Pol 2301, united states government 1 course learni

POL 2301, United States Government 1
Course Learning Outcomes for Unit III
Upon completion of this unit, students should be able to:
2. Identify the distinctive attributes of the U.S. Constitution and
the Bill of Rights.
2.1 Define civil liberties and civil rights.
2.2 Discuss landmark Supreme Court cases and laws related to
civil rights and civil liberties.
2.3 Identify the civil rights and liberties guaranteed in the Bill
of Rights.
2.4 Describe the meaning of equal treatment.
2.5 Summarize the movements in the United States to achieve
equal rights.
Course/Unit
Learning Outcomes
Learning Activity
2.1
Unit Lesson
Chapter 4, pp. 109–148

Unit III Assessment
2.2
Unit Lesson
Unit III Assessment
2.3
Unit Lesson
Unit III Assessment
2.4
Unit Lesson
Unit III Assessment
2.5
Unit Lesson
Unit III Assessment
Required Unit Resources
In order to access the following resources, click the links
below.
Throughout this course, you will be provided with sections of
text from the online textbook American
Government 2e. You may be tested on your knowledge and
understanding of the material presented in the

textbook as well as the information presented in the unit lesson.
Chapter 4: Civil Liberties, pp. 109–148
Chapter 5: Civil Rights, pp. 155–194
Unit Lesson
The civil liberties and civil rights established in the Bill of
Rights provide the foundation of American individual
freedom and protection from arbitrary government intervention
in the lives of citizens. These guarantees
establish the groundwork for full engagement in the political
and civil life of our society. Following the
Enlightenment, philosophers such as John Locke, Charles
Montesquieu, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the
architects of American democracy, held that the individual
rights and liberties were inherent in human
UNIT III STUDY GUIDE
Civil Rights and Civil Liberties
https://online.columbiasouthern.edu/bbcswebdav/xid-
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beings—not derived from government. They further contended
that a key function of government was to
protect rights and liberties.
Authored by James Madison, the Bill of Rights consists of 10
amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Originally,
12 amendments were proposed by Congress to the state
legislatures; however, only 10 were ratified. On
December 15, 1791, after 2 years of debate, the Bill of Rights
was adopted. The Bill of Rights, along with
other founding documents, including the Declaration of
Independence and the U.S. Constitution, are on
display in the National Archives Museum in Washington, D.C.
Take a closer look at the Bill of Rights by visiting “The Bill of
Rights” webpage, which is hosted by the U.S.
National Archive and Records Administration.
The Rotunda at the National Archives Museum in Washington,
D.C., is where the Bill of Rights and other
founding documents are housed. They are displayed around the
Rotunda in specially designed cases to help
preserve the aging documents.
(National Archives Museum, n.d.)
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights

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In this lesson, we will examine civil liberties and
civil rights through two case studies. The first
focuses on a civil liberty—the right to privacy.
While not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution,
citizen demands for privacy rights date back to
the country’s founding. The second case study
centers on a more contemporary controversy—
equal access to education.
Civil liberties are the freedoms that individuals are
guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, national and
state laws, and judicial interpretations. They
guarantee citizens’ freedom to engage in certain
actions such as speech or journalism. At the
same time, these guarantees place limits on what
types of actions the government can restrain and
to what degree the government can restrain the
actions of citizens. There are two broad
categories of civil liberties: personal freedoms and
rights of the accused. They include the rights to
free speech and a free press, the right to privacy,
the right to peaceably assemble, the free exercise
of religion, the rights of criminal defendants such
as due process and protection against self-
incrimination or double jeopardy, and the rights to
a jury trial and council.

Civil rights guarantee freedom from arbitrary or
discriminatory treatment by the government. The
government is required to ensure citizens receive
equal treatment in a variety of settings such as
employment, education, housing, and access to
public facilities regardless of race, gender, religion, ethnicity,
sexual preference, disability, and other legally
protected characteristics (Krutz, 2019). In some cases, civil
rights and civil liberties issues remain narrowly
focused over time while others broaden and diversify. In this
unit’s case studies, we will examine
controversies associated with both civil liberties and civil
rights. In particular, this lesson illustrates some of
the key debates over citizens’ freedom from excessive
government intrusion into their private lives and the
right of all citizens to have equal access to education.
Case Study I: Privacy Rights
In the 21st century, privacy is often considered to be one of the
most important rights held by American
citizens; however, there is no one explicit right to privacy in the
U.S. Constitution or the amendments. Rather,
privacy is rooted in law, judicial interpretation, and a
compilation of constitutional amendments (i.e., the First,
Third, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth) (Gifis, 2016). The
right to privacy has been carved out of existing
amendments and created by laws and U.S. Supreme Court
decisions.
The Statue of Liberty is a symbol of individual rights and
liberties.

