Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons^™

Modern Authorities From Brandies To Brnovich: For Jurists Who Have Considered Social Science / When Doctrine Was Not Enough, Jeremiah Chin

Articles

While the Supreme Court is the final authority on the Constitution, its interpretations increasingly turn to outside, non-legal sources to authoritatively support its conclusions of law and fact. Particularly in cases involving racial discrimination, the Court relies on social science data presented by the trial record, amicus curiae, or its own research. However, the Court lacks explicit rules or methods of analysis for these data. To remedy this gap in analysis, this article proposes a critical methodology for analyzing the use of social science data in cases involving race. By outlining a historiography of the Court's invocation of extrinsic data, …

Changemakers: Master Of Studies In Law: 'Radical Imagination, Radical Listening', Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Whiteness As Contract, Marissa Jackson Sow

Law Faculty Publications

2020 forced scholars, policymakers, and activists alike to grapple with the impact of “twin pandemics”—the COVID-19 pandemic, which has devastated Black and Indigenous communities, and the scourge of structural and physical state violence against those same communities—on American society. As atrocious acts of anti-Black violence and harassment by law enforcement officers and white civilians are captured on recording devices, the gap between Black people’s human and civil rights and their living conditions has become readily  apparent. Less visible human rights abuses camouflaged as private commercial matters, and thus out of the reach of the state, are also increasingly exposed as …

The Civil Right To Belong: A Case Study On Immigrant Integration Of Muslim Students In Educational Institutions, Mamoona H. Siddiqui

Theses and Dissertations

Constitutional equal protection values serve as social integration policies for new Americans and generations that follow. They promise equal opportunity, fair treatment, protection from unlawful discrimination, and freedom to preserve cultural identities in their new communities. However, in times of national security crises and political polarization, the disjuncture in the way equal protection doctrines have been historically implemented often reflect deep-rooted inequities that impact underrepresented communities. American Muslims are one such community in which members have experienced anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiment particularly after 9/11 and political polarization on immigration and civil rights policies. The study explores the equal protection doctrine …

Are High Levels Of Educator Bias Associated With The Disproportionate Discipline Of Black Students?, Melissa Ann Ramos

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Data on school discipline inequities have shown disproportionate numbers of Black students suspended and expelled compared to their non-Black counterparts. Despite the implementation of evidence-based solutions such as positive behavior supports and intervention, educator professional development, and restorative practices aimed at closing the racial discipline gap, little to no change has occurred. Critical Race Theory is used as a lens for viewing racial hierarchies as a socially constructed tool to oppress people of color. This oppression can be seen in various aspects of society and in education, especially in school discipline. It is fueled by biases, both implicit and explicit. …

Violence Everywhere: How The Current Spectacle Of Black Suffering, Police Violence, And The Violence Of Judicial Interpretation Undermine The Rule Of Law, David B. Owens

Articles

No abstract provided.

163 U.S. 537 Supreme Court Of The United States: Plessy V. Ferguson No. 210, Trina Jones

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Race And Guns, Courts And Democracy, Joseph Blocher, Reva B. Siegel

Faculty Scholarship

Is racism in gun regulation reason to look to the Supreme Court to expand Second Amendment rights? While discussion of race and guns recurs across the briefs in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, it is especially prominent in the brief of legal aid attorneys and public defenders who employed their Second Amendment arguments to showcase stories of racial bias in the enforcement of New York’s licensing and gun possession laws. Because this Second Amendment claim came from a coalition on the left, it was widely celebrated by gun rights advocates.

In this Essay we address issues …

The Importance Of Race, Gender, And Religion In Naturalization Adjudication In The United States, Emily Ryo, Reed Humphrey

Faculty Scholarship

This study presents an empirical investigation of naturalization adjudication in the United States using new administrative data on naturalization applications decided by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) between October 2014 and March 2018. We find significant group disparities in naturalization approvals based on applicants’ race/ethnicity, gender, and religion, controlling for individual applicant characteristics, adjudication years, and variation between field offices. Non-White applicants and Hispanic applicants are less likely to be approved than non-Hispanic White applicants, male applicants are less likely to be approved than female applicants, and applicants from Muslim-majority countries are less likely to be approved than …

Do Social Movements Spur Corporate Change? The Rise Of 'Metoo Termination Rights' In Ceo Contracts, James Hicks, Rachel Arnow-Richman, Steven Davidoff Solomon

Scholarship@WashULaw

Do social movements spur corporate change? This Article sheds new empirical and theoretical light on the issue through an original study of executive contracts before and after MeToo. The MeToo movement, beginning in late 2017, exposed a workplace culture seemingly permissive of high-level, sex-based misconduct. Companies typically responded slowly and imposed few consequences on perpetrators, often allowing them to depart with lucrative exit packages. Why did companies reward rather than penalize bad actors, and has the movement disrupted this culture of complicity?

