Constitutional Law M Casto 7.24.10

Constitutional Law-Civil Rights 1

Constitutional Law- Civil Rights, Equal Protection

Professor Massinger

Ethical and Legal Issues in Management

MNGT 5910

Melissa Casto

July 24, 2010


The Constitution of the United States is one of the most imperative documents that has

ever been written and centuries after its adoption, the Constitution continues to influence the

lives of everyone in the United States. In the United States, social issues and arguments such as

abortion and free speech arise and these very issues have to be resolved by the U.S. Supreme

Court through interpretation of our magnificent U.S. Constitution.

One area of constitutional decision that has generated a multitude of social conflict is that

of equal protection. From the end of the Civil War to the present time, the problem of providing

equal protection under the law for everyone, regardless of race, wealth, sex, or place of

residence, has been a fundamental problem in American Society. These issues are not solved

easily and it has taken major changes in the thinking of the United States Supreme Court justices

and the political leaders of this great nation to make equal protection of law a reality for

Americans. Supreme Court decisions impact the lives of Americans every day, but no other set

of these laws has touched our lives as that of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth

Amendment.

Under the Fourteenth Amendment, (McWhirter, 1995), no state may “deny to any person

within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” With that statement added to the U.S.

Constitution in 1868, the United States began a journey into uncultivated legal and philosophical

trials that are still in progress today. This journey has not been an easy one, but it has been a

necessary one. In American history, many lives were lost and much blood was shed over one of

our nation’s simplest but altruistic ideas that “all men are created equal.”


The beginnings of antidiscrimination law (Brennan, Brown, Kubasek, 2009), can be

traced back to three constitutional provisions: the Fifth Amendment, which states that no person

may be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; the Thirteenth

Amendment, which abolished slavery; and the Fourteenth Amendment, which granted former

slaves all the rights and privileges of citizenship and guaranteed the equal protection of the law

to all persons. But the provisions alone were not sufficient to prohibit the unequal treatment of

citizens on the basis of their sex, age, race, religion, and national origin. Congress had to enact

major legislation to bring a reduction in discrimination and these laws are referred to as the civil

rights laws.

Equality (Merriam-Webster, 2004), can be defined as “the quality, fact, or state of being

equal.” This state of being equal came at a precious cost for one couple in the state of Virginia

in the late 1960’s. In 1967, in the case, Loving v. Virginia, 388. U.S.1 the court ruled that laws

against interracial marriage violated the Equal Protection Clause. Richard Loving, a white man,

and Mildred Jeter, a black woman, were married in the District of Colombia in June 1958. After

their wedding nuptials, they returned to their home in the state of Virginia. They were

subsequently arrested and charged criminally due to the fact that they were married interracially.

A Virginia jury found them guilty of violating Virginia’s law against interracial marriage and the

judge sentenced them to one year in prison but agreed to suspend the sentence if they left the

state of Virginia and never came back. The couple moved to the District of Colombia and sued to

have their conviction set aside stating that it violated the Fourteenth Amendment.


In this case, Chief Justice Warren, (McWhirter, 1995), ruled in a unanimous court that

states could no longer outlaw interracial marriage and argued that the prohibition had a negative

effect on both races and intended to be used to maintain a system of racial segregation. Chief

Justice Warren also ruled that this kind of a statute violated the newly developed right to privacy

because it interfered with each person’s right to decide free from unreasonable government

interference whom he or she should marry.

I chose this subject of equal protection and civil rights because I am passionate about

these rights. I endorse the argument that no matter what a person’s opinions are about the need

to guarantee equality and the means that are most appropriate to achieve racial and social

equality, it is important to understand the landmark cases in which courts have ruled and made

this nation the greatest nation in which to live.

This is the year of 2010 and we have an African American as president of the United

States of America. While much has changed for people of color, one would still have to ask the

question, “Are there feelings of superiority still being practiced and very prevalent in the

workforce and corporate America of today?” One could turn on the news on the television any

given night in America and still hear stories being reported on people that have been mistreated

or been denied a basic right due to the color of their skin.

