Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons^™

Informed Applicants: Anti-Discrimination Enforcement Based On The Use Of Criminal Records, Benjamin David Pyle

Faculty Scholarship

Navigating the labor market with a criminal record is treacherous. Countless job applicants will be turned down immediately after a potential employer learns they have had contact with the criminal legal system. Criminal records reflect and exacerbate long-standing racial and economic inequalities in the United States. Thus, the use of records in employment decisions will often implicate anti-discrimination laws. However, successfully enforcing these protections requires job applicants to, at minimum, understand why they were not hired. Many applicants never learn why they were not hired and thus will never be able to protect their rights. This Article argues that understanding …

The Permanent Bar(S): The Unprincipled Cage Of Retribution For Immigrant Youth, Dianara Ramirez Ibarra

Cardozo Law Review

This Note argues that a minor’s diminished decisional capacity should be recognized as an affirmative defense when a permanent bar that is triggered during minority strips away a noncitizen’s opportunity to gain lawful status in the United States. Dreamers and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients, individuals who arrived in the United States as children, are victims of punitive immigration laws that have extinguished any possibility of securing lawful residency in the United States. Even more egregiously, Dreamers and DACA recipients are subject to these permanent bars despite lacking the intent and capacity to fully understand the long-term consequences …

Data Rights For Workers, Pauline Kim, Rachel Leavitt

Scholarship@WashULaw

Workers are subject to immense amounts of data collection on the job, and the algorithmic management tools built with that data can produce negative effects, including deskilling jobs, unstable work hours, reduced wages, and dangerous and degrading working conditions. Workers thus have significant interests how their data are collected and used, and yet they have been excluded from nearly all the recently enacted or proposed data protection laws. Their exclusion stems from data protection’s roots in privacy law and theory, which primarily focused on consumers as data subjects. Current data protection laws, even if expanded to cover workers, would provide …

Abolishing The Family, Susan Frelich Appleton, Albertina Antognini

Scholarship@WashULaw

Family law scholarship is replete with calls for reform. Yet gender-, race-, and class-based inequalities within and across families remain intractable. So what if, instead of reforming the family, we abolish it?

Abolishing the family might sound like a startling idea for a family-law analysis, especially after decades of efforts to expand the legal understanding of “family.” But the proposal is hardly new. In this Article, we lay the groundwork for integrating family abolitionist ideas, which have until now mostly taken place outside of law, into family law scholarship.

While family abolition is in many ways a radical departure from …

Campus Crises And The Limits Of Title Vi, Suzanne B. Goldberg, Olatunde C.A. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

This Piece examines the deployment of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as a mechanism for regulating campus conflict following the 2023 to 2024 campus protests and seeks to reset the discourse in light of the statute’s history, doctrine, and role in higher education. Title VI is an important tool for addressing identity-based harassment, epithets, and violence between students, but it is neither designed nor effective as a tool for negotiating clashes between universities’ cornerstone commitments to robust debate and an optimal learning environment for all students. In converting the statute from a source of protection against …

Innocent Until Proven Guilty, Disenfranchised All The Same: Hidden Voter Suppression Within American Jails, Kennedy Hill

Arkansas Law Review

Jails throughout the United States hold thousands of legally eligible voters who have not been convicted of a crime While those convicted of felonies are often statutorily disenfranchised, pretrial detainees retain their civil rights—including the right to vote. In theory, this should guarantee them a voice. In practice, pretrial detention operates like a legal disqualification. Without meaningful enforcement mechanisms, the right to vote becomes hollow.

This Comment argues that implementing a national standard based on the proactive policies of Massachusetts and Nevada will ensure accessible voting for pretrial detainees. To build that argument, this Comment first explores the low level …

Workplace Retaliation And The Intersection Of Protected Conduct And Job Performance, Chris M. Schmidt

Arkansas Law Review

A host of statutory schemes seek to ensure equal employment opportunities in the United States by eradicating workplace discrimination (“EEO laws”). Consider two foundational pillars necessary for these EEO laws to strike the desired balance between individual rights and workplace efficiency. First, employees require robust protection from retaliation if they engage in protected conduct—for example, by reporting perceived discrimination. Second, employers can—and ideally, should—make employment decisions based on how an employee performs the job.

