http://supreme.justia.com/us/342/485
Alexander v.
Holmes
County
Board of Education (1969)
Again, the Supreme Court said that 15 years after the Brown decision, the time for "all deliberate speed" had come to an end, and
Mississippi
schools had to be immediately desegregated.
http://supreme.justia.com/us/396/1218/case.html
Barnette v. West Virginia Board of Education (1943)
In 1943, the US Supreme Court overturned the ruling it had made three years previously in another flag salute case involving Jehovah's Witness students, Minersville v. Gobitis. By a vote of 6-3 the court in Barnette v. WVa. Board of Education came down on the side of students who had been expelled from school for refusing to salute the flag.
The students had brought a challenge to a compulsory flag salute required by the West Virginia Board of Education, which stated that failure to conform was "insubordination" which should be dealt with by expulsion. Not only were expelled children to be regarded as "unlawfully absent" and hence potential delinquents. Their parents were liable to prosecution, fines and jail terms.
While the students' case had been presented as a matter of religious liberty, the majority Supreme Court opinion written by Justice Robert Jackson in the Barnette case was a ringing endorsement of the right to freedom of thought and expression, even in the middle of a war. The decision states that "the very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts." In other words, it was not up to legislatures or popular opinion to decide whether or not to uphold fundamental rights. The opinion examines whether "compulsion" is a permissible means to achieve "uniformity of sentiment" and "national unity" and points out where that may lead: "Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard....We set up government by consent of the governed, and the Bill of Rights denies those in power any legal opportunity to coerce that consent."
With these stirring words the decision enshrines the right to dissent: "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein...We think the action of local authorities in compelling the flag salute and pledge transcends the constitutional limitations on their power and invades the sphere of intellect and spirit which it is the purpose of the First Amendment to our Constitution to reserve from all official control..."
This ruling for the first time recognizes that the Bill of Rights applies to students in public schools. Students cannot be forced to participate in the Pledge of Allegiance, and cannot be punished for refusing to salute the flag.
http://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1949/1942/1942_591/
Barron v.
Baltimore
(1833)
John Barron was co-owner of a profitable wharf in the
harbor
of
Baltimore
. But as the city developed, construction caused the harbor to silt up and ruined his business. He invoked the Fifth Amendment to sue the city for the money he had lost. But the Supreme Court did not support him. It ruled that the Fifth Amendment guarantee that when the government takes private property for public use there must be just compensation did not apply to the states, but only to the federal government. This decision was used at the time to interpret the Bill of Rights as only applying to the national government, not to the states.
http://www.oyez.org/cases/1792-1850/1833/1833_0/
Bethel School District v. Fraser (1986)
In 1986 the US Supreme Court narrowed the "Tinker standard" when it ruled 7-2 in the case Bethel School District v. Fraser that a school can ban expression it considered to be "lewd, indecent or offensive" whether or not it caused "substantial disruption" in the school.
Matthew Fraser, a student at Bethel High in Washington State, had delivered a nomination speech for classmate Jeff Kuhlman for a student government office before a voluntary assembly. The speech contained these sentences: "I know a man who is firm – he's firm in his pants, he's firm in his shirt, his character is firm – but most...of all, his belief in you, the students of Bethel, is firm. Jess is a man who will go to the very end – even the climax, for each and every one of you." The next day a school official informed him that he had violated a school rule against "the use of obscene, profane language or gestures" and he was given a three-day suspension.
He sued in federal court, arguing that the suspension violated his First Amendment rights. Both the federal and US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit agreed with him, stating that his speech did not cause the "substantial disruption" which was part of the "Tinker standard" for protected student speech. But the US Supreme Court sided with the school district. "The undoubted freedom to advocate unpopular and controversial views in schools and classrooms must be balanced against the society's countervailing interest in teaching students the boundaries of socially appropriate behavior," Chief Justice Burger wrote. "The First Amendment does not prevent the school officials from determining that to permit a vulgar and lewd speech...would undermine the school's basic educational mission. A high school assembly or classroom is no place for a sexually explicit monologue directed towards an unsuspecting audience of teenage students." Schools therefore could punish students for "lewd, indecent, or offensive" speech.
