Facts—The University of Texas Law School denied admission to Sweatt solely because he was black, and state law prohibited African Americans from admission to the school. The state of Texas then established a law school for blacks that was not…
Facts—This case involved two instances of enforcement by state courts of private agreements, known as restrictive covenants, which barred African Americans from holding real property in certain sections of St. Louis and Detroit. Shelley, a black, purchased some property in…
Facts—Screws was a county sheriff who enlisted the assistance of a police- man and a deputy in an arrest. They arrested an African American late at night on a warrant charging him with the theft of a tire. They placed…
Facts—The Law School of the University of Missouri refused Lloyd Gaines, an African American, admittance because of his race. He had completed his undergraduate training at Lincoln University, an all-black school. Missouri had separated the white students from the black…
Facts—In 1892, Plessy, a citizen of Louisiana, having seven-eighths Caucasian and one-eighth African blood, boarded a train from New Orleans to Covington in the same state. The conductor ordered him to sit in the car for black passengers. When Plessy…
Facts—Various hotels, theaters, and railway companies had denied to African Americans the full enjoyment of the accommodations thereof, contrary to the act of Congress requiring no discrimination. Those proprietors had been indicted or sued for the penalty prescribed by the…
Facts—In 1834, Dr. Emerson, a surgeon in the U.S. Army, took Dred Scott, a black slave, to Rock Island, Illinois, where slavery was prohibited by statute. In 1836, Emerson took Scott to Fort Snelling, in the territory of Louisiana, which…
Facts—After the Supreme Court’s decision in Employment Division v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990), Congress held hearings and adopted the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1995 (RFRA). The law mandated that governments should not adopt laws of general applicability that…
Facts—Congress enacted the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to combat systematic discrimination against African American voters in a number of states. In certain areas, where voting had been suppressed, the law provided for the suspension of literacy tests, for the…
Facts—Section 4(E) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 provided that individuals who had successfully completed six or more grades in Puerto Rican schools where a language of instruction other than English was used could not be denied the right…
Facts: After the Court invalidated Nebraska’s regulation of “partial birth abortions,” in Stenberg v. Carhart, 530 U.S. 914 (2000), Congress adopted the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, which sought to limit dilation and extraction (D&X) abortion procedures, in which…
Facts—Responding to a report of a weapons disturbance, Houston police legally entered Lawrence’s apartment and discovered another man and him engaged in an intimate sexual act. Both were arrested and convicted by a justice of the peace under a Texas…
Facts—The state of Washington prohibited individuals from aiding suicides (the law does not prohibit the withholding of “life-sustaining treatment”). Physicians who sometimes treated terminally ill individuals challenged the law as an undue burden on the “liberty interest” protected by the…
Facts—Pennsylvania adopted restrictions on abortions. These required informed consent and a twenty-four-hour waiting period, either the consent of at least one parent or the exercise of a judicial bypass mechanism in cases where minors sought abortions, a requirement that a…
Facts—In August 1982 respondent was charged with violating a Georgia statute that had criminalized sodomy. He had committed this act with another male in the bedroom of his home, where they had been discovered by a police officer serving a…
Facts—Title XIX of the Social Security Act established the Medicaid program in 1965 to provide federal financial assistance to states that choose to reimburse certain costs of medical treatment for needy persons. Since 1976, versions of the so-called Hyde Amendment…
Facts—Redhail was a Wisconsin resident who, under a paternity statute, was unable to marry in Wisconsin or elsewhere as long as he maintained a Wisconsin residence. In January 1972, when Redhail was a minor and a high school student, he…
Facts—Texas statutes prohibited abortions except by medical advice for the purpose of saving the life of the mother. A woman proceeding under the pseudonym of Jane Roe instituted a federal class action against the district attorney of Dallas County challenging…
Facts—Statutory provisions in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia denied welfare assistance to persons who were residents and met all other eligibility requirements except that they had not resided within the jurisdiction for at least a year immediately preceding…
Facts—This case involved the constitutionality of Connecticut’s birth control law. The statute provided that “any person who uses any drug, medical article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception” was to be subject to fine or imprisonment or both.…
Facts—The superintendent of the State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble Minded in the state of Virginia ordered an operation upon Carrie Buck, the plaintiff in error, for the purpose of sterilizing her. She contended that the Virginia statute authorizing the…
Facts—In November 1922, the state of Oregon passed a Compulsory Education Act requiring every child from the ages of eight to sixteen to attend public school. Parents or guardians who refused would be guilty of a misdemeanor. The plaintiff corporation…
Facts—In 1919 Nebraska passed a statute that prohibited the teaching of any subject in any other language than English. Languages could be taught only after the child had successfully passed the eighth grade. Meyer taught in a parochial school and…
Facts—Ralph Baze and Thomas C. Bowling were each convicted of two counts of capital murder and sentenced to death by lethal injection in Kentucky. They sued John D. Rees, the commissioner of Kentucky’s Department of Corrections and other state officials…
Facts—Largely influenced by the kidnapping and murder of twelve-year-old Polly Klaas by a kidnapper who had been released from prison, California adopted a “Three Strikes and You’re Out” law designed to increase punishments for prior serious offenders. Under this law,…