In the Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3, it was said that the act of a mere individual, the

owner of an inn, a public conveyance or place of amusement, refusing accommodations to

colored people, cannot be justly regarded as imposing any badge of slavery or servitude upon the


applicant, but only as involving any ordinary civil injury, properly cognizable by the laws of the

state, and presumably subject to redress by those laws until the contrary appears.

Justice Bradley ruled in this case stating that, “It would be running the slavery question

into the ground, to make it apply to every act of discrimination which a person may see fit to

make as to the guests that he will entertain, or as to the people he will take into his coach or cab,

or car, or admit to his concert or theatre, or deal with in other matters of intercourse or business.”

By the fourteenth amendment, (McWhirter, 1995), all persons born or naturalized in the

United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are made citizens of the United

States and of the state in wherein they reside; and the states are forbidden from making or

enforcing any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the

United Sates, or shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process

of law, or deny to any person within their jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The object of this amendment was to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before

the law, but it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to

enforce social, as distinguished from political equality.

One of the most common instances of this connection is the establishment of segregation

in schools. This issue has caused much debate between the races and stirred up political and

social questions of equality. The story of racial segregation in public schools really started in

1850 with the decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Court in the case of Roberts v. City of

Boston, 5 Cush.198, 1850, in which the supreme judicial court of Massachusetts held that the

general school committee of Boston had power to make provision for the instruction of colored


children in separate schools established exclusively for them, and to prohibit their attendance

upon the other schools. In this case, a young black girl living in Boston, Massachusetts was kept

from attending the elementary school located nearest to her home because it was designated as

an all white school. The Massachusetts statute on public education simply stated that children

should attend the school closest to their home unless special provisions were made. The

Massachusetts Supreme Court in their ruling found nothing illegal about forcing this child to

travel an additional distance, which was a quarter of a mile, to attend a public school for black

children. In the court’s opinion, the schools were essentially “equal” except that the students

were of different races. This is where the concept, “separate but equal” was birthed.

Beginning in 1954, the United States Supreme Court began to move the nation away

from segregated public schools. There was a great deal of resistance that was met and it wasn’t

until 1980 when legally segregated public schools become eliminated from the United States.

In the case of Brown v. Board of Education 347 U.S. 483, 1954, Chief Justice Warren

delivered the opinion of the court. In this case, children of African-American parents sought the

aid of the courts in obtaining admission to the public schools of their community on a

nonsegregated basis. They had previously been denied admission to the schools attended by

white children under laws requiring or permitting segregation according to race. The segregation

was alleged to deprive the plaintiffs of the equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth

Amendment. It was ruled that this type of segregation had a detrimental effect upon the black

children and the impact of the segregation was far greater than the sanction of the law.


When the Fourteenth Amendment was passed in 1868, women did not have the right to

vote, and in many jurisdictions under many circumstances they could not own property or sign

contracts. It was argued by many that women were not necessarily inferior, but because of their

special roles as wives and mothers, they required special treatment at the hands of the

government and might not be able to make crucial decisions appropriately as men would.

According to (McWhirter, 1995), the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, giving women

the right to vote throughout the country in all elections, however the authors of this

amendment did not address the guarantee that women would have “equal protection of

the laws.”

In the 1923 decision of Adkins v. Children’s Hospital, Justice Sutherland, writing for a

five justice majority, overturned a District of Columbia law that required employers to

pay women at least a minimum wage. Employers could pay men any wage, no matter

how low, because there wasn’t a minimum wage for men. Justice Sutherland argued that

the Nineteenth Amendment should by implication also give women equal rights to work

and contract without unreasonable government interference.

It is fundamentally different to discriminate against people who are poor and might

become rich than to discriminate against others due to their race or sex. As time has progressed

and society has become more mindful of sex discrimination, the courts have begun to take notice

as well. Is sex discrimination ever acceptable?

In 1981 the court handed down two decisions that found sex discrimination to be

acceptable.


