CIVIL RIGHTS 101

What are Civil Rights?

Civil and political rights are a class of rights and freedoms that protect individuals from
unwarranted action by government and private organizations and individuals and ensure
one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination
or repression. As a resident of the United States, you have many rights under the laws.
Civil Rights are specifically those rights guaranteed by the Constitution, particularly in
the Bill of Rights and in the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments. (See also
Constitution, Bill of Rights, 42 USC § 1983.)

Civil Rights Chronology

1619:
A year before the Mayflower, the first 20 African slaves are sold to settlers in
Virginia as "indentured servants."
1624
The first African American child, William Tucker is born in the colony.
1775:
Abolitionist Thomas Paine's African Slavery in America published in the
Pennsylvania Journal and the Weekly Advertiser.
1789:
Constitution adopted; slaves counted as three-fifths of a person for means of
representation.
1831:
Nat Turner leads slave revolt in Virginia.
1838:
Some 18,000 Cherokees forcibly removed from their land and forced to resettle
west of the Mississippi in a trek that becomes known as the "Trail of Tears."
1848:
First Women's Rights Convention meeting in Seneca Falls, N.Y., hears Elizabeth
Cady Stanton proposes a constitutional amendment giving women the right to
vote.
Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo cedes Arizona, Texas, California, New Mexico,
Colorado and parts of Utah and Nevada to the United States for $15 million.
Article IX guarantees people of Mexican origin "the enjoyment of all the rights of
the citizens of the United States according to the principles of the constitution."
1856:
In early instance of gerrymandering, Democratic party bosses in Los Angeles call
special convention to consider splitting country in two to increase Anglo political
influence.
1857:
In the Dred Scott decision, Scott, a slave who had lived in a free territory, sues for
his freedom on the grounds his residence on free soil liberates him. The Supreme
 Court, citing historical and conventional view of African Americans, rules against
him, saying African American people are regarded as "so far inferior...that they
had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." The court also declares
that slaves were not citizens and had no rights to sue, and that slave owners could
take their slaves anywhere on the territory and retain title to them.
1861:
The Civil War begins.
1863:
January 1, Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation.
1865:
The Civil War ends. Lincoln assassinated (April 15). Freedman's Bureau, to help
former slaves, established. Ku Klux Klan organized in Pulaski, Tenn. The
Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution is ratified stating that "neither slavery
nor involuntary servitude....shall exist" in the United States.
1867:
Some 2,000 Chinese working on the Central Pacific Railroad strike for better pay.
"Mary" is burned to death for her gold by whites in Helena, Mont.
1868:
Fourteenth Amendment, making African Americans full citizens of the United
States and prohibiting states from denying them equal protection or due process of
law, is ratified. Congress reports that 373 freed slaves have been killed by whites.
1869:
Knights of Labor formed "to uphold the dignity of labor."
1870:
The Fifteenth Amendment enacted, guaranteeing the right to vote will not be
denied or abridged on account of race. At the same time, however, the first "Jim
Crow" or segregation law is passed in Tennessee mandating the separation of
African Americans from whites on trains, in depots and wharves. In short order,
the rest of the South falls into step. By the end of the century, African Americans
are banned from white hotels, barber shops, restaurants, theaters and other public
accommodations. By 1885, most southern states also have laws requiring separate
schools.

In Wyoming Mrs. Louisa Swain becomes first woman to cast a legal ballot in the
nation. The Rev. Hiram R. Revels (R-MISS) and Joseph H. Rainey (R-S.C.)
become first African Americans to sit in Congress. Union Pacific announces it
will hire Chinese laborers at $32.50 a month rather than pay whites $52.
1873:
The first community welfare organizations, or "mutualistas" spring up In the
Southwest. Primarily social organizations, they also provide decent burials for
poor Chicanos and address dealing with abusive police or politicians.
1875:
Congress passes the first Civil Rights Act, guaranteeing African Americans equal
rights in transportation, restaurant/inns, theaters and on juries. The law is struck
down in 1883 with the Court majority arguing the Constitution allows Congress to
act only on discrimination by government and not that by private citizens.