The interests in robust protection and performance-based decision-making serve the purposes of our EEO laws and are well-established. Rarely do they conflict (to the contrary, they …

Religious Employment And The Tensions Between Liberty And Equality, R. Shawn Gunnarson, James C. Phillips, Christopher A. Bates

BYU Law Review

Located in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is an exemption for religious employers that is often misunderstood. Often courts and commentators mischaracterize it as a narrow privilege for religious employers to hire people of the same religion. But the statute’s text says otherwise. This article resolves interpretive debates about the meaning and application of the religious employer exemption through a close textualist reading that discovers a new understanding of the structure of Title VII. Our approach applies the tools of textualism, the prevailing theory of statutory interpretation. Paying attention to the text and structure of Title …

The Inconvenience Doctrine, Alexi Pfeffer-Gillett

BYU Law Review

In a nation of stark inequalities, the Roberts Court is often portrayed as siding with the wealthy and powerful. Many scholars argue that the Court has abandoned legal principles altogether and instead simply chooses winners and losers based on the conservative majority’s political agenda. Meanwhile, scholarly examinations of the legal reasoning underlying the Court’s most impactful decisions are largely confined to specific subject areas. Such compartmentalized analyses, though, overlook broader patterns in the Court’s rulings that transcend substantive legal boundaries.

This Article bridges the gap in these parallel conversations by connecting the Roberts Court’s reasoning across many legal fields with …

Standing In The Dark, Sharon Brett

BYU Law Review

Demonstrating standing for injunctive relief in § 1983 police misconduct cases is undisputedly difficult for civil rights plaintiffs. Under City of Los Angeles v. Lyons, plaintiffs seeking injunctions must present more than evidence of past misconduct; they must show a significant ongoing risk that they will experience the same misconduct again. Scholarly attention to Lyons has focused primarily on doctrinal errors in the Court’s legal analysis, and for good reason. But the case raises another important yet overlooked question: Can civil rights plaintiffs realistically demonstrate risk of future harm given (a) the limited data kept by law enforcement about their …

3l Jayden Boudreau Earns Prestigious Skadden Fellowship, Maurer School Of Law - Indiana University

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

The Skadden Fellowship Foundation announced this week that 3L Jayden Boudreau is one of only 34 law students from across the country—and the only one from an Indiana law school— that has been selected as a 2026 Skadden Fellow, one of the most prestigious honors in public interest law.

The award will support Boudreau’s innovative ACLU LGBTQ & HIV Project, focused on protecting the rights of queer and transgender youth in school settings through legal advocacy and systemic policy engagement. He will spend two years in New York City, working at the national headquarters of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Professor Yvette Butler Named 2026 Recipient Of Derrick A. Bell, Jr. Award, Maurer School Of Law - Indiana University

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

Indiana University Maurer School of Law Professor Yvette Butler has been selected as the 2026 recipient of the Derrick A. Bell, Jr. Award, the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Section on Minority Groups announced late Friday (Dec. 12).

“Professor Butler’s commitment to advancing racial justice and elevating the voices of marginalized communities embodies the highest ideals of our profession,” said Indiana Law Dean Christiana Ochoa. “Her work reflects the courage, clarity of purpose, and unwavering advocacy that defined Derrick Bell’s legacy. We are immensely proud to see her recognized with this award and look forward to the continued impact …

San Mateo County’S Digital Jail Mail Sparks Reckoning Over Private Data, Juan A. Lasso

Capstones

This capstone examines privacy and data risks embedded in digital communication systems used in U.S. correctional facilities. As private vendors introduce tablets, kiosks, and mail digitization services, these technologies enable widespread surveillance and data collection of incarcerated people and their loved ones. The project explores how these systems track and analyze digital footprints in ways that challenge established legal and ethical expectations around privacy. It documents the personal impact on loved ones of people currently or formerly incarcerated in San Mateo County. The reporting centers on the California county jail where a civil rights lawsuit is pending over the mail …