(McLeod-Simmons, 2018)
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An alternate version of the infographic above is provided using
assistive technologies.
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Following the legal tradition championed by
Michigan Supreme Court Justice Thomas
Cooley, Harvard-educated Boston attorney

Samuel D. Warren and U.S. Supreme
Court Justice Louis Brandeis aptly defined
privacy in their 1890 seminal work “The Right
of Privacy” as “the right to be left alone”
(Warren & Brandeis, 1890, p. 205).
However, this idea that government should
leave individuals undisturbed unless there
is a compelling reason to do otherwise has
expanded over the past 130 years in ways
that these early constitutional scholars
could not have imagined. In today’s world,
privacy rights extend into numerous areas
of modern life—from communications to
reproduction.
Privacy Rights
Today, privacy rights can be categorized into three key areas,
which are discussed below.
Personal Data Privacy
Constitutional basis: Drawing from the protections in the Fourth
Amendment and Fifth Amendment, the right to keep sensitive
information private includes medical records, educational
records,
and financial reports collected by both the government and the
private sector.
Defined: The ownership of private information is a legally
complex
issue since personal data is often owned, at least in part, by
several
parties. For example, ownership or control over a person’s

medical records can be shared by the patient’s
family if an information release is signed, or the patient is a
minor. Ownership may also be shared by a
physician’s office or hospital; medical labs; pharmacies;
insurance companies; and state and federal
government agencies if Medicare, Medicaid, or the Children’s
Health Insurance Program (CHIP) or infectious
diseases are involved. Further, that ownership may be shared by
Internet service providers through which
medical information about a patient is shared and
pharmaceutical companies (McCarthy, 2018).
Law: While there is no single federal data protection statute,
there are several landmark statutes that provide
privacy protections for personal data.
Review the following landmark privacy statutes by clicking the
links below.
about the legislation.
Accountability Act (HIPAA) by accessing the
“Health Information Privacy” webpage.
(FERPA)" webpage to learn more about the
FERPA legislation.
Physical Privacy
Constitutional basis: The Fourth, Ninth, and Fourteenth
Amendments serve as a foundation for physical

privacy, which is an individual’s right over his or her physical
person, including reproductive rights and
education pertaining to physical privacy, mandatory drug
testing, and physical searches.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice
Louis Brandeis
(Harris & Ewing, 1916)
Boston attorney Samuel D.
Warren
(Notman, 1875)
https://www.justice.gov/opcl/privacy-act-1974
https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/index.html
https://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html
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Defined: Reproductive rights refer to an individual’s right to
determine when and if to reproduce, to use
contraceptives, to terminate a pregnancy, and to have access to
reproductive health services and education
(FindLaw, n.d.).
Cases: There have been several landmark U.S. Supreme Court

cases that establish a right to privacy and
define privacy in terms of reproductive rights. Griswold v.
Connecticut (1965) and Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972)
established a right to use contraceptives, and Roe v. Wade
(1973) established the right to terminate a
pregnancy as a fundamental right to a woman’s life and future
(American Civil Liberties Union [ACLU], n.d.-b).
In order to access the following video, click the
link below.
Watch the news announcement given by Walter
Cronkite on CBS News of the Roe v. Wade (1973)
Supreme Court decision in this video On This
Day: Supreme Court Legalizes Abortion.
The video transcript is also available at the link
above.
Later, U.S. Supreme Court cases held that federal funds could
be used to terminate a pregnancy even if the
life of the mother was not at risk, Harris v. McRae (1980).
However, the 1989 high court decision in Webster
v. Reproductive Health Services took a step away from
reproductive privacy by restricting late-term abortions,
and Rust v. Sullivan (1991) upheld a gag order barring abortion
counseling by and referrals to family planning
programs that receive federal funds. In the 1992 Planned
Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey
decision, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the core principles of
Roe v. Wade but slightly weakened it.
However, the Court made substantial inroads into striking down