1876:
Sioux and Cheyenne Indians win Battle of Little Big Horn, killing Gen. George
Custer. The battle is an outgrowth of continued U.S. violation of the 1868 Fort
Laramie Treaty as white settlers flock to the sacred Black Hills seeking gold.
1877:
With the election of Rutherford B. Hayes as President, Reconstruction is brought
to an end and most federal troops are withdrawn from the South while those
remaining do nothing to protect the rights of African Americans. The return of
"home rule" to the former secessionist states also means the restoration of white
supremacy and the beginning of the disenfranchisement and segregation of
African Americans.
First national strike occurs, aimed at the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and is
marked by violence; 19 workers are killed by police and troops in Chicago, nine
in Baltimore. Chief Joseph, the revered leader of the Nez Perce tribe surrenders to
federal troops and makes famous comment, "From where the sun now stands, I
will fight no more forever."
1882:
Over the veto of President Chester Arthur, Congress passes the Chinese Exclusion
Act restricting the immigration of all Chinese laborers for 10 years and requiring
Chinese to carry identification cards. In 1892, the act is extended for another 10
years.
1888:
Congress passes the Scott Act prohibiting resident Chinese laborers who leave the
United States from returning unless they have family in the country.
1890:
In the Battle of Wounded Knee, U.S. troops kill 200 Dakota Indian men, women,
and children in the last conflict of the so-called "Indian Wars."
In Mississippi, a state constitutional convention meets to write a suffrage
amendment, including a poll tax and a literacy test designed -successfully- to
exclude African Americans from voting. South Carolina follows suit in 1895,
Louisiana in 1898. By 1910, African Americans are effectively barred from
voting by constitutional provisions in North Carolina, Alabama, Virginia,
Georgia, and Oklahoma as well.
The Woman Suffrage Amendment is introduced in Congress for the first time but
defeated.
Treaty with China allows unrestricted immigration of Chinese into the country,
primarily as laborers on railroads in the West
1892:
Congress passes the Chinese Exclusion Act prohibiting further Chinese
immigration into the United States for ten years.
1896:
The Supreme Court, in Plessy v. Ferguson, rules that state laws requiring
separation of the races are within the bounds of the Constitution as long as equal
accommodations are made for African Americans, thus establishing the "separate
but equal" doctrine that justifies legal segregation in the South. Justice John
 Harlan, in lone dissent, says Constitution is "colorblind and neither knows nor
tolerates classes among citizens."
1900:
Lynching has become virtually a fact of life as a means for intimidating African
Americans. Between 1886 and 1900, there are more than 2,500 lynchings in the
nation, the vast majority in the Deep South. In the first year of the new century,
more than 100 African Americans are lynched, and by World War I, more than
1100.
1910:
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is
founded by W.E.B Du Bois, Jane Addams, John Dewey and others.
The Mexican Revolution brings an influx of immigrants to the United States
looking for work.
1912:
The Mexican ambassador formally protests the mistreatment of Mexicans in the
United States, citing a number of brutal lynchings and murders.
1916:
Rep. Jeannette Rankin (R-Mont.) Becomes first woman elected to Congress.
1917:
The Jones Act grants full citizenship to Puerto Ricans and gives them the right to
travel freely to the continental United States. However, because Puerto Rico is not
a state, like citizens in the District of Columbia, Puerto Ricans are represented in
Congress by a delegate with only limited powers and are unrepresented in the
Senate.
1920:
The Nineteenth Amendment gives women the right to vote and is ratified by the
required 36 states.
1922:
In Ozawa v. United States, the Supreme Court denies Japanese residents the right
to naturalization because they are "ineligible for citizenship," as are foreign-born
Chinese. In Congress, the Cable Act declares that "any woman citizen who
marries an alien ineligible to citizenship, shall cease to be a citizen."
1924:
After 10,000 Native American soldiers in World War I, Congress passes the
Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, granting American citizenship to Native
Americans. Several Indian nations, including the Hopi and the Iroquois, decline
citizenship in favor of retaining sovereign nationhood.
The Immigration Act bars any "aliens ineligible to citizenship" from entering the
United States.
1928:
The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) is founded to fight
discrimination, help educate Chicanos and protest segregation, killings and other
abuses.
1930:
Continuing discrimination against Japanese in the United States leads to
formation of the Japanese American Citizenship League.
