rights

19Sep

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

LGBTQ

Supreme Court To Revisit LGBTQ Rights – This Time With A Wedding Website Designer, Not A Baker

A simmering, difficult, and timely question returns to the Supreme Court this fall: What happens when freedom of speech and civil rights collide? The court took up similar questions four years ago in the famous “gay wedding cake” case, Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, about a baker who refused to provide services for a same-sex couple based on his religious beliefs. The justices ruled in his favor, but did so on narrow grounds, sidestepping the direct constitutional questions over freedom of religion and free speech. Now, another case from Colorado about free speech and same-sex marriage has made its way to the court: 303 Creative v. Elenis. As a professor of law and education who pays particular attention to First Amendment issues, I see the case highlight...

During The Civil Rights Era Black College Presidents Had A Tough Balancing Act

30Mar

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

SOCIAL JUSTICE

During The Civil Rights Era Black College Presidents Had A Tough Balancing Act

Historians have documented again and again how college students contributed to the civil rights movement. Less attention has been paid to the role college presidents played in the fight for equality. Here, Eddie R. Cole, author of the book “The Campus Color Line,” discusses various ways these leaders contributed. 1. What pressures did college leaders face in the civil rights era? College presidents between 1948 to 1968 had to deal with different segments of society that were at complete odds with one another. On the one hand, they oversaw schools where students were increasingly protesting segregation. But they also had to deal with segregationist politicians who controlled state funding for their institutions. Some of those politicians were not shy about their opposition to the civil rig...

Black History Month: Past Movements For Civil Rights – What America’s Voting Rights Activists Can Learn

27Feb

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

EDUCATION

Black History Month: Past Movements For Civil Rights – What America’s Voting Rights Activists Can Learn

With Congress failing to pass new voting rights legislation, it’s worth remembering that throughout U.S. history, new civil rights laws designed to end racial inequities across American life have been met by stubborn resistance. Senate Democrats Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona joined Senate Republicans in blocking both the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. These bills would have combated voter suppression by creating a national automatic voter registration system, and they also would have banned partisan gerrymandering. In the wake of the vote, President Joe Biden said he was “profoundly disappointed that the United States Senate has failed to stand up for democracy.” These setbacks in Congress come on the heels of millions ...

5 Essential Reads – The Battles Over Voting Rights, Preventing Fraud And Access To Ballots

12Jan

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

IN OTHER NEWS, POLITICS

5 Essential Reads – The Battles Over Voting Rights, Preventing Fraud And Access To Ballots

President Joe Biden chose Atlanta – the historic home of the 20th century’s battle for civil and voting rights – to make a strong argument on Jan. 11, 2021, that the Senate must ditch the filibuster and pass legislation soon to protect voting rights. Biden told his audience, “I will defend your right to vote and our democracy against all enemies foreign and domestic.” After Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, Trump’s false assertions of election fraud sparked Republican-dominated state legislatures to pass bills that Democrats say restrict voting rights and place election administration in the hands of rank partisans. GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell says those charges are just “scary stories … about how democracy is at death’s door.” As part of our focus on how democracy...

Justices At The Supreme Court Will Consider Gun Rights – If The Fundamental Right To Keep A Gun At Home Applies To Carrying Weapons In Public

2Nov

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

POLITICS

Justices At The Supreme Court Will Consider Gun Rights – If The Fundamental Right To Keep A Gun At Home Applies To Carrying Weapons In Public

Morgan Marietta, University of Massachusetts Lowell The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments Nov. 3, 2021, on a clear question: Does the constitutional right to possess a gun extend outside the home? The answer may alter gun regulations in many states. The crux of the issue before the court is captured by a debate that Thomas Jefferson had with himself at the time of the founding. When Jefferson was drafting a proposed constitution for his home state of Virginia in June 1776, he suggested a clause that read “No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms.” In the second draft, he added in brackets, “[within his own lands or tenements].” Jefferson’s debate with himself captures the question posed to the court: Is the purpose of the right to “keep and bear arms” the protection of a...

