safeguard potential jurors from discrimination, it has faced a nearly impossible task. The Court has attempted to safeguard a juror’s equal protection rights without eradicating the peremptory challenge’s ability to preserve a criminal defendant’s right to an impartial jury. Under the current legal framework, it is not certain whether either constitutional right is adequately protected. This Note examines the history of the Supreme Court’s limitation on peremptory challenges. It then discusses the current federal circuit split over whether peremptory challenges should be further limited. Finally, this Note …

What’S Hud Got To Do With It?: How Hud’S Disparate Impact Rule May Save The Fair Housing Act’S Disparate Impact Standard, William F. Fuller

Fordham Law Review

    Since 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court has granted certiorari three times on the question of whether disparate impact liability is cognizable under the Fair Housing Act (FHA). The first two times, the parties settled. The question is before the Court once again in Texas Department of Housing & Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc., and this time the parties seem unlikely to settle.

    Disparate impact liability in the civil rights context entails liability for actions that have a discriminatory effect, regardless of an actor’s motive. Under the FHA, this can translate into liability for actions that make housing …

Contextualizing Gay‐Straight Alliances: Student, Advisor And Structural Factors Related To Positive Youth Development Among Members, Matthew P. Shaw

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Gay-straight alliances (GSAs) may promote resilience. Yet, what GSA components predict well-being? Among 146 youth and advisors in 13 GSAs (58% lesbian, gay, bisexual, or questioning; 64% White; 38% received free/reduced-cost lunch), student (demographics, victimization, attendance frequency, leadership, support, control), advisor (years served, training, control), and contextual factors (overall support or advocacy, outside support for the GSA) that predicted purpose, mastery, and self-esteem were tested. In multilevel models, GSA support predicted all outcomes. Racial/ethnic minority youth reported greater well-being, yet lower support. Youth in GSAs whose advisors served longer and perceived more control and were in more supportive school contexts …

Retaliation And The Reasonable Person, Sandra F. Sperino

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

When a worker complains about discrimination, federal law is supposed to protect that worker from later retaliation. Recent scholarly attention focuses on how courts limit retaliation claims by narrowly framing the causation inquiry. A larger threat to retaliation law is developing in the lower courts. Courts are declaring a wide swath of conduct as insufficiently serious to constitute retaliation.

Many courts hold that it is legal for an employer to threaten to fire a worker, to place the worker on administrative leave, or to negatively evaluate the worker because she complained about discriminatory conduct. Even if the worker has evidence …

‘Please Be A Lady… You Are Not Going To Be Heard’: The Debate Over The Ratification Of The Convention On The Elimination Of All Forms Of Discrimination Against Women, Kasie Durkit

International ResearchScape Journal

Why did the United States fail to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women? This overarching question forms the basis of this paper and will be answered using an array of primary and secondary sources. This paper gleans most of its evidence from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearings of 1994 and 2002, letters from both President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Congressional Research Service reports on CEDAW from 2013 and 2007, several Senators’ statements in the Congressional Record, Congressional testimony, and the text of the CEDAW treaty. This …

Deboer V. Snyder: A Case Study In Litigation And Social Reform, Wyatt Fore

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

On April 28, 2015, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments for four cases from the Sixth Circuit addressing the constitutionality of state bans on same-sex marriage. This Note examines DeBoer v. Snyder, the Michigan marriage case, with the goal of providing litigators and scholars the proper context for our current historical moment in which (1) the legal status of LGBT people; and (2) the conventional wisdom about the role of impact litigation in social reform movements are rapidly evolving.

Justice Ginsburg's Umbrella, Ellen D. Katz

Book Chapters

Near the end of her dissent in Shelby County v. Holder, Justice Ginsburg suggested a simple analogy to illustrate why the regional protections of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) were still necessary. She wrote that “[t]hrowing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”

Labor Unions And Title Vii: A Bit Player At The Creation Looks Back, Theodore St. Antoine

Book Chapters

During the debates over what became Title VII (Equal Employment Opportunity) of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, I was the junior partner of the then General Counsel of the AFL-CIO, J. Albert Woll. There were only three of us in the firm. The middle partner, Robert C. Mayer, handled the business affairs of the Federation and our other union clients. Bob was also the son-in-law of George Meany, president of the AFL-CIO, which gave us a unique access to Meany’s thinking. The Federation had only one in-house lawyer, Associate General Counsel Thomas Everett Harris. Tom was an aristocratic Southerner …

On Class-Not-Race, Samuel R. Bagenstos

Book Chapters

Throughout the civil rights era, strong voices have argued that policy interventions should focus on class or socioeconomic status, not race. At times, this position-taking has seemed merely tactical, opportunistic, or in bad faith. Many who have opposed race-based civil rights interventions on this basis have not turned around to support robust efforts to reduce class-based or socioeconomic inequality. That sort of opportunism is interesting and important for understanding policy debates in civil rights, but it is not my focus here. I am more interested here in the people who clearly mean it. For example, President Lyndon Baines Johnson—who can …

Two Stories About Skin Color And International Human Rights Advocacy, William J. Aceves

Faculty Scholarship

Color is an important but underdeveloped designation in international law. It is identified as a protected category in several human rights documents. Despite its status as a protected category, there is no definition of color in these documents.

In the absence of an established definition, race is often used as a proxy for color. Yet, there is growing skepticism within the human rights community about the legitimacy of using racial categories to distinguish human beings. While race and color are often used interchangeably, it is important to treat color as a distinct category. Race and color do not always match. …

A Nation Of Widening Opportunities: The Civil Rights Act At 50, Ellen D. Katz, Samuel R. Bagenstos

Books

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was an extraordinary achievement of law, politics, and human rights. On the fiftieth anniversary of the Act's passage, it is appropriate to reflect on the successes and failures of the civil rights project reflected in the statute, as well as on its future directions. This volume represents an attempt to assess the Civil Rights Act's legacy.

On October 11, 2013, a diverse group of civil rights scholars met at the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor to assess the interpretation, development, and administration of civil rights law in the five decades since …

Certiorari And The Marriage Equality Cases, Carl Tobias

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat

Marriage equality has come to much of the nation. Over 2014, many district court rulings invalidated state proscriptions on same- sex marriage, while four appeals courts upheld these decisions. However, the Sixth Circuit reversed district judgments which struck down bans in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee. Because that appellate opinion created a patchwork of differing legal regimes across the country, this Paper urges the Supreme Court to clarify marriage equality by reviewing that determination this Term.

Breaking Cartels To Stymie The Reproduction Of Racism And Breaking Them In Time, Angela Mae Kupenda

Journal Articles

Daria Roithmayr’s book, Reproducing Racism: How Everyday Choices Lock in White Advantage, situates the reproduction of racism outside of intentionally inflicted racist acts. She argues that even if racism by individual design ceases, everyday decisions by Whites lock in the many decades’, and even centuries’, of entrenched structures of White advantage. Tracing the history of race in America especially from Jim Crow, Roithmayr illustrates how White advantage was locked in through wealth accumulation protections given Whites and denied Blacks, through the real estate market practices favoring Whites, in educational policies perpetuated through a de jure then a de facto system, …