 Mass deportation occurs of Mexican workers during the 1930's large numbers of
whom are U.S. citizens. Over 400,000 are deported to Mexico; the deportees are
accused of usurping "Americans" from jobs during the Depression.
1939:
African American contralto, Marian Anderson, barred by the Daughters of the
American Revolution from singing in Washington D.C.'s Constitution Hall, sings
instead to a crowd of 75,000 people at Lincoln Memorial.
The Legal Defense Fund established as the legislative arm of the NAACP. A year
later the two become separate organizations.
1941:
President Roosevelt issues executive order banning discrimination against
minorities in defense contracts.
1942:
U.S. government places in barbed wire encircled "relocation camps" some
110,000 Japanese Americans. Guards are ordered to shoot anyone seeking to
leave.
The Bracero Program, created under a joint U.S.-Mexico agreement, permits
Mexican nationals to work in U.S. agricultural areas on a temporary basis and at
wages lower than domestic workers.
1943:
Congress, seeking to reward China for becoming an ally in the war against
Germany and Japan, repeals all previous Asian Exclusion Acts and establishes an
annual quota of 105 Chinese emigrants to the United States each year.
1947:
Jackie Robinson becomes first African American to play major league baseball.
1948:
Supreme Court, in Shelly v. Kramer, declares illegal the government support
enforcement of restrictive covenants under which private parties could exclude
minorities from buying homes in white neighborhoods.
Democratic party endorses civil rights platform, prompting Southern walkout and
formation of States Rights Democratic Party (better known as the Dixiecrats) and
nomination of Strom Thurmond as presidential candidate.
1952:
Tuskegee Institute reports that, for the first time in the 71 years it has been
keeping records, there were no lynchings of African Americans during the year.
1954:
In Brown v. Board of Education, the decision widely regarded as having sparked
the modern civil rights era, the Supreme Court rules deliberate public school
segregation illegal, effectively overturning "separate but equal" doctrine of Plessy
v. Ferguson. Chief Justice Earl Warren, writing for a unanimous Court, notes that
to segregate children by race "generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in
the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be
undone." Thurgood Marshall heads the NAACP/Legal Defense Fund team
winning the ruling. Hernandez v. Texas becomes the first Mexican American
discrimination case to reach the Supreme Court. The case involves a murder
conviction by a jury that includes no Latinos. Chief Justice Earl Warren holds
 persons of Mexican descent are "persons of a distinct class" entitled to the
protection of the Fourteenth Amendment.
1955:
On August 28, 14 year old Emmett Till is beaten, shot and lynched by whites after
allegedly saying "bye, baby" to a white woman in a store in Mississippi.
In Alabama, on December 1 Rosa Parks refuses to up her bus seat to a white man,
precipitating the Montgomery bus boycott, led by Martin Luther King, Jr.
1956:
Montgomery bus boycott ends in victory, December 21, after the city announces it
will comply with a November Supreme Court ruling declaring segregation on
buses illegal. Earlier in the year, King's home was bombed. Autherine Lucy is
first African American admitted to the University of Alabama.
1957:
Efforts to integrate Little Rock, Ark., Central High School meet with legal
resistance and violence; Gov. Orval Faubus predicts "blood will run in the streets"
if African Americans push effort to integrate. On Sept. 24, federal troops mobilize
to protect the nine African American students at the high school from white mobs
trying to block the school's integration.
1959:
Alaska and Hawaii are admitted as states. Hawaii, the 50th state, elects Hiram
Fong (of Chinese ancestry) and Daniel Inouye (of Japanese ancestry) to represent
them in Congress, the first two Asian Americans to serve in that body.
1960:
February 1, Lunch counter sit-in by four college students in Greensboro, N.C.
begins and spreads through the South. On April 17, the Student Non-Violent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is founded.
John F. Kennedy elected president.
Following Sudan (1956) and Ghana (1957), 11 African nations achieve
independence.
1961:
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) organizes Freedom Rides into the South to
test new Interstate Commerce Commission regulations and court orders barring
segregation in interstate transportation. Riders are beaten by mobs in several
places, including Birmingham and Montgomery, Ala.
1962:
The United Farm Workers Union , under the leadership of Cesar Chavez,
organizes to win bargaining power for Mexican Americans.
