Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons^™

The Quixotic Search For Race-Neutral Alternatives, Michael E. Rosman

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The Supreme Court has stated that the narrow-tailoring inquiry of the Equal Protection Clause’s strict scrutiny analysis of racially disparate treatment by state actors requires courts to consider whether the defendant seriously considered race-neutral alternatives before adopting the race-conscious program at issue. This article briefly examines what that means in the context of race-conscious admissions programs at colleges and universities. Part I sets forth the basic concepts that the Supreme Court uses to analyze race-conscious decision-making by governmental actors and describes the role of “race-neutral alternatives” in that scheme. Part II examines the nature of “race-neutral alternatives” and identifies its …

Equal Access To Justice: Ensuring Meaningful Access To Counsel In Civil Cases, Including Immigration Proceedings, Human Rights Institute, Program On Human Rights And The Global Economy

Human Rights Institute

Only a small fraction of the legal problems experienced by low‐income and poor people living in the United States — less than one in five — are addressed with the assistance of legal representation. Many people who are low‐income and poor in the United States cannot afford legal representation to protect their rights when facing a crisis such as eviction, foreclosure, domestic violence, workplace discrimination, termination of subsistence income or medical assistance, loss of child custody, or deportation.

There is no federal constitutional right to counsel in civil cases, including in immigration proceedings. On the contrary, the Supreme Court has …

Place, Not Race: Affirmative Action And The Geography Of Educational Opportunity, Sheryll Cashin

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Ultimately, I argue that one important response to the demise of race-based affirmative action should be to incorporate the experience of segregation into diversity strategies. A college applicant who has thrived despite exposure to poverty in his school or neighborhood deserves special consideration. Those blessed to come of age in poverty-free havens do not. I conclude that use of place, rather than race, in diversity programming will better approximate the structural disadvantages many children of color actually endure, while enhancing the possibility that we might one day move past the racial resentment that affirmative action engenders. While I propose substituting …

The Need For Effective Federal Outreach And Mechanisms To Coordinate And Support Federal, State And Local Implementation Of The Convention, Human Rights Institute, International Association Of Official Human Rights Agencies (Iaohra)

Human Rights Institute

As this Committee has consistently recognized, compliance with the CERD requires effective coordination between federal, state, and local governments. In ratifying the CERD, the United States indicated that state and local governments share authority to implement the treaty. This includes the over 150 state and local civil and human rights agencies that enforce federal, state and local human and civil rights laws and/or conduct research, training and education, and issue policy recommendations within the United States (“Human Rights Agencies”). It also encompasses the full array of state and local officials with decision-making and enforcement authority, including governors, state attorneys general, …

Dismissing Deterrence, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

The proposed Voting Rights Amendment Act of 20144 (VRAA)[...]’s new criteria defining when jurisdictions become subject to preclearance are acutely responsive to the concerns articulated in Shelby County[ v. Holder]. The result is a preclearance regime that, if enacted, would operate in fewer places and demand less from those it regulates. This new regime, however, would not only be more targeted and less powerful, but, curiously, more vulnerable to challenge. In fact, the regime would be more vulnerable precisely because it is so responsive to Shelby County. Some background will help us see why.

Petition For A Writ Of Certiorari, Volume 1 Of 2 (Petition With Appendix Pages 1a-563a). Lynch V. Alabama, 135 S. Ct. 53 (2014) (No. 13-1232), 2014 U.S. Lexis 5672, Larry T. Menefee, Edward Still, Eric Schnapper, James U. Blacksher

Court Briefs

QUESTIONS PRESENTED

(1) The district court found that several provisions of the Alabama Constitution of 1901 were adopted for the purpose of limiting the imposition on whites of property taxes that would pay for the education of black public school students. The first question presented is: Do black public school children and their parents have standing to challenge the validity under the Equal Protection Clause of state constitutional provisions adopted for the purpose of limiting the imposition on whites of property taxes that would be used to educate black public school students?

