Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons^™

Days Of Decision: San Francisco’S 1960 House Un-American Activities Committee Protest As A Turning Point Of The New Left, Sophie Carter

Phi Alpha Theta Pacific Northwest Regional Conference

After the degradation of union power throughout the McCarthy era, a new politics took hold among young Americans, and its academic roots and appeal to young leftists established the university as the new institutional mediator for left-wing radicalism in the 1960s, allowing college students to promote antiwar, civil rights, and civil liberties campaigns both on and off campus. Years before the major events that are tied to the New Left in American collective memory, however, Bay Area college students’ protests against the House Un-American Activities Commission garnered national media attention for their perceived radicalism in the face of the federal …

Periods For Profit And The Rise Of Menstrual Surveillance, Michele E. Gilman

All Faculty Scholarship

Menstruation is being monetized and surveilled, with the voluntary participation of millions of women. Thousands of downloadable apps promise to help women monitor their periods and manage their fertility. These apps are part of the broader, multi-billion dollar, Femtech industry, which sells technology to help women understand and improve their health. Femtech is marketed with the language of female autonomy and feminist empowerment. Despite this rhetoric, Femtech is part of a broader business strategy of data extraction, in which companies are extracting people’s personal data for profit, typically without their knowledge or meaningful consent. Femtech can oppress menstruators in several …

Seize The Day: Renewed Hope For The Permissibility Of In Rem Counterclaims Against The United States Government After The Fifth Circuit's Substituted Opinion In $4,480,466.16?, Evan Gildenblatt

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

Symposium: Examining Black Citizenship From Reconstruction To Black Lives Matter: Falling Short Of The Promise Of The Thirteenth Amendment: Time For Change, Michael A. Lawrence

ConLawNOW

This Essay seeks to shine additional light on the potential of the underutilized Thirteenth Amendment (as contrasted to the much-litigated Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause) for advancing racial justice and equity. The Essay suggests the Thirteenth Amendment provides strong constitutional basis for an unapologetic embrace of the sorts of new, race-conscious measures that will be necessary to begin to achieve true racial equity in a country that for centuries has erected massive structural barriers to Black opportunity and advancement

Analysis And Investigation Of Solitary Confinement Reforms, Alison E. Gordon

SJD Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Technological Tethereds: Potential Impact Of Untrustworthy Artificial Intelligence In Criminal Justice Risk Assessment Instruments, Sonia M. Gipson Rankin

Faculty Scholarship

Issues of racial inequality and violence are front and center in today’s society, as are issues surrounding artificial intelligence (AI). This Article, written by a law professor who is also a computer scientist, takes a deep dive into understanding how and why hacked and rogue AI creates unlawful and unfair outcomes, particularly for persons of color.

Black Americans are disproportionally featured in criminal justice, and their stories are obfuscated. The seemingly endless back-to-back murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, and heartbreakingly countless others have finally shaken the United States from its slumbering journey towards intentional criminal justice …

Can “Asians” Truly Be Americans?, Vinay Harpalani

Faculty Scholarship

Recent, tragic events have brought more attention to hate and bias crimes against Asian Americans. It is important to address these crimes and prevent them in the future, but the discourse on Asian Americans should not end there. Many non-Asian Americans are unaware or only superficially aware of the vast diversity that exists among us, along with the challenges posed by that diversity. Some have basic knowledge of the immigration and exclusion of Asian Americans, the internment of Japanese Americans which was upheld in Korematsu v. United States, and the “model minority stereotype”, but these are Asian Americans 101. This …

Domestic Violence Victims, A Nuisance To Society?: Moving Toward A More Equitable System In Protecting Vulnerable Women, Elizabeth Haderlie, Layla Shaaban

Brigham Young University Prelaw Review

Recent conversations about racial biases that exist towards the black community have required many of us to rethink systems and laws that unconsciously perpetuate racial discrimination. This article uses state, federal, and local lawsuits to argue the case against nuisance ordinances and the negative effects they can have on victims of domestic abuse, namely black women. We dive into the histories and statistics of domestic violence and nuisance ordinances. We provide evidence that indicates a correlation between domestic violence victim’s fear of reaching out for help, and nuisance ordinances being in place. Finally, we urge the federal government to amend …

White Tape And Indian Wards: Removing The Federal Bureaucracy To Empower Tribal Economies And Self-Government, Adam Crepelle

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

American Indians have the highest poverty rate in the United States, and dire poverty ensnares many reservations. With no private sector and abysmal infrastructure, reservations are frequently likened to third-world countries. Present-day Indian poverty is a direct consequence of present-day federal Indian law and policy. Two-hundred-year-old laws premised on Indian incompetency remain a part of the U.S. legal system; accordingly, Indian country is bound by heaps of federal regulations that apply nowhere else in the United States. The federal regulatory structure impedes tribal economic development and prevents tribes from controlling their own resources.

