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The Federal Lottery Act of 1895 cited moral grounds to forbid anyone from shipping lottery tickets across state lines. The United States indicted Charles Champion for violating the act, and he sought a writ of habeas corpus to challenge the law.
In United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515 (1996). The Court concluded that VMI’s male-only admissions policy could not survive constitutional scrutiny.
Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948), was a landmark decision that cleared the way for integration of neighborhoods and communities throughout the United States.
The United States Supreme Court had to decide in Wickard v. Filburn whether Congress could regulate purely in-state activities like the private cultivation of wheat for personal consumption under its Commerce Clause authority.
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Washington, D.C., administered a written exam to applicants to the police department. The test, though administered uniformly to all applicants, disqualified four times as many black candidates as white candidates. As a result, the police department was 80 percent white in a city that was 70 percent black.
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Ku Klux Klansman Clarence Brandenburg was charged with violating an Ohio state law that made it a crime to advocate “crime, sabotage, violence, or unlawful methods of terrorism as a means of accomplishing industrial or political reform.” Brandenburg was convicted, and he appealed on the ground that the state law violated the First Amendment.
LeRoy Carhart and other doctors challenged the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, arguing that the law was both void for vagueness and unduly burdensome on women’s right to abortions. In Gonzales v. Carhart, 550 U.S. 124 (2007), the United States Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of the federal act.
In 1996, Congress passed the Line Item Veto Act. The act allowed the president to veto line items, meaning specific provisions, within legislation related to discretionary budget authority, new direct spending, or limited tax benefits without vetoing the remainder of the act.
The Heart of Atlanta Motel was situated next to a Georgia interstate and served mostly out-of-state guests. The motel sued the government, seeking a declaratory judgment that Congress did not have authority under the Commerce Clause to pass the Civil Rights Act. The motel also alleged due-process violations over the deprivation of its right to choose its guests.
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The issue for the Supreme Court in Dolan v. City of Tigard was whether the conditions the city placed on Dolan’s permit constituted an uncompensated taking of property in violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.
Bakke was a landmark case that effectively ended the use of racial quota systems for affirmative-action purposes. However, some 25 years later, the Court upheld a law-school admissions policy that considered race as merely one factor among many.
In the case of Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), the United States Supreme Court considered whether state laws prohibiting marriages on the basis of race violated the Fourteenth Amendment.
Local governments may act to protect sites with historical, cultural, or other significance by designating those places landmarks. In so doing, governments are able to preserve those properties for future generations, but landmark designations restrict the rights of property owners. The case of Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City, 438 U.S. 104 (1978), exemplifies this tension.
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In the case of Hammer v. Dagenhart, 247 U.S. 251 (1918), a cotton-mill owner who employed his two sons at the mill sued to challenge the law, arguing that Congress lacked power under the Commerce Clause to pass it.
David Lucas bought two beachfront lots on the South Carolina coast. Lucas planned to build houses on each parcel. But before Lucas could start work on the build, the State of South Carolina passed a regulation prohibiting permanent residential development on the land.
In the 1970s, President Jimmy Carter hoped to establish a treaty with the People’s Republic of China. To facilitate that, President Carter unilaterally rescinded a defense treaty between the United States and Taiwan. A group of senators, including Senator Barry Goldwater, were incensed by the president’s action and filed suit.
In 1993, Congress passed a federal gun-control measure known as the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act. The act required background checks for anyone who wanted to purchase a firearm.
Barbara Grutter was a successful business owner with excellent academic credentials. In 1997, Grutter applied to the University of Michigan Law School. Grutter was ultimately rejected from the program. Grutter, who was white, argued that the denial amounted to racial discrimination.
In 1994, Congress enacted the Violence Against Women Act. In the two years leading up to the act’s passage, Congress had numerous hearings and made extensive factual findings that gender-motivated violence substantially affected interstate commerce.
Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) to prohibit federal and state governments from passing laws that substantially burden a person’s free exercise of religion. The act was intended to affect any law that substantially burdened religious practice, including generally applicable laws not targeted at religious activity.
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