(2) In 2004 the District Judge in Knight …

A Tale Of Two Minority Groups: Can Two Different Minority Groups Bring A Coalition Suit Under Section 2 Of The Voting Rights Act Of 1965, Sara Michaloski

Catholic University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Fisher V. Texas: The Limits Of Exhaustion And The Future Of Race-Conscious University Admissions, John A. Powell, Stephen Menendian

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article investigates the potential ramifications of Fisher v. Texas and the future of race-conscious university admissions. Although one cannot predict the ultimate significance of the Fisher decision, its brief and pregnant statements of law portends an increasingly perilous course for traditional affirmative action programs. Part I explores the opinions filed in Fisher, with a particular emphasis on Justice Kennedy’s opinion on behalf of the Court. We focus on the ways in which the Fisher decision departs from precedent, proscribes new limits on the use of race in university admissions, and tightens requirements for narrow tailoring. Part II investigates the …

The Struggle For Justice In The Civil Rights March From Selma To Montgomery: The Legacy Of The Magna Carta And The Common Law Tradition, Winston P. Nagan

UF Law Faculty Publications

The article introduces the reader to the idea that justice involves social action and struggle. It then shifts the perspective to the struggle for justice in historic memory. The author focuses on the struggle to limit sovereign absolutism, the outcome of which is reflected in the Magna Carta. The Magna Carta was not a gift of the sovereign, it represented a political struggle to obtain it. The article then traces the evolution of law in the common law tradition and the importance of casuistic legal methods to ground the specific rights of citizens. The article draws reference to the struggle …

Crossing The Bridge: African-Americans And The Necessity Of A 21st Century Human Rights Movement, Marissa Jackson Sow

Law Faculty Publications

I had the honor of hearing Judge Joseph Greenaway give the keynote address at Columbia University's Black Law Students Association's Paul Robeson Gala in 2010. He gave a stirring speech, which has since been published in the Columbia Journal of Race and Law, entitled Have We Crossed the Bridge Yet? The title and theme of His Honor's speech is a reference to David Remnick's The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama, which, in turn, invokes the metaphor of the bridge as a representation of the African-American struggle toward equality. ...

Post-Racial Proxy Battles Over Immigration, Mary D. Fan

Chapters in Books

Amid economic and political turmoil, anti-immigrant legislation has flared again among a handful of fiercely determined states. To justify the intrusion into national immigration enforcement, the dissident states invoke imagery of invading hordes of “illegals”—though the unauthorized population actually fell by nearly two-thirds, decreasing by about a million people, between 2007 and 2009 as the recession reduced the lure of jobs.

Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070—recently invalidated in part by the U.S. Supreme Court in Arizona v. United States—led the charge. By preelection-year summer 2011, several states enacted laws patterned after Arizona’s controversial Senate Bill 1070, including Alabama’s even more aggressive …

Testing, Discrimination, And Opportunity: A Reply To Professor Harvey Gilmore, Dan Subotnik

Scholarly Works

This article was written as part of an ongoing dialog about the author’s previous article, "Does Testing = Race Discrimination?: Ricci, The Bar Exam, the LSAT, and the Challenge to Learning," which defended the Supreme Court’s decision in Ricci v. DeStefano, as well as defending testing more generally against charges of irrelevance, racial obtuseness, and most seriously, race discrimination.

This article specifically responds to an article written by Professor Harvey Gilmore which focuses mostly on the SAT and the LSAT.

Thinking Hard About 'Race-Neutral' Admissions, Richard H. Sander, Aaron Danielson

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Our exploration is organized as follows. In Part I, we sympathetically consider the very difficult dilemmas facing higher education leaders. Understanding the often irreconcilable pressures that constrain university administrators is essential if we are to envision the plausible policies they might undertake. In Part II, we draw on a range of data to illustrate some of the “properties” of admissions systems and, in particular, the ways in which race, SES, and academic preparation interact dynamically both within individual schools and across the educational spectrum. Partly because the questions we examine here have been so little studied, ideal data does not …

Voting Rights Law And Policy In Transition, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer, Guy-Uriel E. Charles

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

State's Rights, Last Rites, And Voting Rights, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer, Guy-Uriel Charles

