| A | B |
|---|
| civil rights | Policies designed to protect people against arbitrary or discriminatory treatment by government officials or individuals. |
| Brown v. Board of Education | 1954 S.C. dec. that school segregation in Topeka Kansas was inherently unconstitutional b/c it violated the 14th Amend. guarantee of equal protection. Marks end of legal segregation in US |
| affirmative action | Policy designed to give special attention to or compensatory treatment of members of some previously disadvantaged group. |
| comparable worth | Issue raised when women who hold traditionally female jobs are paid less than men for working at jobs requiring comparable skill |
| Craig v. Boren | 1976 S.C. dec. determined that gender classification cases would have a "heightened" or "middle level" of scrutiny. In other words, courts were to show less deference to gender classifications than to more routine classifications, but more deference than to racial classifications. |
| Korematsu v. U.S. | 1944 S.C. dec. that upheld as constitutional the internment of more than 100,000 Americans of Japanese descent in encampments during World War II. |
| Reed v. Reed | Landmark Case in 1971 in which the S. Ct. for the first time upheld a claim of gender discrimination. |
| civil rights movement | Began in the 1950s. Organized both African Americans and whites to end the policies of segregation. Sought to establish equal opportunities in the political and economic sectors and to end policies that erected barriers between people because of race. |
| 19th Amendment | Constitutional amendment adopted in 1920 that guarantees women the right to vote. |
| Adarand Constructors v. Pena | 1995 S.C. dec. holding that federal programs that classify people by race, even for an ostensibly benign purpose such as expanding opportunities for minorities, should be presumed to be unconstitutional. Such programs must be subject to the most searching judicial inquiry and can survive only if they are "narrowly tailored" to accomplish a "compelling governmental interest." |
| white primary | One of the means used to discourage African American voting that permitted political parties in the heavily Democratic South to exclude Afric. Amer. from primary elections, thus depriving them of a voice in the real contests. The S.C. declared white primaries unconstitutional in 1941. |
| suffrage | legal right to vote. It has expanded throughout American history. |
| 15th Amendment | The constitutional amendment adopted in 1870 t extend suffrage to African Americans |
| 13th Amendment | The constitutional amendment passed after the Civil War that forbade slavery and involuntary servitude |
| Civil Rights Act of 1964 | The law that made racial discrimination against any group in hotels, motels, and restaurants illegal and forbade many forms of job discrimination. |
| equal results | A policy statement about equality holding that government has a duty to help break down barriers to equal opportunity. Affirmative action is an example of a policy justified as promoting equal results rather than merely equal opportunities. |
| equal protection of the laws | Part of the 14th Amendment emphasizing that the laws must provide equivalent "protection" to all people. As one member of Congress said during debate on the Amendment, it should provide "equal protection of life, liberty, and property" to all a state's citizens. |
| Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 | A law that requires employers and public facilities to make "reasonable accommodations" for people with disabilities and prohibits discrimination against these individuals in employment. |
| equal opportunity | A policy statement about equally holding that the rules of the game should be the same for everyone. Most of our civil rights policies over the past three decades have presumed that equality of opportunity is a public policy goal. |
| Dred Scott v. Sanford | The 1857 S.C. decision ruling that a slave who had escaped to a free state enjoyed no rights as a citizen and that Congress had no authority to ban slavery in the territories. |
| 24th Amendment | The constitutional amendment passed in 1964 that declared poll taxes void. |
| grandfather clause | One method used by Southern states to deny African Americans the right to vote. In order to exempt illiterate whites from taking a literacy test before voting, the clause exempted people whose grand fathers were eligible to vote in 1860, thereby disenfranchising the grandchildren of slaves. S.C. declared unconstitutional in 1913. |
| poll taxes | Small taxes levied on the right to vote, that often fell due at a time of year when poor Afric Amer sharecroppers had the least cash on hand. Method used in Southern states to exclude Afric. Amer from voting registers. Declared void by the 24th Amend in 1964. |
| Plessy v. Ferguson | An 1896 S.C. decision that provided a constitutional justification for segregation by ruling that a Louisiana law requiring "equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races" was not unconstitutional. |
| Regents of the University of Calif. v. Bakke | 1978 S. Ct. decision holding that a state university could not admit less qualified individuals solely because of their race. The Court did not, however, rule that such affirmative action policies and the use of race as a criterion for admission were unconstitutional, only that they had to be formulated differently. |
| Voting Rights Act of 1965 | A law designed to help end formal and informal barriers to Afric Amer suffrage. Under the law, federal registrars were sent to Southern states and counties that had long histories of discrimination; as a result, hundreds of thousands of Afri Amer were registered and the number of AfriAmer elected officials increased dramatically. |