- Listen to the oral argument: http://www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/case/36/
- Read the decision: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=478&invol=675
- Read what Matthew Fraser says about the case 15 years later: http://www.freedomforum.org/templates/document.asp?documentID=13701
Brandenburg
v.
Ohio
(1969)
A leader of the Ku Klux Klan was arrested after he made a speech at a Klan rally and charged under an
Ohio
law that made it illegal to advocate "crime, sabotage, violence, or unlawful means of terrorism..." The Supreme Court struck down this law as over broad. It ruled that speech could only be prohibited if it is "directed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action" and is "likely to incite or produce such action." Mere advocacy which does not incite imminent lawless action is protected by the First Amendment.
http://www.oyez.org/cases/1960-1969/1968/1968_492/
Browder v. Gayle (1956)
A year before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in
Montgomery
,
Alabama
, 15-year old Claudette Colvin, Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald and Mary Louise Smith had taken a similar action to challenge
Montgomery
's segregated buses. In February 1956, with the
Montgomery
bus boycott well underway, these four women brought suit in
US
district court arguing that the segregated buses deprived them of their Fourteenth Amendment rights to equal protection of the laws. Drawing upon the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, the district court judges agreed with their claims. In December 1956, the US Supreme Court upheld the lower court ruling in Browder v. Gayle, bringing victory to the organizers of the year-long
Montgomery
bus boycott.
http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/about_king/encyclopedia/browdervgayle.htm
Brown v. Board of Education of
Topeka
(1954, 1955)
Linda Brown was a third grader in
Topeka
,
Kansas
who had to walk a mile through railway yards to get to her segregated elementary school although a white school was only seven blocks away. The NAACP took her case to test the "separate but equal" doctrine dating from the 1896 Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson. By the time the case reached the Supreme Court, it had been combined with other cases challenging school desegregation in
South Carolina
,
Virginia
and
Delaware
. In one of the most significant rulings of the 20th century, the US Supreme Court in 1954 unanimously outlawed as unconstitutional the mandatory racial segregation of public schools that existed in 21 states on the grounds that segregated facilities are "inherently equal." In 1955, the Supreme Court ruled that schools should comply with the ruling "with all deliberate speed" – which could be (and was) interpreted to mean there was no rush.
http://www.oyez.org/cases/1950-1959/1952/1952_1/
Cantwell v.
Connecticut
(1940)
Newton Cantwell and his two sons were arrested for soliciting members for their religion by handing out pamphlets and blasting anti- Roman Catholic messages on a portable phonograph. They were charged with violating a local ordinance requiring a permit for solicitation and inciting a breach of the peace. In court they argued that their prosecution violated their First Amendment rights. In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court for the first time held that the First Amendment's guarantee of religious freedom applied to the states. The Jehovah's Witnesses could spread their religious message on the streets without a permit and their actions did not cause a breach of the peace.
http://www.oyez.org/cases/1901-1939/1939/1939_632
Chaplinsky v.
New Hampshire
(1942)
Walter Chaplinsky, a Jehovah's Witness, was arrested for calling a city official a "God-damned racketeer" and "damned fascist" in a public place. The Supreme Court decided that these were "fighting words" that were meant to "inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breech of the peace." Like obscene, profane and libelous words and expression, fighting words did not have First Amendment protection.
http://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1949/1941/1941_255/
Communist Party of
America
v. Subversive Activities Control Board (1961)
Because the Communist Party of the
United States of America
was regarded as a movement dominated by a nation hostile to the
US
, the court concluded that the Party had to register with the Justice Department. According to the court, it was not a violation of the First Amendment to force the Party to hand over its membership lists and financial statements. This decision was reversed four years later in Albertson v. Subversive Activities Control Board.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0367_0001_ZD1.html
Cox v.