The passage of time since the height of the movement allows us to investigate these issues empirically, using …

Evolving Beyond Reasonable Accommodations Towards "Off-Shelf Accessible" Workplaces And Campuses, Karla Gilbride

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

One of the hallmarks of the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”), which prohibits discrimination in the workplace on the basis of disability, is that it defines “discrimination” to include “not making reasonable accommodations to the known mental or physical limitations of an otherwise qualified individual with a disability.” This concept of reasonable accommodation was seen as innovative in two ways. It recognized that employers must sometimes take affirmative steps or make adaptations to afford individuals with disabilities an equal opportunity to apply for and perform jobs. And it identified the failure to take such affirmative steps as a type of …

Getting To Death: Race And The Paths Of Capital Cases After Furman, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Garth Davies, Ray Paternoster

Faculty Scholarship

Decades of research on the administration of the death penalty have recognized the persistent arbitrariness in its implementation and the racial inequality in the selection of defendants and cases for capital punishment. This Article provides new insights into the combined effects of these two constitutional challenges. We show how these features of post-Furman capital punishment operate at each stage of adjudication, from charging death-eligible cases to plea negotiations to the selection of eligible cases for execution and ultimately to the execution itself, and how their effects combine to sustain the constitutional violations first identified 50 years ago in Furman …

The Visibility Trap, Kate Redburn

Faculty Scholarship

Vice Patrol offers a novel history of the visibility trap. It integrates interventions in legal history, history of sexuality, and queer theory with remarkable ease. Lvovsky brings new insight to a question that has puzzled scholars across several fields: Why and how does cultural representation lead to increased state repression? Blending impressive archival research with sophisticated theoretical analysis, Lvovsky follows cultural knowledge into the legal system to offer a fresh diagnosis of the problem and how it develops. In her discovery of “epistemic gaps,” she uncovers a key mechanism of the visibility trap. Disagreements between the police and the courts, …

Before Equal Protection: The Fall Of Cross-Dressing Bans And The Transgender Legal Movement, Kate Redburn

Faculty Scholarship

Scholars are still unsure why American cities passed cross-dressing bans over the closing decades of the nineteenth century. By the 1960s, cities in every region of the United States had cross-dressing regulations, from major metropolitan centers to small cities and towns. They were used to criminalize gender non-conformity in many forms – for feminists, countercultural hippies, cross-dressers (or “transvestites”), and people we would now consider transgender. Starting in the late 1960s, however, criminal defendants began to topple cross-dressing bans.

Scholars are still unsure why American cities passed cross-dressing bans over the closing decades of the nineteenth century. By the 1960s, …

Practicing With Conviction: Race, Reentry, And The Legal Profession, Nicole Smith Futrell

Faculty Scholarship

Within recent years, different areas of the legal community have publicly addressed the need for racial justice. The killing of George Floyd and the reckoning with race that followed prompted law schools, bar associations, and court systems, as well as government, private, and non-profit legal organizations, to publicly acknowledge that racial disparities continue to persist in our society. While most of these legal institutions have made some recognition of the fact that the legal system has played a role in perpetuating systemic racism, they have essentially failed to address how discrimination against system-impacted individuals continues to deepen racial and socioeconomic …

Cause For Concern Or Cause For Celebration?: Did Bostock V. Clayton County Establish A New Mixed Motive Theory For Title Vii Case And Make It Easier For Plaintiffs To Prove Discrimination Claims?, Terrence Cain

Seattle University Law Review

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 makes it unlawful for an employer to discriminate against an employee “because of” race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. This seems simple enough, but if an employer makes an adverse employment decision partly for an impermissible reason and partly for a permissible reason, i.e., if the employer acts with a mixed motive, has the employer acted “because of” the impermissible reason? According to Gross v. FBL Financial Services, Inc. and University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center v. Nassar, the answer is no. The Courts in Gross and Nassar held …

Hernández V. Mesa: A Case For A More Meaningful Partnership With The Inter-American Commission On Human Rights, Peyton Jacobsen

Seattle University Law Review

Through an in-depth examination of Hernández, the Inter-American Human Rights System, and the success of Mexico’s partnership with said system, this Note will make a case for embracing human rights bodies— specifically, the Inter-American System on Human Rights—as an appropriate and necessary check on the structures that form the United States government. Part I will look closely at the reasoning and judicially created doctrine that guided the decision in Hernández, with the goal of providing a better understanding of the complicated path through the courts that led to a seemingly straightforward yet unsatisfying result. Part II will illustrate the scope …

Mary Lou Graves, Nolen Breedlove, And The Nineteenth Amendment, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

This close examination of two cases is part of a larger ongoing project to provide a distinct account of the Nineteenth Amendment. In 1921, the Alabama Supreme Court held the Nineteenth Amendment required that any poll tax be imposed equally on men and women. Sixteen years later, the Supreme Court disagreed. Juxtaposing these two cases, and telling their story in rich context, captures my larger claim that—contrary to the general understanding in the scholarly literature—the Nineteenth Amendment was deliberately crafted as a highly circumscribed measure that would eliminate only the exclusively male franchise while serving steadfastly to preserve and promote …

First Comes Love. Then Comes Marriage. Then Comes A Baby In A Baby Carriage: An Application Of Protective Surrogacy Laws To The Tarheel State, Justin Lo

Seattle University Law Review

Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) and determining parentage have a common feature: each is governed by state law or the lack of such laws. This lack of statutory regulations presents significant legal challenges to gay men who wish to start a family. Because same-sex male couples seeking to become fathers through ART and surrogacy are the most likely demographic to be impacted when determining parentage, laws that influence the direction of surrogacy will undeniably facilitate whether both males will be deemed a father. To provide same-sex male couples with a pathway to parenthood, North Carolina should (1) develop robust, protective surrogacy …

Race In Washington’S Juvenile Legal System: 2021 Report To The Washington Supreme Court, Task Force 2.0 Juvenile Justice Subcommittee

Seattle University Law Review

Part I of this report provides the core work of the subcommittee and is intended to function as a stand-alone document, expressed in youth- friendly language, that sets forth: (1) the youth-articulated goals for systemic change to the juvenile legal system; (2) a narrative of how the system currently works and the harms caused; and (3) the change needed to bring about the youth-articulated goals for systemic change. This document is intended to be a youth-centered blueprint for change—a tool for community advocates, a framework for policy makers, and a call-in to the many institutional actors to center the leadership …