Roe in the 2007 Gonzalez v. Carhart (2007)
decision when it upheld the federal ban on abortion imposed by
the Partial Birth Abortion Act (2003) and in
Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc.
(2007) where the court declared partial birth
abortions unconstitutional. In the recent 2016 case Whole
Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt (2016), the U.S.
Supreme Court struck down a state law restricting women
access to abortion by reducing the number of
abortion clinics in the state (Liptak, 2016).
link below.
Watch the news coverage by C-SPAN in the
video Plaintiff Reaction to Supreme Court Ruling
on Texas Abortion Restrictions.
The transcript for the video Plaintiff Reaction to
Supreme Court Ruling on Texas Abortion
Restrictions is also available.
See how your state ranks in the protection of reproductive rights
by engaging with the
following interactive map from the Status of Women in the
States website, which can
be accessed by clicking the link below.
Reproductive Rights Interactive Map

(Germanovich, n.d.)
(Germanovich, n.d.)
https://c24.page/8xcdvgabg8x4zhvg4yae9w4e9a
https://www.c-span.org/video/?411779-104/plaintiff-reaction-
supreme-court-ruling-texas-abortion-restrictions
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https://statusofwomendata.org/explore-the-data/reproductive-
rights/
UNIT x STUDY GUIDE

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Communications Privacy
Constitutional basis: Based chiefly on the Fourth Amendment
but also on the First and Third Amendments,
the right to communications privacy includes telephone calls,
cell phone calls, emails, and social media
postings. Privacy violations can take the form of warranted or
warrantless electronic surveillance and use of
communication records.
Defined: Electronic surveillance is the use of
an electronic or mechanical device to obtain
the information from an electronic
communication. The communication is not
acquired with the consent of the individual(s)
under surveillance, and the individual(s)
under surveillance has the reasonable
expectation of privacy. Examples of electronic
surveillance include wiretapping, geolocation
tracking (i.e., geotracking), videotaping,
datamining, and social media mapping (Legal
Information Institute, n.d.).
Cases and law: In the case Olmstead v.
United States (1928), the U.S. Supreme Court
held that electronic eavesdropping by the
government did not constitute a violation of
the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against
unreasonable searches and seizures since
the interception did not occur through an
actual intrusion into a person’s home. The
court also contended that conversations were

not physical objects that are subject to being seized. It was not
until almost 4 decades later in Katz v. United
States (1967) that the Supreme Court ruled that the Fourth
Amendment offers protection to an individual
anywhere that the individual has a reasonable expectation for
privacy. As technology changed, the need for
clarity in the meaning of surveillance and privacy emerged.
In 1978, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act, which defined electronic surveillance.
The High Court also began to revise its conception of electronic
surveillance and privacy. In the Kyllo v.
United States (2001) decision, the Supreme Court addressed the
use of electronic surveillance that did not
require a physical entrance into a person’s home. The Supreme
Court held that a Fourth Amendment search
did not require an actual physical entrance into a person’s home
if information was gathered that would not
have been obtained without the entrance (Legal Information
Institute, n.d.). The events of September 11,
2001, changed the nature of electronic surveillance. While
warrantless searches and surveillance had always
been permitted, they were legal only under limited
circumstances; however, following 9/11, Congress passed
the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing
Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct
Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act of 2001, which expanded the
authority of government to engage in searches
and surveillance, including warrantless searches without
probable cause; access to third-party records, such
as cellphone records held by a service provider; and the
collection of information pertaining to the origins and
destination of communications rather than just the content of
the communication (ACLU, n.d.-a).

Electronic surveillance is used in many public spaces to deter
crime; however, it also raises privacy issues.
(Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency [DARPA], 2013;
McLeod-Simmons, 2019b; XoMEoX, 2017)
UNIT x STUDY GUIDE
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link below.
Watch the History Channel’s explanation of the
USA PATRIOT Act by watching the video Here’s
Why the PATRIOT Act Is So Controversial.
The video transcript is also available at the link
above.
In the case Carpenter v. United States (2018), the U.S. Supreme
Court addressed several of these issues.
The court held that the government needs a warrant to access an
individual’s cellphone location history (geo-
tracking). The High Court also ruled that obtaining geo-tracking
information constitutes a Fourth Amendment
search and requires a probable cause warrant.