James Meredith becomes first African American student admitted to the
University of Mississippi.
1963:
June 20, President John F. Kennedy meets with civil rights leaders at the White
House in an attempt to call off the March on Washington scheduled for August.
Over a quarter of a million people participate in the March on Washington on
August 28, 1963, and hear Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his "I Have a Dream"
speech.
 Medger Evers, NAACP field secretary in Jackson, Miss., murdered on June 12,
1963. A Birmingham church is bombed on Sept. 15, killing four African
American girls attending Sunday school: Denise McNair, age 11, and Cynthia
Wesley, Carole Robertson and Adie Mae Collins, all 14 years old.
1963:
In and event that traumatizes the nation, President Kennedy is assassinated in
Dallas, Texas. Two days later, his alleged assailant, Lee Harvey Oswald, is also
shot and killed. Vice President Lyndon Johnson becomes president.
Martin Luther King Jr., receives the Nobel Peace Prize. The Twenty-fourth
Amendment, ending the poll tax, is ratified and becomes part of the Constitution.
Mississippi Freedom Summer, a voter education and registration project, begins.
White northern college students volunteer to run practice elections in preparation
for the Presidential election of 1964. Two white students, Andrew Goodman and
Michael Scherner, and an African American civil rights worker, James Chaney,
are murdered.
The Bracero Program is terminated.
1965:
Selma, Ala. voting rights campaign. Jimmie Lee Jackson, 26, participating in a
march led by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, is killed by Alabama
state troopers as he attempts to prevent the troopers from beating his mother and
grandfather.
Selma to Montgomery march. The Voting Rights Act passes and is signed into
law on August 6, effectively ending literacy tests and a host of other obstacles
used to disenfranchise African American and other minority citizens.
Malcolm X, the fiery orator and Muslim leader, is assassinated. For some,
Malcolm X's militant rhetoric is a rival and alternative to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s
message of Christian non-violence.
The Watt's section of Los Angeles erupts in five days of rioting after an African
American woman is killed by a fire truck driven by white men.
1966:
National Organization for Women (NOW) is founded to fight politically for full
equality between the sexes.
Stokely Carmichael, head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee,
first uses the phrase "black power" during a voter registration drive in Mississippi.
The phrase - and its many different interpretations by African Americans and
whites - divides the civil rights movement.
1967:
Sparked by a police raid on a black power hangout, Detroit erupts into the worst
race riots ever in the nation, with 43 people dead, including 33 African Americans
and 10 whites. During the nine months of the year, 164 other racial disturbances
are reported across the country, including major riots in Tampa, Cincinnati,
Atlanta, Newark, Plainfield and Brunswick, New Jersey, which kill at least 83
people.
Thurgood Marshall becomes the first African American justice of the Supreme
Court.
 Muhammad Ali, formerly Cassius Clay, is stripped of his heavyweight boxing
title for resisting military draft as a Muslim minister in the Nation of Islam.
Jose Angel Gutierrez founds the Mexican American Youth Organization in San
Antonio, Texas. The group would become over time La Rasa Unida Party, the
first Chicano political party.
Articles of incorporation are filed in San Antonio for the Mexican American
Legal Defense and Education Fund, the first national Chicano civil rights legal
organization.
Congress enacts the Age Discrimination Act of 1967 prohibiting employment
discrimination against older Americans. The act is amended 12 years later to
prohibit discrimination against older Americans by any housing provider who
receives federal funds.
1968:
March 1,The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, popularly
known as the Kerner Commission after chairman Otto Kerner, Governor of
Illinois, issues its report warning that the nation is moving toward two separate
societies-one black and poor, the other affluent and white. The commission,
appointed by President Johnson following the 1967 disorders in Detroit and other
communities, calls for major anti-poverty efforts and strengthened civil rights
enforcement to eliminate the causes of the disorders.
April 4, Martin Luther King, Jr. is murdered. The assassination sparks unrest and
civil disorders in 124 cities across the country, including the nation's capital,
Washington, D.C. On April 11, as disorders continue, President Johnson signs the
Civil Rights Act of 1968, aimed at curbing discrimination in housing.
June 6, Sen. Robert Kennedy, campaigning for the Democratic nomination for
president, is shot and killed in a Los Angeles hotel.