Diplomacy Derailed: Discrimination’S Detour On Route 40, Gage A. Kivlen

Masters Theses, 2020-current

The 1961 Route 40 campaign in Maryland became a critical battleground where three competing approaches to addressing racial segregation revealed deep contradictions in Cold War America. Route 40, a major highway between Washington D.C. and New York, became an international embarrassment when African diplomats from newly independent nations were repeatedly refused service at restaurants and hotels. This crisis prompted responses from three distinct actors: the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), which employed grassroots organizing and direct action; the State Department's Special Protocol Service Section (SPSS), which pursued top-down diplomatic solutions; and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which conducted extensive …

Ben's Blog 1: What Would Benjamin Cardozo Do? (Wwcd): The Holiday Party Edition, Benjamin N. Cardozo School Of Law

Cardozo Law News Archive

The inaugural installment of Ben's Blog presents a fictional exchange inspired by Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo, applying his judicial philosophy to contemporary workplace holiday party issues. The blog explores employment law topics including workplace inclusion, alcohol policies, cannabis use, anti-harassment obligations, and employer liability in a lighthearted educational format.

Criminalizing Difference: An Intersectional Analysis Of Disability In The Criminal Justice System, Rowan Eisleman

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This research addresses the central question: How do individuals with disabilities intersect with the criminal justice system, and what systemic factors contribute to their overrepresentation and victimization? Despite over 61 million Americans having disabilities, there exists a significant gap in comprehensive scholarship examining disability-criminal justice intersections, particularly regarding how people with intellectual and developmental disabilities experience unique vulnerabilities as both offenders and victims. This study contributes to disability studies and criminology by providing a comprehensive intersectional analysis examining how disability compounds with race and gender to create compounded marginalization. This study conducted a comprehensive literature review, analyzing government statistics from …

Shielding Freedoms: State Noncooperation In Hunts For Evidence And People, Mary D. Fan

Washington Law Review

The nation is fracturing into a patchwork of rights and punishment. What some states and localities safeguard as rights, other jurisdictions are criminalizing and punishing. As the divides in rights and punishment deepen, some states are becoming sanctuaries for freedoms penalized elsewhere and enacting shield laws prohibiting cooperation with criminalization and punishment states. A prime example is shield laws protecting people seeking to exercise reproductive rights or obtain gender-affirming care. Major jurisdictions for healthcare and technology-related businesses, such as Washington, California, New York, and Massachusetts, have enacted shield laws that prohibit law enforcement and companies from complying with subpoenas seeking …

Public Defender Discretion, Alma Magaña

Articles

A focus of criminal legal system reform efforts has been the curtailment of police, prosecutorial, and judicial discretion, which has been criticized for its arbitrariness and its contribution to racial, class, and gender disparities. However, one system actor has largely escaped similar scrutiny: public defenders, who, by grant of authority from ethical rules of practice and Supreme Court jurisprudence, have significant decision-making authority in the cases of indigent persons charged with crimes.

This Article will, for the first time, explore the historical rationale for giving public defenders the power to make life-altering decisions for their clients. Specifically, it dissects the …

Red, White-, And Blue-Collar Crime: Federal Sentencing Practices Among White-Collar And Blue-Collar Offenders, Henna Judge

Fordham Law Review

Under the current federal sentencing regime, district courts exercise immense amounts of discretion when sentencing. Though strict adherence to the U.S. Sentencing Commission Guidelines (the “Guidelines”) was once mandatory, courts must now use these Guidelines as an advisory starting point and make a series of fact-specific determinations when sentencing a defendant. Though judicial discretion in this realm aids in preventing undue reliance on Guidelines-range recommendations that can lack nuance, it also invites bias.

In recent years, scholars and courts alike have called attention to a potential disparity in the way blue-collar and white-collar offenders are sentenced. This Note examines relevant …

Conceptual Gerrymandering In Sffa And Some Thoughts On How It Enables The Case’S Weaponization, David Simson

Buffalo Law Review

This Article makes two main contributions at the intersection of Constitutional Law and critical analyses of race and racial (in)equality. First, and more narrowly, the Article provides an in-depth analysis and critique of the Supreme Court’s most recent affirmative action decision in Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard (SFFA), specifically with respect to a crucial aspect of the case that has not been addressed in depth in other scholarship on the decision: how key opinions conceptualize “race” in their reasoning. The Article shows how the SFFA majority opinion and a concurring opinion by Justice Gorsuch incorporate multiple, and inconsistent, understandings …