Case Study II: Equal Treatment
In today’s political landscape, laws and court decisions actively
work to ensure equal treatment under the law.
There are numerous legislative and judicial protections to
ensure the civil rights of all citizens. However, this
has not always been the case. Since the inception of the United
States, there have been debates and battles
over how individuals should be treated by the government and
by private entities. Women, racial and ethnic
minorities, and other disenfranchised groups have sought
freedom from discrimination and equal treatment
under the law. In this second case study, we will examine one of
these civil rights movements in which the
goal was to desegregate public schools.
While the Thirteenth Amendment abolished
slavery, discrimination against racial
minorities continued throughout much of the
United States after the Civil War. Jim Crow
laws, predominately in Southern states,
institutionalized racial discrimination. Poll
taxes, literacy tests, white primaries, threats
of violence, and violence enforced racial
discrimination, effectively disenfranchising
black citizens from the post-Reconstruction
period through the 1960s and beyond. Legal
segregation separated the races in public
spaces such as public transportation,
restaurants, and schools. This separation
was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) when it
established the separate but equal doctrine

as consistent with the Fourteenth
Amendment’s equal protection clause
(Krutz, 2019).
Pictured is a 1935 poll tax receipt from St. Francis County,
Arkansas. Poll taxes were used to prevent Blacks from voting.
The $1 poll tax is equivalent to $7.50 today.
(Desilver, 2014; McLeod-Simmons, 2019b)
(Germanovich, n.d.)
https://c24.page/bf4zbxxd5kkmeef8tc87jerxwm
UNIT x STUDY GUIDE
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In 1952, the Plessy ruling, as applied to segregated public
education, was
challenged in a class action suit combining five cases from
Kansas, Virginia,
South Carolina, Delaware, and the District of Columbia under

the title Brown
v. Board of Education of Topeka. While it was not the first case
attempting to
dismantle segregation, it was one of the successful ones. The
National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
Legal Defense
and Education Fund sponsored the case with a young attorney
from
Baltimore, Maryland, Thurgood Marshall, who served as lead
counsel. The
case raised several legal issues, but the most important was its
challenge to
the separate but equal doctrine. Marshall argued that separate
school
systems for Black and White children were inherently unequal
and, therefore,
were in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the
Fourteenth
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It took 2 years for the
court to hear the
case and render a decision.
With Earl Warren sitting as Chief Justice, the
U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision
on May 11, 1954, with Warren stating that in the
field of public education, the doctrine of separate
but equal has no place. Separate educational
facilities are inherently unequal (Brown v. Board
of Education of Topeka [1], 1954). In a complete reversal of
Plessy, which
contended that the Fourteenth Amendment supported the
separate but equal
doctrine, the Warren Court unanimously held that the
segregation of children in

public schools based on race deprives the children of the
minority group of equal
educational opportunities even though the physical facilities and
other tangible
factors may be equal.
Anticipating that the ruling would meet with opposition, the
Supreme Court
delayed providing direction for how the government should
implement the
decision. The Supreme Court sought input from the attorneys
general of all
states that permitted segregated schools, asking them to submit
recommendations on how to implement
desegregation. After holding a series of additional hearings on
how best to construct a plan for desegregating
American schools, on May 31, 1955, the Justices handed down a
blueprint for how desegregation was to
proceed, namely with "all deliberate speed" (Brown v. Board of
Education [2], 1955, para. 1).
The Brown decisions were key to starting the process of
desegregating public schools in the United States.
But integration would prove to be a long, difficult, and
dangerous road that would include additional court
rulings and laws. A key piece of legislation was the Civil Rights
Act of 1964, a sweeping piece of legislation
that aimed at ending discrimination based on color, race,
religion, and national origin. But even after years of
public debate and discord, additional court rulings, and state
and federal laws, all schools in the United States
are still not fully integrated even today.
In order to access the following resource, click the link below.

