What Will Happen to Equal Protection Under the Law?
from OnTheCommons.org:
What Will Happen to Equal Protection Under the Law?
The Supreme Court decides major issues like voting rights and marriage equality
| by David Morris
In a democracy the majority wins. Which makes minority groups vulnerable. At the dawn of the Republic John Adams warned about the tyranny of the majority.
Almost a century later, the 14th Amendment finally declared that no State shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Despite its being passed specifically to protect the rights of ex-slaves from the souths new Black Codes, the Supreme Court astonishingly ruled the 14th Amendment did not apply to states as it dismissed indictments for lynching two blacks that had been issued based on violations of the Amendment.
Sixty years later the Court reversed itself. In the 1950s and 1960s the Warren Court, now viewed by conservatives as engaging in unwanted judicial activism, intervened to protect minorities from state legislatures.
In 1966, the Supreme Court struck down a $1.50 tax imposed on each voter (equivalent to about $10.50 today). Legislators in southern states defended the poll tax as a way to prevent repeaters and floaters from committing voting fraud. The Court disagreed. It rules that voting is a fundamental constitutional right and thus the burden was on the state to prove that a discriminatory law was necessary. The Court argued that introducing a wealth or payment of a fee as a measure of a voters qualifications violated the equal protection clause by unfairly burdening low-income, mostly black voters. ...............(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://onthecommons.org/magazine/what-will-happen-equal-protection-under-law