Rep. Shirley Chisholm (D-N.Y.) is the first African American woman elected to
Congress.
American Indian Movement (AIM) founded in Minneapolis.
The Supreme Court, in Green v. County School Board of New Kent County
(Virginia), rules that "actual desegregation" of schools in the South is required,
effectively ruling out so-called school "freedom of choice" plans and requiring
affirmative action to achieve integrated schools.
1969:
A June 27 police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a Greenwich Village bar catering to
homosexuals, results in two nights of rioting and is the symbolic beginning of the
gay rights movement. The event is commemorated each year by Gay Pride
demonstrations across the nation.
1971:
The Supreme Court, in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education,
upholds busing as a legitimate and sometimes necessary tool to achieve
desegregation and integration. But the Court does not rule on segregation in
public schools in northern states where it is not imposed by statute.
1973:
Congress passes Section 504 of the Vocation Rehabilitation Act barring
discrimination against disabled people with the use of federal funds.
1973:
Jan. 22, The Supreme Court, in Roe v. Wade, strikes down most states' restrictive
abortion laws, greatly expanding the right to legal abortion.
1973:
May 9, a 71-day siege by a force of more than 1,000 FBI agents, U.S. Marshals,
Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) police and U.S. military advisers is ended at the
symbolically important hamlet of Wounded Knee at Oglala Sioux reservation in
South Dakota. The village was occupied by the American Indian Movement
(AIM) in an effort to spur talks with the U.S. government on violated treaty
rights, BIA abuses on the reservation and civil rights concerns of Native
Americans. Federal agents surrounded the town claiming that the Indians were
holding "hostages" from the white trading post in the hamlet and demanded the
surrender of all those occupying the village. During the siege, two AIM
supporters are killed in firefights.
June 21, in Keyes v. School District No. 1, Denver, Colorado, the Supreme Court,
for the first time, addresses the issue of school desegregation in northern public
schools, finding segregation intentionally imposed (de jure) unconstitutional even
when not accompanied by statute. The Court concludes that the Denver public
school system is an unlawful "dual system" that a system wide remedy is
required, and that assigning African American students to Latino schools is not an
adequate desegregation plan because both groups had been subject to historic
segregation.
1973:
Dec.15, the Board of Trustees of the American Psychiatric Association votes
unanimously to strike from its manuals the classification of homosexuality as a
mental illness.
1974:
The Supreme Court rules that public schools must teach English to foreign
language -speaking students (Lau v. Nichols). The case involves the San
Francisco school system, which does not provide any instruction in English to
some 1,800 Chinese-speaking pupils. The court holds that, under the Civil Rights
Act of 1964, districts receiving federal funds must provide either a bilingual or
English as a second language program whenever students of a non-English
speaking minority are enrolled in significant numbers.
1975:
The American Medical Association calls for the repeal of all state laws barring
homosexual acts between consenting adults.
1977:
First National Women's Conference, held in Houston, Texas calls for a host of
reforms aimed at empowering women and providing them with equal opportunity.
1978:
The Supreme Court, in the Regents of the University of California v. Bakke case,
upholds the principle of affirmative action but rejects fixed racial quotas as
unconstitutional. The case involves Alan Bakke, denied a slot at the University of
California medical school at Davis. Bakke claims he is a victim of reverse
 discrimination because a minority student, with lower test scores, is admitted
instead on affirmative action grounds.
1979:
The first Gay and Lesbian Civil Rights March on Washington draws more than
100,000 people on October 14.
1981:
The first news reports of what will become the AIDS epidemic are published.
1982:
The Equal Rights Amendment, which would have written into the constitution a
ban on sexual bias, equal pay for equal work, and a guarantee of equal
opportunity, falls three states short of ratification.
Supreme Court rules in Plyer v. Doe that children of illegal immigrants have a
right to free public schooling. Poverty reached its highest level - 14% - since
1967. African American poverty rate is 34.2 percent; Latino rate is 26.2 percent.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is extended and strengthened by Congress, barring
laws that dilute the voting power of minorities, whether or not that is the law's
intention. The amendment overturns a Supreme case, Bolden v. City of Mobile
(Ala.), that required proof of intentional discrimination against minority voters in
order to establish a violation of the Voting Rights Act.