Articles by Maurer Faculty

There are two ways to read the Supreme Court's decision in Shelby County Alabama v. Holder: as a minimalist decision or as a decision that undermines the basic infrastructure of voting rights policy, law, and jurisprudence. In this Article, we present the case for reading Shelby County as deeply destabilizing. We argue that Shelby County has undermined three assumptions that are foundational to voting rights policy, law, and jurisprudence. First, the Court has generally granted primacy of the federal government over the states. Second, the Court has deferred to Congress particularly where Congress is regulating at the intersection of race …

Probabilities, Perceptions, Consequences And "Discrimination": One Puzzle About Controversial "Stop And Frisk", Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

A troubling aspect of the practice of "stop and frisk" in New York and other cities is the evidence that this police tactic is employed predominantly against young men in racial minorities. On August 12, 2013, the federal district court ruled in Floyd v. City of New York that New York's practices and policies regarding stop and frisk violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and its Due Process Clause, which makes the Fourth Amendment ban on "unreasonable searches and seizures" applicable against the states. Judge Shira A. Scheindlin found that a number of specific stops and subsequent …

Universalism And Civil Rights (With Notes On Voting Rights After Shelby), Samuel R. Bagenstos

Articles

After the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder, voting rights activists proposed a variety of legislative responses. Some proposals sought to move beyond measures that targeted voting discrimination based on race or ethnicity. They instead sought to eliminate certain problematic practices that place too great a burden on voting generally. Responses like these are universalist, because rather than seeking to protect any particular group against discrimination, they formally provide uniform protections to everyone. As Bruce Ackerman shows, voting rights activists confronted a similar set of questions—and at least some of them opted for a universalist approach—during the campaign …

The Unrelenting Libertarian Challenge To Public Accommodations Law, Samuel R. Bagenstos

Articles

There seems to be a broad consensus that Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits race discrimination in “place[s] of public accommodation,” was a remarkable success. But the consensus is illusory. Laws prohibiting discrimination by public accommodations currently exist under a significant legal threat. And this threat is merely the latest iteration in the controversy over public accommodations laws that began as early as Reconstruction. This Article begins by discussing the controversy in the Reconstruction and Civil Rights Eras over the penetration of antidiscrimination principles into the realm of private businesses’ choice of customers. Although the …

Post-Racial Lending?, Cassandra Jones Havard

All Faculty Scholarship

Should lenders have absolute discretion when setting mortgage loan prices regardless of the borrower's creditworthiness? How should a regulatory framework evaluate lending decisions for racial bias to determine if demographic or other variables are used as proxies for race? Congress enacted the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act in order to acquire data on mortgage lending patterns and to discourage geographical disinvestment. Basic HMDA data indicates that mortgage loan applications from black and Hispanic households are more likely to be denied than are applications from whites. Loan denial rates for blacks, Hispanics, and Asians are higher than white applicants at all income …

The "Nixon Sabotage": The Political Origins Of The Equal Protection Challenge To The Voting Rights Act, Danieli Evans

Articles

Critics of the Voting Rights Act argue that the anti-discrimination law requires states to engage in unconstitutional discrimination, as state decisionmakers must be conscious of race in order to ensure that voting policies do not weaken minority representation. This argument relies on the idea that subjective racial motivation is the essence of unconstitutional discrimination (even if benevolent, or to promote racial inclusion). The conventional understanding among constitutional scholars is that this “search for the bigoted decisionmaker” developed in employment and housing discrimination decisions between 1976 and 1979. Previous accounts have not recognized the role that the 1971 school desegregation decision …

Domestic Counterinsurgency: How Counterinsurgency Tactics Combined With Laws Were Deployed Against Blacks Throughout U.S. History, William Y. Chin

University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review

Long before the United States engaged in counterinsurgency overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States engaged in counterinsurgency domestically against blacks. The history of America is a history of enduring conflict between black insurgents and white counterinsurgents. This conflict began centuries ago with the forced transport of enslaved blacks to America’s shores. From the beginning, whites employed all levers of national power including laws to suppress black resistance. The laws became counterinsurgency weapons launched against blacks in an internal conflict lasting generations.

