Civil Rights 3.0

It is now commonplace to hear the LGBT rights movement being described as the last, or the next, or today’s, pre-eminent civil rights issue. This chapter will explore what that means from several perspectives: What does the label tell us about the civil rights paradigm itself? If the achievement of marriage equality is the great civil rights achievement of this generation, what does that suggest about a future for equality more generally? How have new forms of, and technologies for, movement building affected the idea and practice of civil rights? Does the civil rights paradigm have a future? I focus in on three aspects of the social meaning of civil rights: legal doctrine and legal institutions, social movement strategies, and the tension between the discourse of challenges to social hierarchy and that of civil rights. What we learn is that LGBT advocates have contributed to the overall project of formal equality under law primarily by developing an extraordinary strategic and tactical dexterity, uniquely so at the state level and in its alliance with the business sector. As to the latter, however, there are serious potential disadvantages. In the current political framework, the possibility of advances in substantive equality law-–either statutory or Constitutional-–has shrunken to the point that, even as LGBT rights groups make breakthroughs in achieving goals such as marriage equality, they will do well to avoid having to take backward steps with regard to such overarching concepts as the disparate impact principle or heightened scrutiny. For the future, the big question for this movement-–and all other social justice movements in the United States-–is whether it will deploy its talents and resources to challenge embedded, structural forms of discrimination

Civil Rights News

Volume 1-2012 of Civil Rights News by the AFL-CIO Department of Civil, Human and Women\u27s Rights. This Issue covers: Civil Rights, Voting Rights, Immigration, LGBT Developments, Women’s Rights, and additional Resource

Toward a Jurisprudence of the Civil Rights Acts

What is the nature of the “rights,” jurisprudentially, that the 1964 Civil Rights Act legally prescribed? And, more generally, what is a “civil right”? Today, lawyers tend to think of civil rights and particularly those that originated in the 1964 Act, as antidiscrimination rights: our “civil rights,” on this understanding, are our rights not to be discriminated against, by employers, schools, landlords, property vendors, hoteliers, restaurant owners, and providers of public transportation, no less than by states and state actors, on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity, age, sexuality or disability. Contemporary civil rights scholarship overwhelmingly reflects the same conception: our civil rights are quasi-constitutional rights to be free of discrimination in the private as well as public world. But this conventional lawyerly understanding-–basically, that “civil rights” are “antidiscrimination rights”-–is clearly inadequate, certainly with respect to civil rights generally but also, and more tellingly, even with respect to the rights created and then protected by the ‘64 Act itself. First, on the general point: some of the “civil rights” sought or held across our history have not been antidiscrimination rights of any sort at all: labor rights, welfare rights, free speech rights, and the constitutional rights of criminal defendants have all, at various times, been championed as “civil rights,” and these rights are neither logically nor jurisprudentially tied to any conception of antidiscrimination. But furthermore, even the “civil rights” which are defined and then protected against discrimination by the 1964 Civil Rights Act, as well as by various Civil Rights Acts both before and subsequent to it, are not, in circular fashion, simply our rights not to be discriminated against on the basis of impermissible characteristics. Rather, the “civil rights” of which we cannot be discriminatorily deprived, whether originating in the ‘64 Act or elsewhere, are, after all, rights to something: a right to vote, or to physical security, or to enter contracts, or to own, buy or sell property, or to legal recourse in the aftermath of a wrong committed against us, or to write a will, or to be considered for or to hold down a job and to be paid fairly for our labor, or to the use of a restaurant or a hotel or a city bus, or to a public education, or to marry whom we love. And, these are just some of the public goods that have been recognized at various times as “civil rights,” of which we cannot be deprived by discriminatory action. Even if just that much is right, then the “civil right” protected by all of our Civil Rights Acts, including the ‘64 one, is considerably more complex, jurisprudentially, than the conventionally legalistic and formulaic equation of “civil rights” with “antidiscrimination rights” suggests. Minimally, the “civil right” recognized or protected by the various Civil Rights Acts is almost invariably a multilayered right, or a “right to a right”: it is a right to not be discriminatorily deprived of some underlying right. Only the first right in that phrase “a right to a right” is the antidiscrimination right. The second “right,” though, is the underlying civil right of which we cannot be discriminatorily deprived, and it is both itself complex, and highly variable: it might be a common law right, such as a right to enter contracts or sell property, or a statutory right, such as a right to vote, or simply a right to a social or public good, such as employment or educational opportunities, or the protection of a trustworthy police force against private violence. And, while we have generated a library of writing, and jurisprudence, and judicial opinions, on the nature of the first right in that phrase-–the right not to be deprived of various rights, on the basis of race, sex, and so forth-–we have devoted much less to the second: the nature of the underlying right of which we cannot be deprived. So, what is the jurisprudential nature of that right? What is a “civil right,” jurisprudentially, both with respect to the rights protected against discrimination by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and more broadly? Again, and more generally, what is a “civil right”

Beyond Disability Civil Rights

[Excerpt] This Article argues that to be effective, both domestic and international disability rights must adopt a disability human rights paradigm. Such a framework combines the type of civil and political rights provided by antidiscrimination legislation (also called negative or first-generation rights) with the full spectrum of social, cultural, and economic measures (also called positive or second-generation rights) bestowed by many human rights treaties.16 By acting holistically, this agenda accounts for factors normally exogenous to civil rights laws and ensures that individuals can flourish and participate in their societies. Accordingly, our intention is to share some thoughts on how to best provide disabled citizens with equal opportunity rather than “merely” equal treatment. Internationally, States and civil society organizations have been developing innovative and effective equality measures. We draw on their experiences in providing examples of how disability legislation and policy can be developed to implement a more holistic human rights approach. These lessons are also pertinent for invigorating the ADA

Birmingham Pledge Week 2009

Celebrating the 11th Anniversary of the Birmingham Pledge. (Sign it. Live it.) September 4-19, 2009 in Birmingham, Ala

Flyer for the 9th Annual Teen Summit

A youth-led summit on race, prejudice, diversity, and the value of inclusion. Monday, September 15, 2008. Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (Ala.

A Single Struggle? The Global Convergence of Civil and Human Rights Conference

Program for a conference held April 30-May 2, 2008 at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in Birmingham, Ala

When Civil Rights Go Wrong: Agenda and Process in Civil Rights Reform

The aging of the persons leading the civil rights movement is only a metaphor for a more serious aging process that afflicts the movement. It is a sclerotic condition that has kept an old agenda and once-prodding - but now increasingly intolerant - ideas in place, a fixed way of thinking that has become more strident and resistant to change as it has become more complacent with itself. Once the opponent of conformity, some parts of the civil rights community now preach conformity within their communities. I see these not as indices of the venality of the civil rights movement, but as human responses that can be reformed by the contributions of a new generation. This change has already begun to occur, and my goal is to have a new generation build an immunity to sclerosis into the movement ..

Birmingham Pledge Week 2008

Celebrating the 10th Anniversary of the Birmingham Pledge. (Sign it. Live it.) September 6-15, 2008 in Birmingham, Ala

Cardozo’s Civil Rights Clinic Wins Fifth Circuit Appeal for Client in Police Misconduct Case

Civil Rights Clinic students Zoe Burke ’23 and 3L Rahni Stewart recently won an appeal for their client in a police misconduct case in Kenner, LA.https://larc.cardozo.yu.edu/cardozo-news-2024/1013/thumbnail.jp