Wisconsin becomes the first state to adopt a civil rights law prohibiting
discrimination against gay people.
1983:
In Bob Jones University v. The United States, the Supreme Court, over the Reagan
administration's objections, upholds the Internal Revenue Service rule denying tax
exemption to private schools that practice racial discrimination.
In a report, "Personal Justice Denied," the Commission on the Wartime
Relocation and Internment of Civilians concludes that the internment of people of
Japanese ancestry during World War II was not justified by military necessity and
that grave injustice had been done.
1984:
The Supreme Court rules that states do have the right to outlaw homosexual acts
between consenting adults.
1987:
In a political struggle turning largely on the nominee's judicial and philosophical
views of race, gender and privacy, the Senate rejects President Reagan's
nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court.
The AIDS quilt commemorating AIDS victims is displayed for the first time
during the second march on Washington for gay and lesbian rights, a
demonstration drawing 200,000.
1988:
President Reagan vetoes the Civil Rights Restoration Act, passed by Congress to
overturn the 1984 Supreme Court ruling, Grove City College v. Bell. The act
sharply limits the remedies available to the federal government in applying anti-
bias rules to private organizations receiving federal subsidies. Congress enacts the
measure by overriding the President Reagan's veto.
1989:
 The Supreme Court, in a series of rulings, severely restricts the reach of federal
anti-discrimination employment laws and remedies available to fight bias. The
move prompts congressional effort to craft new law overturning the Court
decision.
1990:
Congress passes -and President Bush signs- the landmark Americans With
Disabilities Act, banning job discrimination against people with disabilities and
requiring buildings, businesses and public transportation to be accessible. Most
provisions take effect in 11992-93.
1991:
Thurgood Marshall, first African American appointed to Supreme Court, resigns
for health reasons. President Bush names Clarence Thomas, a conservative
African American with little background in constitutional issues, to the post. The
Thomas nomination brings to the fore the issue of sexual harassment, as one of
Thomas' former co-workers, law professor Anita Hill, charges Thomas sexually
harassed her. Thomas denies accusations and after bitter, televise hearings that
rivet the nation, he is confirmed, 52-48.
After two years of debate, vetoes and threatened vetoes, Bush reverses himself
and says proposed civil rights bill is not a "quota bill." On Nov. 22, he signs the
legislation at a White House ceremony. But ceremony is overshadowed by reports
that the president has proposed issuing a presidential order that would end all
government affirmative action programs and hiring guidelines that benefit women
and minorities. After sharply negative reactions from civil rights leaders and
others, the administration backs down.
1992:
Voting Rights Act bilingual provisions are extended to 2007.
1993:
Shortly after being sworn in, President Clinton affirms his campaign pledge to lift
the ban that prohibits gays from serving in the military. On April 25, at least
300,000 (the figure is hotly debated) march on Washington supporting federal
civil rights legislation protecting gay men and lesbians from discrimination and
opposing the military ban. Several months later on July 19, President Clinton,
faced with congressional opposition to removing the ban, announces a "don't ask,
don't tell, don't pursue" policy regarding homosexuals in the military that falls
short of lifting the ban. Congress moves to codify a restrictive interpretation of
Clinton's executive order.
The Supreme Court, in two rulings affecting civil rights, roils the waters for
determining proper remedies for discrimination. In St. Mary's Honor Center v.
Hicks the Court holds that even when a plaintiff shows that an employer gives a
dishonest reason for alleged discriminatory actions, the worker is still required to
present direct evidence of the employers discriminatory intent.
In Shaw v. Reno , a sharply divided High Court rules that legislative districts
drawn in a "bizarre" fashion in order to create black representation can violate the
constitutional rights of white voters to equal protection of the law. The ruling,
which invalidates North Carolina's majority African American 12th congressional
 district, is seen as opening the door to challenges of other states' reapportionment
plans that are aimed at equalizing the distribution of power.
1997:
June 14, in a 5-4 decision the Supreme Court upheld a court-drawn redistricting
plan that reduced the number of majority-minority Georgia congressional districts
from three to one. The cases of Abrams v. Johnson and the U.S. v. Johnson
marked the second time the Court had been asked to rule on the constitutionality
of Georgia's congressional redistricting plan drawn pursuant to the 1990 Census.
