Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons^™

Time To Panic! The Need For State Laws Mandating Panic Buttons And Anti-Sexual Harassment Policies To Protect Vulnerable Employees In The Hotel Industry, Kristy D'Angelo-Corker

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Measuring Environmental Justice: Analysis Of Progress Under Presidents Bush, Obama, And Trump, Mollie Soloway

Student Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

Finding Original Public Meaning, James Macleod

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Evolution Of Legal Topics, Rights And Obligations In The United States, Roberto Rosas

Faculty Articles

What new constitutional rights does the American Legal system have to offer? The United States Constitution is a document that continues to be interpreted every year. The Supreme Court hears recent cases with the purpose of interpreting the meaning of the Constitution. Since the creation of the Supreme Court, the Constitution has been analyzed in different ways – some interpretations lasting decades and some amendments going through changes depending on the different ideologies of the Justices on the Court.

This article discusses some of the rights established by the Supreme Court from 2016 to 2019 and provides the background as …

Sacrificing Secrecy, Daniel S. Harawa

Georgia Law Review

Juries have deliberated in secret since medieval times. The
historical reason for the secrecy is that it promotes impartiality,
which in turn protects a defendant’s right to a fair trial. But as
it turns out, jurors are not always impartial. Lurid examples
exist of jurors condemning defendants based on the defendant’s
race, sexuality, ethnicity, and religion.
Generally speaking, courts cannot hear evidence of what
transpired during deliberations. In 2017, however, the U.S.
Supreme Court created an exception to this rule, holding that
the Sixth Amendment requires courts to hear evidence of jurors
making racially biased statements. But this exception means …

Some Objections To Strict Liability For Constitutional Torts, Michael L. Wells

Georgia Law Review

Qualified immunity protects officials from damages for
constitutional violations unless they have violated “clearly
established” rights. Local governments enjoy no immunity, but
they may not be sued on a vicarious liability theory for
constitutional violations committed by their employees. Critics
of the current regime would overturn these rules in order to
vindicate constitutional rights and deter violations. This
Article argues that across-the-board abolition of these limits on
liability would be unwise as the costs would outweigh the
benefits. In some contexts, however, exceptions may be justified.
Much of the recent controversy surrounding qualified
immunity involves suits in which police officers …

The Equal Rights Amendment After Bostock: A Means To Expand Constitutional Protections For Sexual Minorities, Courtney M. Hogan

Georgia Law Review

The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was presumed dead in
the 1980s after a long battle for ratification failed, but it has
recently returned to public discourse with the latest wave of
feminist influence in the United States. The ERA declares that
equal rights under the law cannot be denied on account of sex.
In the 2020 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Bostock v. Clayton
County, the Court interpreted similar language from Title VII
of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which also prohibits sex
discrimination. In that case, the Court interpreted the statutory
prohibition on sex discrimination to include discrimination
against …

The Voting Rights Paradox: Ideology And Incompleteness Of American Democratic Practice, Atiba R. Ellis

Georgia Law Review

This Essay describes the “voting rights paradox”—the fact
that despite America’s professed commitment to universal
enfranchisement, voting rights legislation throughout U.S.
history has arisen in some states to serve antidemocratic,
exclusionary ends. This Essay argues that this contradiction
comes into focus when the right to vote is understood as having
as an ideological driving force based on worthiness for
admission to the franchise. This ideology of worthiness persists
because the right to vote is dependent on political decisions left
to the political branches and the majority’s willingness to allow
propaganda to influence the scope of the franchise.
Ultimately, this Essay …

Black Livelihoods Matter: Capitalist Myths Of Economic Efficiency In Racist Lending Policies (A Prologue And A Plea), Kim Vu-Dinh

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Fare Share: A Proposed Solution To Address The Racial Disparity In Access To Public Transportation Funding In America, Michael Swistara

