Court : US Supreme Court
..... is inherent in winner-take-all, district-based elections, and we cannot hold that such a reapportionment law would violate the equal protection clause because the voters in the losing party do not have representation in the legislature in proportion to the statewide vote received ..... the district court's apparent holding that any interference with an opportunity to elect a representative of one's choice would be sufficient to allege or prove an equal protection violation, unless justified by some acceptable state interest, in addition to being contrary to the above-described conception of an unconstitutional political gerrymander, would invite attack on ..... this question, the plurality expresses the view, with which i agree, that a partisan political gerrymander violates the equal protection clause only on proof of "both intentional discrimination against an identifiable political group and an actual discriminatory effect on ..... (c) the view that intentional drawing of district boundaries for partisan ends, and for no other reason, violates the equal protection clause would allow a constitutional violation to be found where the only proven effect on a political party's electoral power was disproportionate results in one election (possibly two elections), ..... 17 ] in the statewide political gerrymandering context, these prior cases lead to the analogous conclusion that equal protection violations may be found only where a history (actual or projected) of disproportionate results appears in .....
Tag this Judgment!Court : US Supreme Court
..... 80 peremptory challenges for any reason, as long as that reason is related to his view concerning the outcome of the case to be tried, the equal protection clause forbids the prosecutor to challenge potential jurors solely on account of their race or on the assumption that black jurors as a group will be unable impartially to consider the state's case against a black defendant. pp ..... conceding that the constitution does not guarantee a right to peremptory challenges and that swain did state that their use ultimately is subject to the strictures of equal protection, the state argues that the privilege of unfettered exercise of the challenge is of vital importance to the criminal justice system. ..... b since the decision in swain, we have explained that our cases concerning selection of the venire reflect the general equal protection principle that the "invidious quality" of governmental action claimed to be racially discriminatory "must ultimately be traced to a racially discriminatory purpose ..... even the swain dissenters did not take issue with the majority's position that the equal protection clause does not prohibit the state from using its peremptory challenges to exclude blacks based on the assumption or belief that they would be partial to a black defendant ..... (1965), concerning "the evidentiary burden placed on a criminal defendant who claims that he has been denied equal protection through the state's use of peremptory challenges to exclude members of his race from the petit jury. .....
Tag this Judgment!Court : US Supreme Court
..... circuit court interpreted "freeholder" as not entailing a condition of property ownership and, with only a tentative discussion of the equal protection clause, entered a declaratory judgment that 30 is valid both on its face and as applied to the present board of ..... a federal court's power to remedy violations of the equal protection clause, however, those limits are plainly irrelevant when this court is asked to review a state court judgment that no violation of the equal protection clause has occurred or, as here, that the equal protection clause is inapplicable to the state action in question. ..... held that a person who does not own real property has article iii standing to challenge under the equal protection clause a state law requirement that one own real property in order to serve on a particular government ..... not reach that result by ruling, as the missouri supreme court held here, that the equal protection clause was irrelevant because of the kind of functions performed by the water district officials. ..... precisely because the water district cases applied equal protection analysis, they cannot stand for the proposition that the equal protection clause is inapplicable "when the local unit of government in question [has ..... missouri, without disputing appellants' premise that ownership of real property is a prerequisite for appointment to the board of freeholders, ruled that "the equal protection clause has no relevancy here" because the board "exercises no general governmental powers. .....
Tag this Judgment!Court : US Supreme Court
..... was afro-american, it is not surprising that the court held that he could make out a prima facie case of an equal protection violation by showing, inter alia, that "the prosecutor ha[d] exercised peremptory challenges to remove from the venire members of the defendant ..... my opinion, however, that petitioner should have been permitted to prove that the exclusion of black jurors violated the equal protection clause also leads me to the conclusion that petitioner should be entitled to prove that the state has violated the fair-cross-section ..... the court today decides only petitioner's sixth amendment claim and refuses to reach the equal protection argument, even though we are unanimous in agreeing that "the systematic exclusion of blacks from the jury system through peremptory challenges ..... ] just as the state in batson argued that the equal protection clause was central to petitioner's argument, so the state here has argued that petitioner's claim is an equal protection argument in disguise and that, as such, it is ..... here, the petitioner declined to challenge the discriminatory exercise of peremptory challenges on equal protection grounds, framing the issue at argument and in his briefs in sixth ..... marshall note, the concerns that were expressed in batson are not properly confined to the context in which a defendant objects to the exclusion of jurors of his own race but support also "an equal protection claim by a defendant whose race or ethnicity is different from the dismissed juror's. .....
Tag this Judgment!Court : US Supreme Court
..... defendant to show that he is a member of the racial group alleged to have been removed from the jury, we contrasted the requirements for standing under the fourteenth amendment's equal protection clause and the sixth amendment: "we have never suggested, however, that such a requirement of correlation between the group identification of the defendant and the group identification of excluded venire ..... (planned parenthood official and a licensed physician can raise the constitutional rights of contraceptive users with whom they had professional relationships); craig, supra, (licensed beer vendor has standing to raise the equal protection claim of a male customer challenging a statutory scheme prohibiting the sale of beer to males under the age of 21 and to females under the age of 18); triplett, supra, (attorney ..... the respondent had successfully established a prima facie case of discrimination against mexican-americans in the selection of grand jurors, we said that, "in order to show that an equal protection violation has occurred in the context of grand jury selection, the defendant must show that the procedure employed resulted in substantial under-representation of his race or of the identifiable ..... release of today's opinion, our jurisprudence contained neither a case holding, nor even a dictum suggesting, that a defendant could raise an equal protection challenge based upon the exclusion of a juror of another race; and our opinions contained a vast body of clear statement to the .....