A deciding factor for the justices was the fact that Reps. Sanford Bishop Jr. and
Cynthia McKinney, both Black Democrats, were re-elected despite the fact that
they were running in districts where whites comprised the majority.
1994:
In Adarand, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 vote for the first time that all
federal laws creating racial classifications, regardless of an intention to burden or
benefit minorities, when challenged, must be tested by the same stringent
standard. Federal set-aside and affirmative action programs benefitting minorities
then are subject to strict scrutiny and must be narrowly tailored.
1996:
Supporters of gay workers rights forced a vote on the Employment Non-
Discrimination Act (ENDA) in the 104th Congress. ENDA, if passed, would
make it illegal to fire, or fail to hire or promote an individual on the singular
factor of their sexual orientation. The bill enjoyed wide bi- partisan support,
failing in the Republican dominated Senate by only one vote. A formal hearing
for ENDA was held in the 105th Congress on October 23, 1997.
1996:
November 5, in California, the controversial Proposition 209, also known as the
California Civil Rights Initiative, was passed by a narrow voter margin or 55-45.
The legislation of Prop. 209 effectively abolished California's affirmative action
programs in hiring, contracting, and educational admissions. Other initiatives
have spread to numerous cities and states across the United States. Legislation has
been introduced in the House and Senate with the similar agenda of wiping out all
federal affirmative action programs.
1998:
Bragdon v. Abbott is the first ADA case to make its way to the Court, which
holds, among other things, that HIV-positive individuals are protected under the
ADA.
In Faragher v. City of Boca Raton and Burlington Industries v. Ellerth, the Court
clarifies its earlier rulings on sexual harassment, reaffirming that Title VII
requires employers to ensure a workplace free from sexual and other forms of
discriminatory harassment.
Brutal hate crimes capture the nation's attention, including the dragging death of
African American James Byrd, Jr. in Texas, and the murder of Matthew Shepard,
a young gay man in Wyoming.
1998 and 1999:
In Gebser v. Lago Vista Independent School District and Davis v. Monroe County
School District, the Supreme Court makes clear that Title IX requires schools to
 take action to prevent and stop the harassment of students by teachers or other
students. Those decisions, however, also severely limit the circumstances under
which victims of such harassment may receive money damages for their injuries.
1999:
The Court reaffirms in Olmstead v. L.C. that the ADA bars the unnecessary
segregation of people with disabilities in state institutions. As the Court noted,
such segregation is often motivated by irrational fears, stereotypes, and
patronizing attitudes, and unfairly relegates individuals with disabilities to
second-class status.
The Court significantly limits the ADA's reach in a trio of cases (Sutton v. United
Airlines, Murphy v. United Parcel Service, and Albertsons v. Kirkingberg). The
Court holds that any determination of whether an individual has a disability
triggering the ADA's protections must consider any mitigating measures taken to
control the effects of the individual's impairment, such as medication or therapy.
Under this decision, for example, an individual who controls the effects of
depression through medication may be unable to claim the ADA's protections
when he or she suffers discrimination because of that depression.
Heinous hate crimes continue throughout the summer, including a series of
shootings targeted at African Americans, Asian Americans, and Jew in the
Midwest, and the shooting of children at a Jewish child care center in Los
Angeles, followed by the murder of Filipino American postal worker Joseph Ileto.
2000:
The Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) is enacted.
Providing important new protections for religious freedom without the potential
for undermining state and local civil rights laws, RLUIPA focuses on land use for
churches, synagogues, and other religious groups, and religious freedom of those
in government-run institutions such as hospitals, prisons, and group homes.
The November 2000 elections raise yet a new set of concerns about minority
voting rights as voters across America -- especially minority voters -- report that
they had been effectively denied the franchise in a variety of ways. These
included allegations that minority voters faced a significantly greater risk that
their votes would not be counted accurately, due to disproportionate use of
outdated and inaccurate equipment in minority neighborhoods. Asian American,
Haitian American, Latino, and other language minority voters report that they
were denied language assistance to which they were entitled. These and other
irregularities trigger calls for federal election reform legislation to address both
procedural and technological barriers to voting participation.