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Black American households are up to six times less likely to own a car than white families and are four times more likely to rely on public transportation to meet their daily needs. Despite this, communities of color have seen consistent disinvestment in their transit infrastructure. Four hundred years of continued housing segregation combined with post-recession austerity policies and ongoing pro-automobile bias has exacerbated this disparity. This Note proposes a straightforward legislative tool to begin to combat this inequity. The proposed legislation would require that urbanized areas spend their public transit dollars according to the population density of the communities …

Toward A Race-Conscious Critique Of Mental Health-Related Exclusionary Immigration Laws, Monika Batra Kashyap

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article employs the emergent analytical framework of Dis/ability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) to offer a race-conscious critique of a set of immigration laws that have been left out of the story of race-based immigrant exclusion in the United States—namely, the laws that exclude immigrants based on mental health-related grounds. By centering the influence of the white supremacist, racist,and ableist ideologies of the eugenics movement in shaping mental health-related exclusionary immigration laws, this Article locates the roots of these restrictive laws in the desire to protect the purity and homogeneity of the white Anglo- Saxon race against the threat of …

Law And Anti-Blackness, Michele Goodwin

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article addresses a thin slice of the American stain. Its value derives from the conversation it attempts to foster related to reckoning, reconciliation, and redemption. As the 1930s Federal Writers’ Project attempted to illuminate and make sense of slavery through its Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives From 1936-1938, so too this project seeks to uncover and name law’s role in fomenting racial division and caste. Part I turns to pathos and hate, creating race and otherness through legislating reproduction— literal and figurative. Part II turns to the Thirteenth Amendment. It argues that the preservation of slavery endured through …

A Reasonable Person Standard For Qualified Immunity, Bailey D. Barnes

Faculty Publications

Ahmaud Arbery, Jacob Blake, Rayshard Brooks, George Floyd, Daniel Prude, Breonna Taylor. In 2020, the United States' longstanding problem of police brutality, especially related to officer encounters with minorities, was on full display. The names listed here are only a snapshot of those cases that garnered the most significant media attention. Though in admittedly differing circumstances, each of these cases demonstrates that both on-duty and off-duty police interactions can have dire, even deadly, consequences. Yet, these situations are only those that resulted in death or severe injury. Invariably, there are numerous other instances where law enforcement, clothed with the state's …

And What Of The “Black” In Black Letter Law?: A Blaqueer Reflection, T. Anansi Wilson

Faculty Scholarship

This is a reflective, analytical essay remarking on the role that Blackness has and continues to play in the construction, understanding and application of "black letter law." This essay is written from a Black and BlaQueer perspective and displays how a shift in standpoint--moving from the invisible, standard white "reasonable person"--underscores and illuminates the current legal and sociopolitical crisis we find ourselves in. It is continuation of the discussion began in my earlier articles "Furtive Blackness: On Blackness & Being," "The Strict Scrutiny of Black and BlaQueer Life" and the working paper "Sexual Profiling & BlaQueer Furtivity: BlaQueers On The …

Table Of Contents

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents.

Comparing Dadd V. Anoka County With Corbitt V. Vickers: Why Defendants Should Bear The Burden Of Establishing Qualified Immunity In A Motion To Dismiss, Aisha Green

American University Law Review

In the wake of last summer’s George Floyd protests, qualified immunity is once again at the forefront of the debate. Officials, such as police officers, can raise qualified immunity as an affirmative defense in response to allegations that they have violated an individual’s constitutional rights. The different interpretations of qualified immunity’s meaning, use, and scope among the circuit courts have contributed to the development of strong opinions on both sides of the defense.

Particularly, circuit courts are split over who bears the burden of establishing qualified immunity when defendants use it as a basis for a motion to dismiss under …

Foreword, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Foreword.

The Deans' Roundtable, Dean Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Dean Danielle Conway, Dean Tamara Lawson, Dean Mario Barnes, Dean L. Song Richardson

Seattle University Law Review

The Deans' Roundtable.

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents.

'Act Normal Or Leave': When Law And Culture Collide, Heidi R. Gilchrist

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.