Civil Rights
18 cases
Dred Scott v. Sandford
Dred Scott, enslaved in Missouri, sued for freedom after residing in free states and territories with his owner. Chief Justice Tan...
Civil Rights Cases
The Civil Rights Act of 1875 required equal access to inns, theaters, and railroads regardless of race. Five consolidated prosecut...
Yick Wo v. Hopkins
San Francisco required wooden laundries to obtain operating permits, yet denied permits to virtually every Chinese applicant while...
Plessy v. Ferguson
Homer Plessy, seven-eighths white, was arrested for sitting in a whites-only railcar under Louisiana law in a deliberate test case...
Brown v. Board of Education
Black children in five states were denied admission to white schools under compulsory segregation laws. Chief Justice Warren wrote...
Baker v. Carr
Tennessee had not redrawn state legislative districts since 1901, leaving rural voters vastly overrepresented compared to growing ...
Reynolds v. Sims
Alabama's legislature malapportioned districts, giving sparsely populated rural counties legislative power wildly disproportionate...
Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States
A downtown Atlanta motel refused Black guests and challenged the public accommodations provisions of the 1964 act. The Court held ...
Loving v. Virginia
Richard and Mildred Loving, a white man and a Black woman, were sentenced to a year in jail for marrying in Virginia, with the sen...
Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education
A North Carolina district covering city and county was ordered to desegregate after years of resistance. Chief Justice Burger wrot...
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke
Allan Bakke, rejected twice by the UC Davis medical school whose program reserved sixteen of one hundred seats for minority applic...
Grutter v. Bollinger
Barbara Grutter, rejected by the University of Michigan law school, challenged its admissions program considering race as one fact...
Shelby County v. Holder
Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act required jurisdictions with histories of discrimination, mostly in the South, to obtain fe...
Bostock v. Clayton County
Gerald Bostock was fired for joining a gay softball league, and other plaintiffs were fired for being transgender. Justice Gorsuch...
Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard
Students for Fair Admissions challenged admissions programs considering race at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. Chie...
United States v. Wong Kim Ark
Wong Kim Ark was born in San Francisco in 1873 to Chinese immigrant parents who could not themselves naturalize under the Chinese ...
Korematsu v. United States
Fred Korematsu, an American citizen of Japanese descent, refused to leave his California home under military orders issued pursuan...
Shelley v. Kraemer
J.D. and Ethel Shelley, a Black family, bought a house in St. Louis covered by a covenant barring sale to Black buyers, and white ...