Civil Liberties Challenges

Chapter 14

Section 4

Section 4Affirmative Action

• Affirmative Action is a set of policies developed in the 1960s to remedy past discrimination.

• Often the policies involve the targeted recruitment of women and minorities.

• In Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the Court ruled that colleges and universities could not use a quota system, although they could consider race in admissions.

Section 4Affirmative Action (cont.)

• In 1995 the Court overturned earlier decisions by saying that federal agencies could not automatically favor minority-based companies for federal contracts.

Section 4Discrimination Against Women

• Women did not win the right to vote until 1920 when the Nineteenth Amendment was adopted.

• In Reed v. Reed the Supreme Court said that any law that classifies people on the basis of gender “must be reasonable, not arbitrary, and must rest on some ground of difference.”

Section 4Citizens’ Right to Know

• Informed citizens are essential to democracy.

• Since 1917, the government has used a security classification system that permits it to keep information that is important to national security or foreign policy secret.

• In 1966 Congress increased the public’s access to government by passing the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Section 4Citizens’ Right to Privacy

• In 1965 the Supreme Court interpreted that taken together the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth and Ninth Amendments recognize an area of privacy.

Section 4Citizens’ Right to Privacy (cont.)

• In the Griswold v. Connecticut, the Court said that Connecticut could not outlaw access to contraception because it would violate the privacy of married couples.

• In 1973 the Roe v. Wade decision established a woman’s right to get an abortion during the first six months of pregnancy, but individual states could prohibit abortion in the last three months.

Section 4Citizens’ Right to Privacy (cont.)

• The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) required federal agents to get a warrant from a special FISA court before tapping domestic phone and computer lines.

• The Patriot Act and its revisions broadened the definition of who could be seen as a terrorist and expanded the government’s power to detain, investigate, and prosecute suspected terrorists.