Civil Rights [1st]

1. Not whether the government has the right to treat different people differently; it is whether such differences in treatment are reasonable.
2. Publicized their grievances and organized a civil rights movement. Now leaders focused on integration and being equal with the white people.
3. Step 1: persuade the court to declare unconstitutional laws creating schools that were separate but obviously unequal. Step 2: persuade the court to declare unconstitutional laws creating schools that were separate but unequal in not-so-obvious ways. Step 3: persuade it to rule that racially separated schools were inherently unequal and hence unconstitutional. Successes: Lloyd Gaines, Linda Brown v B.O.E.
4. Busing to make integration possible. People lived where they lived and this made it hard for the schools to become integrated. "Freedom of Choice" was introduced and school stayed pretty much the same. A school must now show signs of having the intent to be segregated in order for it to violate the law.
5. First, public opinion was changing. Second, acts from whites upon blacks in a harmful way were caught on tape and shown on t.v. and caused a strong moral force to rise. Third, JFK was shot by a left wing association. Fourth, in 1964, the Democratic party took majority in the house and outnumbered those in the South.
6. In the 60's, less than 1/3 of the black population was registered to vote and as time continued, the number of registered blacks rose. Also, bills were passed that allowed certain freedoms to blacks and so they decided to just give them all the rights that whites had...?
7. It has made a complete 360 degree turnaround. With women having almost no rights, they now have them all. First standard: reasonableness, when the government treats some classes of people differently from others, the different treatment must be reasonable and not arbitrary. Second standard: strict scrutiny, some instances of drawing distinctions between different groups of people are inherently suspect; thus the court will subject them to strict scrutiny to ensure that they are clearly necessary to attain a legitimate state goal.
8. The debate is whether or not the government should step in to make the nation as a whole desegregated, including women and all other minorities. Equality of result is having the government take affirmative action to hire minorities while equality of opportunity says that people want things to happen on their own course and and there should be no special treatment given to one or more minorities.
9. The court adapted a standard somewhere between reasonableness and strict scrutiny.
-state can't set different ages at which men and women become legal adults
-state can't set different ages at which men and women can buy beer
-women cannot be barred from jobs by arbitrary height and weight requirements
-employers cannot require that women take mandatory pregnancy leaves
-business and service clubs cannot exclude women
-women and men get same amount of money for retirement benefits
10. At first, they really didn't care too much. Then, in 1973, Texas law was struck down with Roe v Wade. The right to privacy was what the court went with. Groups introduced constitutional amendments to overturn the Roe v Wade but none succeeded. The Court broadened its views on the decision saying that women must be informed on what they would like to do. 1992, the court said that there was a right to have an abortion [Casey and Stenberg cases tried to overturn Roe].
11. Through compensatory action. Disabled persons cannot be denied a job if there is reason to believe that they can do it. Methods of transportation should be accessible to the disabled as well as public accommodations.