Also known as: civil right · civil-rights
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
Fundamental rights and liberties secured to individuals by the Constitution and federal statutes against governmental or private interference. These rights include protections against racial discrimination in marriage and employment, privacy in intimate conduct, and due process safeguards in criminal and juvenile proceedings. Statutory schemes such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and 42 U.S.C. § 1983 supply remedies for violations.
Camila Cervantes, a lawyer, provides free representation to a nonprofit group challenging a state voting restriction that disproportionately burdens minority citizens. The organization lacks funds to pay standard fees. Her services qualify under the rule allowing reduced-fee work to protect civil rights when payment would deplete resources.
Central Dynamics, a nonprofit, mails informational letters to residents explaining their constitutional rights and offering free legal help in civil rights matters. State officials attempt to ban the mailings as improper solicitation. The letters receive First Amendment protection as expressive activity advancing civil rights objectives.
Cassandra Cooper and her husband seek to obtain contraceptives from a licensed physician in violation of a state criminal statute. They challenge the law as an unconstitutional invasion of marital privacy. The Court recognizes the right to make intimate decisions free from unwarranted governmental intrusion.
Estelle Griswold served as Executive Director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut. Dr. C. Lee Buxton served as the League's Medical Director and was a professor at Yale Medical School. Together they opened and operated a center in New Haven that was open from November 1 to November 10, 1961. At the center they gave information, instruction, and medical advice to married persons as to the means of preventing conception. They examined the wife and prescribed the best contraceptive device or material for her use. Fees were usually charged, although some couples were serviced free. The statutes involved were sections 53-32 and 54-196 of the General Statutes of Connecticut (1958 rev.). Section 53-32 made it a crime to use any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception. Section 54-196 punished accessories as principals. The appellants were found guilty as accessories and fined $100 each. The Appellate Division of the Circuit Court affirmed the convictions. The Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut affirmed that judgment in State v. Griswold, 151 Conn. 544, 200 A. 2d 479. The United States Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction. The appellants asserted standing to raise the constitutional rights of the married persons with whom they had a professional relationship. A criminal conviction for serving married couples removes doubts about case or controversy. The rights of husband and wife would be diluted unless considered in a suit involving those who have this kind of confidential relation to them.
View caseChristian Coleman, a juvenile, faces an adjudication hearing on charges that would constitute a felony if committed by an adult. The state seeks to apply a preponderance standard. The Court requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt to protect the juvenile's liberty interest without stripping civil rights upon adjudication.
During a 1967 adjudicatory hearing conducted pursuant to section 742 of the New York Family Court Act, a judge in New York Family Court found that the twelve-year-old appellant had entered a locker and stolen one hundred twelve dollars from a woman's pocketbook. The petition which charged appellant with delinquency alleged that his act, if done by an adult, would constitute the crime or crimes of larceny. The judge acknowledged that the proof might not establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt but relied on section 744(b) of the New York Family Court Act, which provides that any determination at the conclusion of an adjudicatory hearing that a juvenile did an act or acts must be based on a preponderance of the evidence. After a subsequent dispositional hearing, appellant was ordered placed in a training school for an initial period of eighteen months, subject to annual extensions of his commitment until his eighteenth birthday, six years in appellant's case. The Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court, First Judicial Department, affirmed without opinion. The New York Court of Appeals then affirmed by a four-to-three vote, expressly sustaining the constitutionality of section 744(b). The Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction.
View caseClifford Cox, a white man, and Christine Castro, a Black woman, marry in violation of Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute. They are prosecuted and seek to have the convictions set aside. The Court invalidates the statute as an invidious racial classification violating equal protection and due process.