This Article asserts the federal regulatory “white …

Environmental Law As Segregation, Nadia B. Ahmad, Melissa Bryan

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Sexual Harassment Is Not A Crime: Aligning The Uniform Code Of Military Justice With Title Vii, Laura T. Kessler, Sagen Gearhart

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Sexual harassment and sexual assault are ongoing problems in the military. The Department of Defense responded in 2019 with sweeping changes in how the military handles sexual misconduct, including a proposal to criminalize sexual harassment in the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). This Article, co-authored by an expert on workplace sex discrimination and a former military officer, responds to this proposal. We argue that sexual harassment, however reprehensible, is not criminal conduct. Moreover, criminalization is likely to undermine the military’s efforts to prevent and punish sexual harassment by raising the stakes for the involved service members, thereby deterring reporting, …

Tax Benefits, Higher Education And Race: A Gift Tax Proposal For Direct Tuition Payments, Bridget J. Crawford, Wendy C. Gerzog

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article combines three topics--taxes, higher education, and race--to evaluate the tax system's role in exacerbating racial inequalities. Part II frames the discussion with a brief overview of the economics of higher education: how much it costs, how much debt the average student incurs to afford it, and how that debt burden varies by race. Part III describes the major income and wealth transfer tax benefits for higher education, including I.R.C. § 2503(e)'s exclusion of direct tuition payments from gift tax. Part IV demonstrates how this gift tax exclusion disproportionately benefits white families already more likely to avail themselves …

Bostock’S Paradox: Intersections In Lgbtq Employment Rights And Private, Religious Businesses, Christopher Smith

Brigham Young University Prelaw Review

Thanks to the recent opinion of Bostock v. Clayton County by the United States Supreme Court regarding the protection of LGBTQ employees in the workplace, discussion has turned to how this protection relates to religious employers. Religious organizations such as churches and mosques are afforded protections thanks to an exemption found in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The role and scope of these protections in regards to private, religious (but not religion-owned) businesses has been debated as recently as 2014 in the Supreme Court. In this paper I address this issue and determine that, underneath current ruling …

Bias Preservation In Machine Learning: The Legality Of Fairness Metrics Under Eu Non-Discrimination Law, Sandra Wachter, Brent Mittelstadt, Chris Russell

West Virginia Law Review

Western societies are marked by diverse and extensive biases and inequality that are unavoidably embedded in the data used to train machine learning. Algorithms trained on biased data will, without intervention, produce biased outcomes and increase the inequality experienced by historically disadvantaged groups. Recognizing this problem, much work has emerged in recent years to test for bias in machine learning and AI systems using various fairness and bias metrics. Often these fairness metrics address technical bias, but not the underlying cause of inequality: social bias. In this Article we make three contributions. First, we assess the compatibility of fairness metrics …

Masthead

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Editor’S Note, Kimberly Shi

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Symposium Schedule

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Weathering The Pandemic: Dying Old At A Young Age From Pre-Existing Racist Conditions, Arline T. Geronimus

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

Mainstream social epidemiology now acknowledges the contributions of interpersonal racism, racialized stress, and implicit bias to population health inequity. It also increasingly recognizes that current and historical racist policies place barriers in the way of healthy lifestyles by institutionalizing food deserts, housing decay, and austerity urbanism. Essential as these developments are, they only skim the surface of how insidiously structural racism establishes and reproduces population health inequity. I coined the term “weathering” to describe the effects of sustained cultural oppression upon the body. Weathering expands on the more conventional “social determinants of health” approach to understand the contextually fluctuating and …

Empathy’S Promise And Limits For Those Disproportionately Harmed By The Covid-19 Pandemic, Theresa Glennon

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

Structural race, ethnicity, and class disparities in the United States concentrated and intensified the health, economic, and psychological impact of COVID-19 for certain populations. Those same structural disparities and the belief system that maintains them may also account for the weak policy response that left the United States with high rates of infection and death, economic devastation of individuals, families, and small businesses, and psychological distress. A more equal society with a stronger pre-pandemic safety net may have prevented or eased the disproportionate hardship and avoided the drama and cliffhanging. Or the shock of a pandemic and likelihood of extreme …

School Finance, Race, And Reparations, Preston C. Green Iii, Bruce D. Baker, Joseph O. Oluwole

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

In this article, we explain why and how school finance reform should be a part of a reparations program for Black Americans. This article proceeds in six parts. Part I explains how Black-white school funding disparities occurred during the separate-but-equal era. Part II discusses how these funding disparities have occurred in the aftermath of the Brown decision. Parts III and IV explore why school desegregation and school finance litigation, respectively, have failed to remedy these gaps. Part V lays out a reparations framework that state legislatures could adopt to provide restitution to schools and taxpayers harmed by state policies creating …

Can “Asians” Truly Be Americans?, Vinay Harpalani

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

Recent, tragic events have brought more attention to hate and bias crimes against Asian Americans. It is important to address these crimes and prevent them in the future, but the discourse on Asian Americans should not end there. Many non-Asian Americans are unaware or only superficially aware of the vast diversity that exists among us, along with the challenges posed by that diversity. Some have basic knowledge of the immigration and exclusion of Asian Americans, the internment of Japanese Americans which was upheld in Korematsu v. United States, and the “model minority stereotype”, but these are Asian Americans 101. This …