Tag this Judgment!Court : US Supreme Court
..... 297 (1976), the court determined that an ordinance banning certain street-vendor operations, but grandfathering existing vendors who had been in operation for more than eight years, did not violate the equal protection clause because the "city could reasonably decide that newer businesses were less likely to have built up substantial reliance interests in continued operation." id. ..... fritz, the court determined that a denial of dual "windfall" retirement benefits to some railroad workers, but not others, did not violate the equal protection clause, because "congress could properly conclude that persons who had actually acquired statutory entitlement to windfall benefits while still employed in the railroad industry had a greater equitable claim to those benefits than the ..... the court expressly rejected the state's claim that it had a legitimate interest in providing special rewards to veterans who lived in the state before 1976 and concluded that "[n]either the equal protection clause, nor this court's precedents, permit the state to prefer established resident veterans over newcomers in the retroactive apportionment of an economic benefit." id. ..... under her reading of the case, properties are "similarly situated" or within the same "class" for the purposes of the equal protection clause when they are located in roughly the same types of neighborhoods, for example, are roughly the same size, and are roughly the same in other, unspecified ways. .....
Tag this Judgment!Court : US Supreme Court
..... of a legal right by "two or more persons in any state or territory [who] conspire or go in disguise on the highway or on the premises of another, [first] for the purpose of depriving, either directly or indirectly, any person or class of persons of the equal protection of the laws, or of equal privileges and immunities under the laws; or [second] for the purpose of preventing or hindering the constituted authorities of any state or territory from giving or securing to all persons within such state or territory the ..... - 1 section 1985(3) provides as follows: "if two or more persons in any state or territory conspire or go in disguise on the highway or on the premises of another, for the purpose of depriving, either directly or indirectly, any person or class of persons of the equal protection of the laws, or of equal privileges and immunities under the laws; or for the purpose of preventing or hindering the constituted authorities of any state or territory from giving or securing to all persons within such state or territory the ..... equal protection of the laws; or if two or more persons conspire to prevent by force, intimidation, or threat, any citizen who is lawfully entitled to vote, from giving his support or advocacy in a legal manner, toward or in favor of the election of any .....
Tag this Judgment!Court : US Supreme Court
..... ." days, fullilove, 96 yale second, metro broadcasting squarely rejected one of the three propositions established by the court's earlier equal protection cases, namely, congruence between the standards applicable to federal and state racial classifications, and in so doing also undermined the other two-skepticism of all racial 227 classifications and consistency of treatment irrespective of ..... history and its practical consequences, congress surely can conclude that a carefully designed affirmative action program may help to realize, finally, the "equal protection of the laws" the fourteenth amendment has promised since 1868.8 discriminatory responses."); m ..... . as with any legal concept, some cases may be difficult to classify,4 but our equal protection jurisprudence has identified a critical difference between state action that imposes burdens on a fication was not "racial" because it did not encompass ..... . a majority of the court in croson held that "the standard of review under the equal protection clause is not dependent on the race of those burdened or benefited by a particular classification," and that the single standard of review for racial classifications should be " ..... . cases decided after mclaughlin continued to treat the equal protection obligations imposed by the fifth and the fourteenth amendments as indistinguishable; one commentator observed that "[i]n case after case, fifth amendment equal protection problems are discussed on the assumption that fourteenth amendment .....
Tag this Judgment!Court : US Supreme Court
..... law limiting the appointment of appellate counsel for indigents, justice harlan pointed out that "[l]aws such as these do not deny equal protection to the less fortunate for one essential reason: the equal protection clause does not impose on the states 'an affirmative duty to lift the handi- 135 caps flowing from differences in economic ..... in which the court has required states to alleviate financial obstacles to process beyond a hearing-though sometimes couched in due process terms-have been based on the equal protection proposition that if the state chooses to provide for appellate review, it " 'can no more discriminate on account of poverty than on account of religion, race ..... tenders this question, which we agreed to hear and decide: maya state, consistent with the due process and equal protection clauses of the fourteenth amendment, condition appeals from trial court decrees terminating parental rights on the affected parent's ability ..... contends in this court that a state may not, consistent with the due process and equal protection clauses of the fourteenth amendment, condition appeals from trial court decrees terminating parental rights on the affected parent's ..... the constitution-in the same way that indigency frequently prevents persons from availing themselves of a variety of state services.1 the griffin line of cases ascribed to-one might say announced-an equalizing notion of the equal protection clause that would, i think, have startled the fourteenth amendment's framers. .....
Tag this Judgment!Court : US Supreme Court
..... the trial court's grant of a preliminary injunction was sustained by the colorado supreme court, which held that amendment 2 was subject to strict scrutiny under the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment because it infringed the fundamental right of gays and lesbians to participate in the political process. ..... 568 (1979), and just as a mandatory retirement age of 50 for police officers does not violate equal protection even though it prematurely ends the careers of many policemen over 50 who still have the capacity to do the job, see massachusetts bd. ..... central both to the idea of the rule of law and to our own constitution's guarantee of equal protection is the principle that government and each of its parts remain open on impartial terms to all who seek its assistance ..... just as a policy barring the hiring of methadone users as transit employees does not violate equal protection simply because some methadone users pose no threat to passenger safety, see new york city transit authority v ..... central both to the idea of the rule of law and to our own constitution's guarantee of equal protection is the principle that government and each of its parts remain open on impartial terms to all who seek its assistance ..... the search for the link between classification and objective gives substance to the equal protection clause; it provides guidance and discipline for the legislature, which is entitled to know what sorts of laws it can pass; and it marks the limits of our own authority .....
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