Louisiana
(1965)
In 1961 Elton Cox led students on a civil rights demonstration through the streets of
Baton Rouge
to the courthouse. They kept to the side of the road so traffic would not be obstructed. At lunchtime, Cox called for demonstrators to try to get service at one of the segregated lunch counters in the vicinity. At this point, police fired tear gas at the crowd and arrested Cox. He was convicted of disturbing the peace. The US Supreme Court struck down the state law under which he was convicted, saying it was overbroad and not fairly applied. The court said other parades and street meetings that blocked the street had been permitted under the law, and Cox had been deprived of the right of free speech and assembly. The Court added that "the rights of free speech and assembly do not mean that everyone may address a group in any public place at any time."
http://www.oyez.org/cases/1960-1969/1964/1964_49/
Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education (1999)
In a 5-4 ruling that left the US Supreme Court bitterly divided, the majority of the court decided that school districts do have an obligation to protect students from peer-to-peer sexual harassment. The court ruled that schools can be sued under Title IX of the 1972 Education Act barring sexual discrimination if it can be shown that the sexual harassment is "so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it effectively bars the victim's access to an educational opportunity or benefit," and school officials have done nothing to stop it, but instead acted with deliberate indifference. The case involved LaShonda Davis, a fifth grader in a Georgia school, who, over a period of five months, was taunted so severely that her grades dropped and she contemplated suicide. School officials did nothing in response to her mother's complaints.
- Listen to the oral arguments: http://www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/case/474/
- Read the decision: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=000&invol=97-843
Dennis v.
United States
(1951)
Eleven members of the American Community Party had been convicted under the Smith Act of willfully advocating the overthrow of the
US
government by force or violence. The Supreme Court upheld their convictions, drawing a distinction between teaching about communism and actively advocating communist views that threatened the government. The fact that such advocacy was not likely to succeed was irrelevant. It still presented a "clear and present danger" that does not enjoy First Amendment protection.
http://www.oyez.org/cases/1960-1969/1965/1965_502/
Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)
Dred Scott was taken by his master, John Sandford, from the slave state of
Missouri
to
Illinois
(a
free state
by the Missouri Compromise of 1820) with his master. Upon his return to
Missouri
, Scott sued on the grounds that he was not a slave due to the time he had spent in freedom. The US Supreme Court held by 7-2 that no one but a citizen of the
United States
could be a citizen of a state, and that only Congress could confer national citizenship. Chief Justice Roger Taney, from a slave owning family in
Maryland
, concluded that the phrase “all men are created equal” from the Declaration of Independence was never meant to apply to the enslaved African race and that no person descended from an African slave could be a citizen. The ruling also held that Missouri Compromise – which prohibited slavery north of the 36th parallel in the land of the
Louisiana Purchase
– was unconstitutional.
http://www.oyez.org/cases/1851-1900/1856/1856_0/
Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972)
William Baird was convicted in
Massachusetts
of giving contraception to an unmarried woman in violation of a state law that said contraception could only be given by authorized distributors (which Baird was not) and then only to married couples. The US Supreme Court ruled the law unconstitutional, stating there was no "rational basis" to distinguish between married and single people in this way, and that this was an "unwarranted governmental intrusion."
http://www.oyez.org/cases/1970-1979/1971/1971_70_17/
Elk Grove v. Newdow (2004)
The US Supreme Court chose Flag Day, June 14, 2004, to issue a ruling in the controversial case Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow. This case had challenged the use of the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance as a violation of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause. The words had been added to the Pledge by federal statute on Flag Day, June 14, 1954 to distinguish the
US
from its Cold War enemy, the
Soviet Union
, which rejected all organized religion.
The case was brought by a professed atheist, Michael Newdow, who said his nine-year-old daughter's religious liberty was violated because she had to hear the Pledge in class, even though she did not have to participate in it. A district court ruled against Mr. Newdow, but then the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit agreed that the words "under God" in the Pledge and the school's policy of requiring the Pledge on a daily basis both failed the Lemon test – the standard established by the Supreme Court for deciding when a practice violated the Establishment Clause.
There was an immediate outcry against this ruling in both the US Congress and across the country. Then the legal picture got more complicated. The mother of Newdow's daughter – who had custody of the child – publicly stated that she disapproved of the lawsuit. She said that as a born-again Christian, she did not mind the girl being exposed to the Pledge in school.
The Supreme Court had to decide two things: whether the Pledge in schools violated the Establishment Clause because it contained the words "under God," and whether Michael Newdow as a non-custodial parent had legal "standing" – an identifiable interest that gave him the right to speak for his daughter before a federal court. The court ducked the Establishment Clause issue, so we still don't know whether the words "under God" violate the Constitution. On the matter of Newdow's right to bring the case, it ruled that because of family law principles, Newdow did not have standing to bring the suit in federal court.