Persistent Inequalities, The Pandemic, And The Opportunity To Compete, Rachel F. Moran

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

Even before the recent coronavirus pandemic, race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status played a powerful role in allocating opportunity—in the public schools and elsewhere. The pandemic has laid bare the dimensions of this inequality with a new and alarming clarity. In this essay, I first will focus on the landscape of educational inequity that existed before the coronavirus forced public schools to shut down. In particular, I will explore patterns of racial and ethnic segregation in America’s schools and how those patterns are linked to additional challenges based on socioeconomic isolation. In addition, I will consider the role of language and …

Giving Due Process Its Due: Why Deliberate Indifference Should Be Confined To Claims Arising Under The Cruel And Unusual Punishment Clause, Shad M. Brown

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

This Note discusses culpability requirements for claims brought by pretrial detainees and convicted prisoners. The initial focus is on deliberate indifference, a culpability requirement formulated under the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause but symmetrically applied to claims arising under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Note then shifts to Kingsley v. Hendrickson, a landmark Supreme Court decision that casts doubt on the application of Eighth-Amendment standards to Fourteenth-Amendment claims. Finally, this Note advocates for the application of objective unreasonableness, a different culpability requirement, to claims arising under the Due Process Clause. It does so on the …

It’S My Party, And I’Ll Do What I Want To: Making The Case For Judicial Review Of National Interest Waiver Denials, M. Hunter Rush

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

Politics and personal beliefs have become increasingly intertwined since the founding of the United States. Few issues have divided Americans more than immigration laws and policies. This Note advances the argument that when a noncitizen’s application for a National Interest Waiver is denied, there must be some recourse. The current problem is exacerbated when the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, on behalf of the Secretary of Homeland Security, denies a waiver for what appears to be racially or religiously motivated purposes. Judicial review in an Article III court is the most neutral forum of review that a noncitizen residing …

Opportunity Zones Providing Opportunity For Whom?: How The Current Regulations Are Failing And A Solution To Uplift Communities, Ruta R. Trivedi

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

In 2017, the newly enacted Tax Cuts and Jobs Act created an incentive for taxpayers to invest in Qualified Opportunity Zones— census tracts that consist of low-income communities. These investments, which are incentivized via lucrative tax deferral benefits, are intended to uplift communities and leave them in a better position than they were pre-investment. However, the initiative lacks regulation requiring investments to actually benefit low-income areas, resulting in money going to places that do not need help, while communities that are in need may face displacement. This is a result of many wealthy investors finding that luxury projects are the …

Past The Tipping Point, But With Hope Of Return: How Creating A Geoengineering Compulsory Licensing Scheme Can Incentivize Innovation, Brooke Wilson

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

This Note explores the patenting of geoengineering technologies and issues arising from the early stages of this high-risk, high-reward technology. This Note focuses on one possible solution to solving the issues surrounding the patenting of geoengineering technology: Creating a specialized compulsory licensing scheme.

Sometimes They Don't Die: Can Criminal Justice Reform Measures Help Halt Police Sexual Assault On Black Women?, Michelle S. Jacobs

UF Law Faculty Publications

In the eighteen months between March 2019 and August 2020, at least eight Black women were murdered by the police. Breonna Taylor was one of them. Officer Brett Hankison, one of the three officers who murdered Breonna Taylor, was eventually discharged from the Louisville Police Department. In the memo discharging him, the police chief cited behavior that amounted to an extreme indifference to the value of human life: Hankison blindly fired ten rounds into the home of Ms. Taylor's neighbor. Additionally, in the aftermath of Ms. Taylor's death, two women came forward and accused Hankison of sexually assaulting them while …

Left At The Borders: Addressing The Issue Of Inclusivity For Female Immigrants, Elizabeth S. Castillo, Brooklyn Bird, Abby Forrest, Editor

Brigham Young University Prelaw Review

The United States laws, regulations, and political discourse surrounding migration is rife with varying sensitivities. These include but are not limited to the physically, emotionally, and mentally exigent circumstances that cause women and girls of many ages and nationalities to flee their home countries for the United States. Because of the structure of American immigration law and the impactful measures taken by the Trump administration, we argue the language found in the Immigration and Nationality Act neglects to address gender-specific persecution, which renders the already difficult process of seeking asylum still more challenging for women hoping to migrate to the …

Beyond #Metoo: Addressing Workplace Sexual Misconduct Cases And The Targeted Use Of Non-Disclosure Agreements, Taylor Percival, Lane Gibbons

Brigham Young University Prelaw Review

Recent allegations against prominent figures have brought the targeted use of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) in sexual misconduct cases to public knowledge. NDAs have historically been used in a variety of ways in such cases, but situations of coercion and uneven power dynamics often leave victims with no real choice, and they end up losing their right to speak publicly about their experiences. This paper discusses the history of NDAs in sexual misconduct cases, explores when and why their enforcement is unlawful, and proposes the adoption of federal legislation like the BE HEARD Act to limit the inappropriate use of NDAs.