View an interactive map of districts with open desegregation
orders as late as 2014 at the
ProPublica webpage "A National Survey of School
Desegregation Orders" (Qiu & Hannah-
Jones, 2014; Vugenfirer, n.d.).
Supreme Court Justice
Thurgood Marshall
(Okamoto, 1967)
Supreme Court Justice
Earl Warren
(Dijon, 2014)
https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/desegregation-orders
UNIT x STUDY GUIDE
Title
In order to access the following activity, click the link below to
explore
the milestones of desegregation.
Interactive Activity 3.1: Desegregation Timeline

Click here to access the PDF version of Interactive Activity 3.1:
Milestones to the Revolution.
Where We Are Today
Every citizen in the United States has access to education in
mostly integrated schools. Only about 13% of
grade school students attend schools that are not integrated
(Meckler, 2019). However, the more urban the
area, the more segregated schools tend to be. To some extent,
this is due to income. Students from wealthier
families with parents who are better educated tend to live in
more suburban areas. However, it is also a result
of desegregation orders being lifted by the federal courts. As
mandatory integration plans, including busing,
are dismantled, segregation has reemerged in some areas with
Black and Hispanic students attending
schools that lack diversity (Rabinowitz et al., 2019). Why is
this important? Predominately minority schools
and school districts tend to pay teachers less and employ less
experienced teachers. This can mean that
course offerings tend to be less challenging (e.g., less science,
technology, engineering, and mathematics
[STEM] curriculum). It also means that minority students take
fewer advanced placement courses and have
less access to gifted programs (Waldman & Green, 2018).
Access the link below to view an interactive map
that shows how your local school rates with racial equality in
advanced placement and gifted programs. This
now brings us back to the starting point of this case study and

Justice Thurgood Marshall’s early concern over
equal access for all children to an equal educational
opportunity. In the first Brown decision (1954), Marshall
remarked:
Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state
and local
governments. It is the very foundation of good citizenship.
Today it is a
principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values,
in preparing
him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust
normally to his
environment. In these days, it is doubtful that any child may
reasonably be
expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an
education.
(Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 1954, para. 14)
In order to access the following resource, click the link below.
View an interactive map that displays the likeliness of Black
students to be placed in gifted
programs as compared to White students at the ProPublica
webpage "Miseducation: Is
There Racial Inequality at Your School?" (Groeger et al., 2018;
Vugenfirer, n.d.).
References

American Civil Liberties Union. (n.d.-a). Surveillance under the
USA/PATRIOT Act.
https://www.aclu.org/other/surveillance-under-usapatriot-act
American Civil Liberties Union. (n.d.-b). Timeline of important
reproductive freedom cases decided by the
Supreme Court. https://www.aclu.org/other/timeline-important-
reproductive-freedom-cases-decided-
supreme-court
(Chernetskaya, n.d.)
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https://projects.propublica.org/miseducation/
https://projects.propublica.org/miseducation/
125045827_1

UNIT x STUDY GUIDE
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Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/347/483/#tab-
opinion-1940809
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1), 347 U.S. 483
(1954). https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-
1955/347us483
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (2), 349 U.S. 294
(1955). https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-
1955/349us294
Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. ___ (6th Cir. 2018).
https://www.oyez.org/cases/2017/16-402
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. (2013). Big Data
[Image].
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DARPA_Big_Data.jpg
Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438 (1972).
FindLaw. (n.d.). What are reproductive rights?
https://family.findlaw.com/reproductive-rights/what-are-
reproductive-rights-.html

Germanovich, Y. (n.d.). Simple video camera vector icon
[Photograph]. https://www.dreamstime.com/simple-
video-camera-flat-pictogram-icon-vector-image138944656
Gifis, S. H. (2016). Dictionary of legal terms: Definitions and
explanations for non-lawyers. Barron’s
Educational Series.
Gonzalez v. Carhart, 550 U.S. 124 (2007).
Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc.,
550 U.S. 124 (2007).
Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965).
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1964/496
Groeger, L. V., Waldman, A., & Eads, D. (2018, October 16).
Miseducation: Is there inequality at your school?
ProPublica. https://projects.propublica.org/miseducation/
Harris & Ewing. (1916). Louis Brandeis, head-and-shoulders
studio portrait, facing front [Photograph].
https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2004673443/
Harris v. McRae, 448 U.S. 297 (1980).
Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967).

https://www.oyez.org/cases/1967/35
Krutz, G. (2019, February 21). American government 2e (S.
Waskiewicz, Ed.). OpenStax.
https://openstax.org/details/books/american-government-2e
Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001).
Legal Information Institute. (n.d.). Electronic surveillance.
Cornell Law School.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/electronic_surveillance
Liptak, A. (2016, June 27). Supreme Court strikes down Texas
abortion restrictions. New York Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/28/us/supreme-court-texas-
abortion.html
McCarthy, M. (2018, November 2). Privacy is not a property
right in personal …

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