In June 1958, two residents of Virginia, Mildred Jeter, a Negro woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, were married in the District of Columbia pursuant to its laws. Shortly after their marriage, the Lovings returned to Virginia and established their marital abode in Caroline County. At the October Term, 1958, of the Circuit Court of Caroline County, a grand jury issued an indictment charging the Lovings with violating Virginia’s ban on interracial marriages. On January 6, 1959, the Lovings pleaded guilty to the charge and were sentenced to one year in jail; however, the trial judge suspended the sentence for a period of 25 years on the condition that the Lovings leave the State and not return to Virginia together for 25 years. After their convictions, the Lovings took up residence in the District of Columbia. On November 6, 1963, they filed a motion in the state trial court to vacate the judgment and set aside the sentence on the ground that the statutes which they had violated were repugnant to the Fourteenth Amendment. The motion not having been decided by October 28, 1964, the Lovings instituted a class action in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia requesting that a three-judge court be convened to declare the Virginia antimiscegenation statutes unconstitutional and to enjoin state officials from enforcing their convictions. On January 22, 1965, the state trial judge denied the motion to vacate the sentences, and the Lovings perfected an appeal to the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia. On February 11, 1965, the three-judge District Court continued the case to allow the Lovings to present their constitutional claims to the highest state court. The Supreme Court of Appeals upheld the constitutionality of the antimiscegenation statutes and, after modifying the sentence, affirmed the convictions. The Lovings appealed this decision, and the Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction on December 12, 1966. The two statutes under which the Lovings were convicted and sentenced are part of a comprehensive statutory scheme aimed at prohibiting and punishing interracial marriages, specifically Virginia Code sections 20-58 and 20-59. Virginia is now one of 16 States which prohibit and punish marriages on the basis of racial classifications, and the present statutory scheme dates from the adoption of the Racial Integrity Act of 1924.
View caseCynthia Cortez and her same-sex partner are arrested in their home for engaging in consensual sexual conduct prohibited by state law. They challenge the statute as an unconstitutional intrusion on liberty. The Court holds that the Due Process Clause protects personal decisions concerning intimate relationships.
In Houston, Texas, officers of the Harris County Police Department were dispatched to a private residence in response to a reported weapons disturbance. They entered an apartment where one of the petitioners, John Geddes Lawrence, resided. The officers observed Lawrence and another man, Tyron Garner, engaging in a sexual act. The two petitioners were arrested, held in custody overnight, and charged and convicted before a Justice of the Peace. The complaints described their crime as "deviate sexual intercourse, namely anal sex, with a member of the same sex (man)." Texas Penal Code Ann. § 21.06(a) (2003) provides that a person commits an offense if he engages in deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex. The statute defines deviate sexual intercourse as any contact between any part of the genitals of one person and the mouth or anus of another person, or the penetration of the genitals or the anus of another person with an object. The petitioners exercised their right to a trial de novo in Harris County Criminal Court. They challenged the statute as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and of a like provision of the Texas Constitution. Those contentions were rejected. The petitioners, having entered a plea of nolo contendere, were each fined $200 and assessed court costs of $141.25. The Court of Appeals for the Texas Fourteenth District considered the petitioners' federal constitutional arguments under both the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. After hearing the case en banc the court, in a divided opinion, rejected the constitutional arguments and affirmed the convictions. The majority opinion indicates that the Court of Appeals considered our decision in Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986), to be controlling on the federal due process aspect of the case. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to consider three questions. The petitioners were adults at the time of the alleged offense. Their conduct was in private and consensual.
View caseRule 6.1(b)(1) expressly counts delivery of free or reduced-fee services to individuals or groups seeking to secure or protect civil rights as qualifying pro bono work when standard fees would deplete organizational resources.
Nonprofit groups that inform citizens of their rights and offer free representation in civil rights cases engage in protected expressive and associational activity. Outright bans on their communications are generally impermissible.
A finding that a juvenile violated criminal law does not constitute a criminal conviction and does not deprive the juvenile of civil rights, provided the reasonable-doubt standard is applied at the adjudicatory stage.
…whipping—and to sustained and protracted questioning incommunicado in order to extort confessions. The Commission on Civil Rights in 1961 found much evidence to indicate that "some policemen still resort to physical force to obtain confessions," 1961 Comm'n on Civil Rights Rep., Justice, pt. 5, 17. The use of physical…