scholarly journals Sex Discrimination in Schools: The Law and Its Impact on School Policies

Laws ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 34
Author(s):  
Suzanne Eckes

The law has the potential to influence school policy in the United States. Specifically, statutes, constitutional provisions, and the outcomes of court cases can impact the civil rights of students, which, in turn, can presumably lead to policies that prohibit discriminatory practices. For example, Congress has enacted federal laws (statutes) that prohibit discrimination based on race, sex, and disability; these laws arguably impact school practice. After setting the legal context, through an analysis of statutes, constitutional provisions and case law, this article examines how law has the potential to influence education policy related to sex discrimination. In doing so, a few illustrative cases related to sexual harassment, single-sex programs, pregnant and parenting teens, dress codes, transgender student rights, and athletics are discussed to provide examples about how case outcomes may help create more equitable school environments.

2020 ◽  
pp. 103-126
Author(s):  
Linda C. McClain

This chapter studies how arguments about bigotry, conscience, and legislating morality featured in legislative debate over the Civil Rights Act of 1964, particularly the public accommodations provision (Title II). President Lyndon B. Johnson urged clergy to support the act and help the United States overcome bigotry. Religious leaders testified for and against the law. Lawmakers and witnesses supporting the law insisted that the nation’s conscience demanded that Congress pass a law to end bigotry and racial discrimination. Opponents referred to bigotry in multiple ways: they argued that segregation reflected natural difference and God’s plan, not bigotry; that people had a right to be bigoted; and that the act’s supporters were the real bigots. The chapter concludes with two Supreme Court cases upholding Title II relevant to later constitutional challenges to civil rights laws protecting LGBTQ persons: Heart of Atlanta v. United States and Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprises.


Author(s):  
Derrick Bell

The supreme court’s 1896 Decision in Plessy v. Ferguson served to bring the law into a dismal harmony with the nation’s view of race in life. The Court decided that segregation in public facilities through “separate but equal” accommodations for black citizens would satisfy the equal protection clause in the Fourteenth Amendment. The years since the sporadically enforced policies of Reconstruction ended in 1876 had been hard for those former slaves and their offspring whose slavery had legally ended with the passage of the Thir­teenth Amendment in 1865. To ensure their rights to due process and the equal protection of the law, the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 provided that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, . . . are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Despite legislation intended to provide enforcement of these rights, the laws were poorly enforced and most were subsequently declared unconstitutional. Corrupting law but relying on intimidation and violence, southern governments stripped blacks of political power. Given meaningful if unspoken assurances that the federal government would not protect black civil rights, conservative southerners regained power utilizing racial fear and hatred to break up competing populist groups of poor black and white farmers. In addition to the disenfranchisement of blacks, whites sought to secure their power through intensive anti-Negro propaganda campaigns championing white supremacy. Literary and scientific leaders published tracts and books intended to “prove” the inhumanity of the Negro. In this hostile climate, segregation laws that had made a brief appearance during Reconstruction were revived across the South, accompanied by waves of violence punctuated by an increase in lynchings and race riots. In an effort both to protest the indignity of segregation and challenge its validity, Homer Plessy, acting for a New Orleans civil rights group, attempted to ride in a railroad car reserved for whites. He was arrested and convicted of violating Louisiana’s 1890 segregation law. On appeal, the Supreme Court acknowledged that the Fourteenth Amendment required absolute equality of the two races before the law, adding: “but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either.”


2019 ◽  
pp. 173-212
Author(s):  
Lawrence M. Friedman

This chapter discusses the law on marriage and divorce, family property, adoption, poor laws and social welfare, and slavery and African Americans in the United States. In the colonial period, the United States had no courts to handle matters of marriage and divorce. Marriage was a contract—an agreement between a man and a woman. Under the rules of the common law, the country belonged to the whites; and more specifically, it belonged to white men. Women had civil rights but no political rights. There were no formal provisions for adoption. A Massachusetts law, passed in 1851, was one of the earliest, and most significant, general adoption law. The so-called poor laws were the basic welfare laws.


