3.11 - Government Responses to Social Movements

Civil Rights Movement Victories

• Brown v. Board of Education (1954): ruled school segregation unconstitutional.
• Decided 9-0. Chief Justice Warren wrote that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal," so segregated schools violate the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. This overturned Plessy v. Ferguson's "separate but equal" doctrine for public schools. NAACP lawyers led by Thurgood Marshall brought the case.
• A follow-up ruling (Brown II, 1955) ordered schools to desegregate "with all deliberate speed," but many Southern states resisted for years. In 1957, President Eisenhower sent federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas so nine Black students could attend Central High School.

• Civil Rights Act of 1964: banned discrimination based on race, color, religion, or national origin in public accommodations, meaning businesses serving the public (hotels, restaurants, theaters) couldn't discriminate. It also helped integrate public schools and other public facilities, cut off federal money to programs that discriminate, and made job discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin illegal.

• 24th Amendment (1964): banned poll taxes in federal elections, which had been used to block minority voting. The Supreme Court banned them in state elections two years later.

• Voting Rights Act of 1965: bans racial discrimination in voting. It suspended literacy tests and other voting obstacles in places with a history of discrimination (a 1970 amendment banned literacy tests nationwide), sent federal examiners to register voters, and boosted minority turnout when combined with the 24th Amendment. Later amendments (1975) required ballots in other languages where needed. It also required certain states and counties with a history of discrimination to get federal approval before changing election laws or district maps, until Shelby County v. Holder (2013) struck down the formula that decided which places were covered.

Women's Rights Movement Victories

• Civil Rights Act of 1964: also banned sex discrimination in employment (Title VII).

• Equal Pay Act of 1963: required equal pay for equal work.

• Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972: bans sex discrimination in any education program or activity that receives federal money, public or private. It's best known for sports: if men have access to a program, women must too.

Broader Expansion of Civil Rights

• Disabled Persons Movement: led to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), extending Civil Rights Act protections to disabled people.

• LGBTQ Movement: won marriage equality through cases like United States v. Windsor (2013), which struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act's definition of marriage as only between a man and a woman, and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015). Obergefell legalized same-sex marriage nationwide and required states to recognize marriages performed elsewhere. In Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), the Court ruled that firing someone for being gay or transgender is sex discrimination banned by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

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