Howard Fuller – How The Civil Rights Activist Became A Devout Champion Of School Choice

28Sep

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Journalism

Howard Fuller – How The Civil Rights Activist Became A Devout Champion Of School Choice

Jon Hale, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign As a longtime civil rights activist and education reformer, Howard Fuller has seen his support for school choice spark both controversy and confusion. That’s because it aligns him with polarizing Republican figures that include Donald Trump and Trump’s former secretary of education, Betsy DeVos. But unlike those figures, Fuller’s support for school choice is not rooted in a conservative agenda to privatize public schools. Rather, it is grounded in his ongoing quest to provide Black students a quality education by any means necessary. I write about Fuller in my new book “The Choice We Face,” which traces the history of school choice as well as demands for radical education reform by Black activists. Unlike most other school choice advo...

From Past Movements For Civil Rights – What America’s Social Justice Activists Can Learn

13Aug

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SOCIAL JUSTICE

From Past Movements For Civil Rights – What America’s Social Justice Activists Can Learn

Anthony Siracusa, University of Colorado Boulder With Congress considering legislation to protect voting rights and address police accountability, it’s worth remembering that throughout U.S. history new civil rights laws have been followed by resistance and the stubborn persistence of racial inequity across American life. Still, these discussions in Congress come on the heels of millions of Americans calling for change. The demonstrations that followed George Floyd’s death belonged to a broader effort to reckon with white violence and discrimination in U.S. life. The historical roots of our contemporary racial injustice were documented in the 1619 Project, a New York Times undertaking that reexamined the legacy of slavery in the U.S. This year’s widespread commemoration of the Tulsa Ra...

The Rights Of Transgender Athletes Striking A Balance Between Fairness In Competition

18May

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

LGBTQ

The Rights Of Transgender Athletes Striking A Balance Between Fairness In Competition

In a majority of U.S. states, bills aiming to restrict who can compete in women’s sports at public institutions have either been signed into law or are working their way through state legislatures. Caught up in this political point-scoring are real people – both trans athletes who want to participate in competitive sports and those competing against them. As a professor of ethics and public policy, I spend much of my time thinking about the role of the law in protecting the rights of individuals, especially when the rights of some people appear to conflict with the rights of others. How to accommodate transgender athletes in competitive sports – or whether they should be accommodated at all – has become one of these conflicts. On one side are transgender athletes who want to compete in...

The Latest Battleground Over Transgender Rights – High School Sports

4Apr

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IN OTHER NEWS

The Latest Battleground Over Transgender Rights – High School Sports

This year, 20 states proposed to ban transgender girls – meaning those assigned male at birth but who live and identify as girls – from competing on girls interscholastic sports teams. The only bill to pass was in Idaho. That law bars transgender athletes from participating in high school and college sports. It also authorizes “sex testing” of athletes through genital exams and genetic and hormone testing. The ACLU is challenging the law, arguing that it violates civil rights, and a federal court has delayed its implementation. On Dec. 21, over 60 women’s and LGBTQ rights groups and nearly 200 women athletes, including Billie Jean King, Megan Rapinoe and Candace Parker, filed legal briefs contesting the Idaho law and supporting the full inclusion of transgender athletes. The right of gi...

How Individual Rights And Government Regulation Are Both Necessary For A Free Society – Masks And Mandates

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

SOCIETY

How Individual Rights And Government Regulation Are Both Necessary For A Free Society – Masks And Mandates

I’ve been thinking a lot, recently, about the tension between demanding “individual rights” – in the sense of deciding whether or not to wear a mask – and calling for more action on the part of our government to protect us from the coronavirus pandemic. I’m a political theorist, which means I study how communities are organized, how power is exercised and how people relate to one another in and between communities. I’ve realized – through talking to friends, and thinking about the protests against COVID-19-related restrictions that have taken place around the country – that many people do not understand that individual rights and state power are not really opposites. The laws and policies that governments enact set the framework for the exercise of our rights. So, inaction on the part of...