- Listen to the oral arguments: http://www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/case/1682/
- Read the decision: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=000&invol=02-1624
Engel v. Vitale (1962)
In 1962 the Supreme Court decided the case of Engel v. Vitale challenging organized prayer in schools. The case had been brought by parents of ten students at New Hyde Park High School in New York, who had to start school each day saying aloud the following prayer: "Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our Country."
They argued that the state law requiring this prayer was a violation of the Establishment clause of the First Amendment and the separation of Church and State because it furthered the religious beliefs of one particular group.
A New York State Court had ruled in favor of prayer in schools as long as the schools did not compel students to join in over their or parental objections. But the Supreme Court disagreed, and stated that prayer in public schools "breaches the constitutional wall of separation between Church and State...in this country, it is no part of the business of government to compose official prayers for any group of the American people to recite as a part of a religious program carried on by government."
- Listen to the oral argument: http://www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/case/111/
- Read the decision: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=370&invol=421
Ex Parte Merryman (1861)
This was not a Supreme Court case but a ruling by Supreme Court Justice Roger Taney, sitting as a judge for the US Circuit Court for the District of Maryland. It was an important test of presidential power during wartime. As the Civil War broke out, there were riots in parts of Maryland, and Lieutenant John Merryman, an officer in the Maryland cavalry was arrested shortly after President Lincoln, in April 1861, suspended habeas corpus in the area where there was fighting. Merryman filed a writ of habeas corpus, seeking his release from what he said was arbitrary imprisonment. Chief Justice Taney ruled that only Congress, not the president, could suspend habeas corpus. President Lincoln disregarded the ruling.
Ex Parte Milligan (1866)
In September 1863, in the middle of the Civil War, President Lincoln imposed congressionally-authorized martial law and suspended habeas corpus in the case of spies and “aiders of the enemy.” Lambdin Milligan was a Confederate sympathizer who was sentenced to death by a military tribunal in
Indiana
for disloyalty and inciting insurrection. Milligan petitioned the circuit court for habeas corpus and the Supreme Court ended up hearing his case and ruling in his favor. In a landmark decision, the court ruled that military tribunals could not be established to try civilians where courts were open, even in war time, and that the suspension of habeas corpus was illegal unless the courts were closed.
Ex Parte Quirin (1942)
In a decision that has been relied on by the Bush Administration to defend the military commissions it established at Guantanamo Bay to try suspected "enemy combatants," the US Supreme Court upheld the jurisdiction of the military tribunal which presided over the trial of eight Germans who during the Second World War entered the US secretly to conduct sabotage operations. The court said even though civilian courts were open, the saboteurs were "unlawful belligerents" who did not have Sixth Amendment protections and should be tried by military courts. The eight Germans were sentenced to death. Six were executed and President Roosevelt commuted the death sentences of two of the men.
Franklin v. Gwinnett County School District (1992)
The US Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Christine Franklin could sue her school district for failing to halt a teacher's sexual advances when she was a student at North Gwinnett High School. After Franklin filed a complaint, the school district had opened an investigation of the teacher, Andrew Hill, but closed the investigation when Hill agreed to resign on condition that all matters pending against him were dropped.
Franklin then went to district court, stating she was the victim, and had been left without any possibility of redress for the wrong she had suffered. The case was brought under Title IX of the 1972 federal Education Act, that bars sexual discrimination in schools that receive federal funding. The district court and the appeals court both ruled that Title IX did not authorize the award of damages. But the Supreme Court disagreed, ruling that she could demand restitution for the injury inflicted on her, and the courts should decide what damages should be paid.
http://www.oyez.org/cases/1990-1999/1991/1991_90_918/
Furman v.
Georgia
(1972)
The Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling in Furman v. Georgia brought to a halt all executions that were pending in the 39 states that had the death penalty. At the time there were 600 people on death row, but executions were infrequently carried out. Under review were three different cases in which the death penalty was given African-American defendants: Lucious Jackson, who was convicted of rape in Georgia; Elmer Branch, who was convicted of rape in
Texas
; and William Henry Furman, who was convicted of murder in
Georgia
