Equal protection cases

Question 1

Roberts v. City of Boston

Facts and Result

Answer 1

▪ Massachusetts allowed local school committees to make school
assignments.
▪ Boston segregated students by race.
▪ The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court had to decide what “equal” means.
▪ This case was the birth of “separate but equal.”

Question 2

Brown v. Board of Education
▪ This was a consolidated case
involving challenges to school
segregation in Topeka, Kansas, and
Washington, D.C.
▪ The schools in question provided
equal facilities and school funding
to children of different races.
▪ The plaintiffs argued that school
segregation was inherently unequal.

Analysis

Answer 2

▪ The Court rejected using an
originalist framework to evaluate
the Equal Protection challenge.
▪ The Court invoked modern social
science research as it interpreted the Equal Protection Clause.
▪ The Court found that segregating
schools by law was unconstitutional
even if equal funding were
provided to different races.

Question 3

Students for Fair Admissions Majority Opinion
▪ Harvard was a party because it accepts federal funding and the standard for Title VI and the Equal Protection Clause is the same under Court precedent.

Answer 3

The Supreme Court applied strict
scrutiny and found that giving a
preference to Black and Hispanic
students merely because of their race violated the Equal Protection Clause.

Question 4

Bradwell v. Illinois: The Supreme Court Addresses Sex Discrimination For the First Time
- Outcome and Reasoning

Answer 4

▪ Illinois didn’t have to allow women to become lawyers.
▪ The 14th Amendment wasn’t intended to combat sex discrimination.
▪ The Seneca Falls Declaration was wrong.
▪ God didn’t want women to be lawyers.

Question 5

U.S. v. VMI
▪ VMI used a special instructional method and philosophy to forge citizen-soldiers.
▪ The institution refused to admit women.
▪ Virginia established a separate college for women that was inferior in important respects.
▪ The United States sued Virginia over VMI’s male-only admissions policy.

analysis and holding

Answer 5

1. The majority held that the male-only
   admissions policy could only be
   justified by (1) an exceedingly
   persuasive justification and (2)
   substantially related to that interest.
2. The majority found the separate
   women’s college insufficient and
   found that VMI’s admission policy
   failed intermediate scrutiny.
3. The majority held that you cannot
   rely on gender stereotypes or average
   differences between men and women
   to pass intermediate scrutiny.

Question 6

Dobbs Background: States Challenge Roe/Casey

Answer 6

▪ In 1992, the Supreme Court imposed an “undue
burden” test on abortion regulations. It called “the
contending sides of a national controversy to end their
national division by accepting a common mandate
rooted in the Constitution.”
▪ States continued passing abortion restrictions.
▪ Just before Dobbs, Texas passed a Heartbeat Act to ban abortion after a fetal heartbeat was detected.

Question 7

Dobbs Majority

Outcome and Analysis

Answer 7

1. The majority held that the 14th Amendment
   doesn’t protect a fundamental right to
   abortion and that abortion laws are subject
   to rational basis scrutiny.
2. The Supreme Court held that the proper
   way to identify a substantive Due Process
   right is to determine whether it is “deeply
   rooted” in history and tradition.
3. The Supreme Court held that Roe/Casey
   couldn’t be saved by stare decisis.
4. Summarily dismissed Equal Protection
   argument.

Question 8

National Abortion Ban Relevant Provisions
- 13th Amendment

Answer 8

Section 1. Neither slavery nor
involuntary servitude, except as a
punishment for crime whereof the
party shall have been duly convicted,
shall exist within the United States,
or any place subject to their
jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power
to enforce this article by appropriate
legislation.

Question 9

Lawrence v. Texas
▪ Two gay men were convicted of
violating Texas’s anti-sodomy
law.
▪ The two individuals raised equal
protection and substantive due
process challenges to the
prosecutions.

Majority

Answer 9

▪ Held that Texas’s anti-sodomy
statute violated a “liberty” interest
protected by the 14th Amendment.
▪ Refused to say that a fundamental
right was implicated but held that
Texas’s law couldn’t survive
rational basis review.
▪ Decision motivated by concerns
Texas was unfairly treating LGBTQ
people

Question 10

Obergefell Majority

Answer 10

▪The Court found that LGBTQ people had a
fundamental right to have same sex marriages
recognized.
▪The Court also considered how gay marriage bans raised Equal Protection concerns.
▪The Court held that religious objections to same-sex marriages were insufficient to justify gay marriage bans.

Question 11

Griffin’s Case

Facts and analysis

Answer 11

▪ Caesar Griffin was convicted of shooting
with intent to kill.
▪ His trial was presided over by a Virginian
who swore an oath to the U.S. Constitution
and then supported the Confederacy.
▪ A district court judge granted a writ of
habeas corpus on the grounds that the state
court judge was disqualified by the 14th
Amendment.
▪ Justice Chase, riding circuit, held that the
14th Amendment Section 3 wasn’t self
executing.

Question 12

Trump v. Anderson
Outcome and analysis

Answer 12

1. The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that
   Colorado lacked the authority to apply
   Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to federal
   officeholders.
2. A majority of the Court found that Section
   3 wasn’t self-executing.
3. The Court didn’t answer the following
   questions:
   ▪ Who is an “officer”?
   ▪ Was January 6, 2021, an “insurrection”?
   ▪ Did President Trump “engage” in
   “insurrection”?