Arizona, home of SB 1070, has proven itself to be ground zero in the nation’s immigration debate. At the center of racially charged controversy is Tom Horne, former Superintendent of Public Instruction and current state Attorney General, who has waged a four-year campaign to eradicate the Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican-American/La Raza Studies Program.
On the eve of Title IX’s fortieth anniversary, news of the federal government’s failure to meaningfully enforce the law’s provisions is troubling. The Office for Civil Rights must overhaul its enforcement efforts if the progress that Title IX has made in expanding women’s rights is to continue.
Since the Supreme Court’s decision in Carlson v. Green, inmates have been able to sue individual prison officials for violating their Eighth Amendment rights. A recent trend in federal prisons is threatening to destroy this cause of action for prisoners. Now it is up to the Supreme Court to clear up this controversial question and resolve the circuit split.
The Crime Victims’ Rights Act gave crime victims the right to notice of any public court proceeding involving the perpetrator and full and timely restitution. Under the CVRA, notice is given to victims whenever a criminal defendant, anywhere in the country and who would otherwise have been unknown to the victim, is convicted of any child pornography offense involving their images, including cases where the defendant only possessed images without having done more. Suddenly, victims could go after a new and potentially massive group of defendants for restitution.
Trial for Lobato v. State started this week in a Colorado district court, a case in which 14 school districts from the relatively low-property tax area of San Luis Valley sued the State of Colorado, the State Board of Education, and the Governor, arguing the state has violated Colorado’s constitution by mandating programs in low-income schools that are already underfunded. The plaintiffs have asked for ongoing injunctions requiring the state to restructure school funding and ensure adequate education for all students via judicial oversight until the overhaul of the funding scheme is complete.
Educational inequity is a civil rights issue. Just choose your statistic – numerous studies show how educational achievement maps onto race and socioeconomic status (such as the finding that “by the end of high school, black and Hispanic students’ reading and mathematics skills are roughly the same as those of white students in the eighth grade.”) This inequity undercuts the provision in every state constitution that grants every child a right to education.
According to the Roberts Court, the only form of “corruption” that the Government has a legitimate interest in seeking to prevent through campaign finance regulation is quid pro quo corruption, i.e. the trading of cash for votes. By limiting the “corruption” interest in this way, the Roberts Court has thus been able to argue that any threat of undue influence can be satisfactorily addressed through caps on individual donations to candidates. As a result, the “corruption” interest appeared to have lost most, if not all, of its critical force after Citizens United.
The past two decades have seen the filing of dozens of cases of so-called “educational adequacy” litigation, state court cases in which plaintiffs have charged that the state has a responsibility to offer all of its children an adequate education. State Supreme Courts throughout the country have held, in clear and forceful terms, that students have a right to an education that will allow them to make effective life decisions, play a meaningful role in the political process, and compete favorably in the job market.
Last month, Governor Rick Scott of Florida signed a bill requiring Temporary Assistance for Needy Families recipients to undergo drug testing. If a recipient tests positive for drugs, she or he becomes ineligible for benefits. Critics’ Fourth Amendment arguments against the legislation may ultimately lead to its invalidation – however from a civil rights perspective, the discriminatory nature of the legislation is even more important.
While there has always been a resistance to affirmative action policies, the present debate has added a new dimension. There has been a rise in rhetoric concerning the notion of white victimhood, and policies like affirmative action are cited as justification for these theories. This victimhood narrative is important because of the way it portrays affirmative action policies as oppressive and discriminatory.
In a bill introduced to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, city officials have proposed making it illegal