Laws ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen O’Connell

Sexual harassment across multiple grounds, including race, disability, sexuality and age, remains an entrenched problem that is poorly dealt with in law. Prevalence rates for intersectional sexual harassment are higher for certain groups, while legal redress is low. This paper examines case law on sexual harassment in Australia where there are intersectional factors and asks whether the “intersectionality” section inserted into the federal Sex Discrimination Act in 2011 has impacted legal practice and decision-making. In particular, it considers the situation of sexual harassment claimants with behavioural and personality traits that are considered “disordered” and the specifically gendered disability stereotypes that shape their treatment in law. Recent cases in Australia dealing with the sexual harassment of people with personality disorders show that intersectionality provisions of sexual harassment laws may in fact be used to undermine a legal claim by a person with disability rather than strengthen it. This article argues that an intersectional legal feminist perspective on harassment is needed for the law to work.


2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 34
Author(s):  
Jr. Richard J. Hunter ◽  
Henry J. Amoroso ◽  
John H. Shannon

This article provides an overview or primer on the law of products liability in the United States for use in the managerial decision-making process.  It focuses on the development of case law under the common law in determining a product defect, types of defects, theories of recovery, and the move to the adoption of the theory of strict liability in products cases.  The article is written within the context of the Restatement of the Law of Torts.  The article provides useful information to the product manager who is responsible for production decisions in a business organization. Key words: Products Liability, Product Defects, Strict Liability in Tort


1969 ◽  
pp. 341
Author(s):  
Brian Kaliel

Civil rights in juvenile courts is an area of the law that has attracted wide discussion and comment in the United States. Canada's laws, however, while following the same general pattern as those in the United States have not been the subject of close scrutiny. The purpose of the article is to scrutinize Canada's laws and place them in the context of modem views as the role and function of juvenile courts.


Author(s):  
Ellen M. L. Bolger

This paper seeks to situate Kenji Yoshino’s thesis from Covering: the hidden assault on our civil rights within the Canadian human rights context. The main research question is whether his thesis is of any practical utility within the Canadian human rights statutory framework – that is if there is room for improvement in the current legislation. After examining the case law, one course of action in the Canadian law context is to protect gender expression to gender identity in jurisdictions that have not already chosen to do so. Instead of only protecting the most blatant covering demands related to gender expression, it would be beneficial to apply the protection of gender expression in a very broad manner. “Covering” as defined by Yoshino is an issue applicable to the Canadian legal context under many different protected grounds of discrimination, such as place of origin and sex.


Laws ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 88
Author(s):  
Suzanne Eckes ◽  
Charles J. Russo

Concerns often arise about the First Amendment rights of public school educators in the United States both inside and outside of their classrooms. As such, after setting the legal context, we analyze teachers’ free speech rights in a variety of settings. In order to do so, we discuss illustrative cases analyzing the legal landscape of teachers’ free expressions rights in U.S. public schools. The purpose of this article is to provide a brief overview highlighting Supreme Court cases and selected opinions from lower courts involving teacher speech impact the expressive rights of educators in public schools rather than serve as a comprehensive analysis of all such speech cases.


2016 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 277-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
Israel Doron ◽  
Ariela Lowenstein ◽  
Simon Biggs

Background: In any aging society, the sociolegal construction of intergenerational relationships is of great importance. This study conducts an international comparison of a specific judicial issue: whether active labor unions have the legal right to strike for the purpose of improving the benefits given to nonactive workers (specifically, pensioners). Method: A comparative case law methodology was used. The texts of three different Supreme Court cases—in the United States, Canada, and Israel—were analyzed and compared. Findings: Despite the different legal outcomes, all three court rulings reflect a disregard of known and relevant social gerontology theories of intergenerational relationships. Conclusion: Social gerontological theories can play an important role in both understanding and shaping judicial policies and assisting the courts in choosing their sociojudicial narratives.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document