In Michael v. Sonoma County, 657, U. S. 198. 1981, a 17- year old boy had been

convicted of statutory rape. California law made it a crime for males to have sexual intercourse

with a female if that female was less than 18 years of age, regardless of whether or not she

consented. With this law, females involved in this illegal sexual activity were not subject to

punishment. Justice Rehnquist wrote the opinion for the five-justice majority. He argued that this

was not a case of sex discrimination because the state has an interest in protecting young women

from becoming pregnant. He also argued that when these young women become pregnant, it

drains the resources of society because studies have shown that state benefits are supporting a

majority of these young teen mothers and their children.

Another landmark case concerning sex discrimination was that of the 1981 case, Rostker

v. Goldberg. This particular case addressed the fact that federal government makes males register

for the draft, but not females. Justice Rehnquist, who wrote the opinion for the six-member

majority, ruled that this requirement did not violate the Equal Protection Clause because the

purpose of the draft is to raise an army to fight in time of war. Since at that time women were not

allowed to fight in combat, he argued that it did not make sense to subject them to the draft.

There were dissenting opinions with this case. Justices Brennan, White, and Marshall all

dissented. In one dissenting opinion, Justice White argued that women could fill many

noncombat roles, and, because a modern army had more noncombat roles than combat roles, it

did not make sense to exempt women from the draft.


In the 1961 decision of Hoyt v. State of Florida, the court upheld Florida’s method of

selecting people for jury service. In this case, Hoyt v. State of Florida 368 U.S. 57, 1961, the

appellant, a woman, had been convicted in Hillsborough County, Florida, of second degree

murder of her husband and was tried in a court of law with an all-male jury. She was charged

with killing her husband by assaulting him with a baseball bat and had accused the courts of an

unfair trial due to the fact that there were no women jurors. At the core of the appellant’s

argument is the claim that the nature of the crime in which she was convicted noticeably

demanded the addition of persons of her own sex on the jury. The court did not agree and Justice

Harlan delivered the opinion of the court. There were concurring opinions from all other justices

in this case as well. When the trial took place in 1957, only 220 women of approximately 46,000

registered female voters had volunteered for jury duty and this constituted about 40 percent of

the total voting population. The courts ruled that the statute in question, Fla.Stat, 1959, S

40.01(1), F.S.A. was not written offensive to the Fourteenth Amendment and ruled in favor of

the state in this case. They defended the ruling by stating that there were not enough women to

pick from at the time of the trial due to the fact that the women had to volunteer for jury duty at

that time and not enough women had volunteered, hence the reason for the all-male jury.

When Americans (McWhirter, 1995) declared their independence from England, they

also declared their fundamental values. They held certain truths to be “self-evident,” including

All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain

unalienable Rights, which among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of

happiness.


The United States of America is the greatest nation in the world and this nation has spent

over two centuries trying to live up to these “self-evident” truths. On August 28, 1963, the

Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. invoked these words as he stood and spoke to a multitude

of 25,000 people on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. He said that he had a

dream that one day the United States would “live out the true meaning of this creed.” He hoped

that one day the “sons of slaves and the sons of former slave owners” would be able to “sit down

together at the table of brotherhood” and that one day the “jangling discord of our nation” would

be turned into “a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.”

This day might not be yet upon us, but we are closer than we have ever been. The United

Sates of America has dedicated itself to three fundamental goals: liberty, democracy, and

political equality and with our Constitution, we may enforce, create, and withhold these goals

through our Judicial systems. The goal of equality is a purpose from which retreat was not and

never will be an option.


References:

1. Brennan, Brown, and Kubasek, (2009). The Legal Environment of Business. Pearson:

Prentice Hall, New Jersey.

2. Merriam-Webster. (2004). Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. Merriam-

Webster, Inc: Massachusetts.

3. McWhirter, Darien, A. (1995), Exploring the Constitutional Series and Equal

Protection Law. Oryx Press: Arizona.

Constitutional Law M Casto 7.24.10

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