In The Interests Of Justice: Human Rights And The Right To Counsel In Civil Cases, Martha F. Davis

Touro Law Review

This report examines the international human rights treaties binding on the United States as well as other non-binding international human rights documents to ascertain the status of the right to counsel in civil cases, the so-called "Civil Gideon" right. The United Nations treaty monitoring bodies responsible for the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination have both indicated that legal assistance may be required to ensure fairness in civil cases. The Charter of the Organization of American States, to which the United States is a party, goes farther …

Saint Francis College V. Al-Khazraji: Cosmetic Surgery Or A Fresh Breadth For Section 1981? , Barbara A. Bayliss

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Shelby V. Holder: Brief Of Professor Patricia A. Broussard And Famu College Of Law Students As Amici Curiae In Support Of Respondents, Patricia A. Broussard, Sabrina Collins, Stacy Hane, Akunna Olumba

Amicus Briefs

Shelby County, Alabama v. Eric H. Holder, Jr., In the Supreme Court of the United States, Brief of Professor Patricia A. Broussard, Sabrina Collins, Stacy Hane, Akunna Olumba and Named Students and Organizations of Florida A & M University College of Law as Amici Curiae in Support of Respondents

The Changing Nature Of The Dominant Justifications That Legitimated The Oppression Of African-Americans In The United States, Kevin D. Brown

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The original justifications for the oppression of both African–Americans in the United States and Dalits in India were drawn from the religious systems of thought of both societies. However, over the centuries, the basic justifications for the oppression of African–Americans changed, while the primary rationale for the oppression of Dalits still remains rooted in religion. This essay sketches out the dominant forms that made and continue to make the oppression of African–Americans appear to be part of the natural order of things. It shows how the primary justifications for the oppression of Blacks changed over time. In so doing, this …

A Cure Worse Than The Disease?, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

The pending challenge to section 5 of the Voting Rights Act insists the statute is no longer necessary. Should the Supreme Court agree, its ruling is likely to reflect the belief that section 5 is not only obsolete but that its requirements do more harm today than the condition it was crafted to address. In this Essay, Professor Ellen D. Katz examines why the Court might liken section 5 to a destructive treatment and why reliance on that analogy in the pending case threatens to leave the underlying condition unaddressed and Congress without the power to address it.

What Was Wrong With The Record?, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

Shelby County v. Holder offers three reasons for why the record Congress amassed to support the 2006 reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) was legally insufficient to justify the statute's continued regional application: (1) the problems Congress documented in 2006 were not as severe as those that prompted it to craft the regime in 1965; (2) these problems did not lead Congress to alter the statute's pre-existing coverage formula; and (3) these problems did not exclusively involve voter registration and the casting of ballots.

South Carolina's 'Evolutionary Process', Ellen D. Katz

Articles

When Congress first enacted the Voting Rights Act (VRA) in 1965, public officials in South Carolina led the charge to scrap the new statute. Their brief to the Supreme Court of the United States described the VRA as an “unjustified” and “arbitrary” affront to the “Equality of Statehood” principle, and a “usurp[ation]” of the State’s legislative and executive functions. Not surprisingly, the Warren Court was unpersuaded and opted instead to endorse broad congressional power to craft “inventive” remedies to address systematic racial discrimination and to “shift the advantage of time and inertia from the perpetrators of evil to its victims.” …

Shelby County V. Holder: Why Section 2 Matters, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

Editor’s Note: Professor Ellen D. Katz writes and teaches about election law, civil rights and remedies, and equal protection. She and the Voting Rights Initiative at Michigan Law filed a brief as amicus curiae in Shelby County v. Holder, on which the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments February 27. Here, she examines why Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act bears consideration in the case, which involves a challenge to Section 5 of the act.

Bringing Human Rights Home: How State And Local Governments Can Use Human Rights To Advance Local Policy, Human Rights Institute

Human Rights Institute

State and local governments play an essential role in promoting and protecting human rights. Within the United States, agencies and officials at the municipal, city, county and state levels can help fulfill human rights by ensuring dignity, equality and opportunity for everyone in their jurisdiction.

Recognizing the value of human rights, state and local agencies and officials across the United States are incorporating international human rights standards in their daily work. As illustrated by examples throughout this report, integrating human rights into local law, policy and practice can enhance government decision-making and respond directly to local needs. It also allows …