7/2/20  //  Commentary

The Court’s LGBTQ rulings should not distract from the broader trajectory of its jurisprudence in favor of the privileged.

6/21/20  //  Commentary

On this week’s Versus Trump, Easha Anand makes her triumphant return to talk qualified immunity and police reform. The trio talk about the proposal to reform qualified immunity and debate whether that will do much. They then break down other new legal innovations in the various proposals and ask: is it enough to create new grounds for people to sue? Or are other reforms more important? Listen now!

6/16/20  //  Commentary

Following the Supreme Court's decision in Bostock, it's worth asking: Why has the law been so successful at improving the lives of gay people but much less successful at improving the lives of people of color?

8/19/19  //  Commentary

Today, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) published a proposed rule that would substantially limit enforcement of the 1968 Fair Housing Act. This rule is deeply flawed.

6/27/19  //  Quick Reactions

The Court’s decision in Rucho will have profound and disastrous implications for the 2020 redistricting cycle and beyond. But it may also foreshadow the endgame for Section 2

6/5/19  //  Quick Reactions

Recent revelations in the census case at the Supreme Court are also relevant to another case at the Court--partisan gerrymandering.

12/24/17  //  Daily Update

President Trump's Muslim ban echoes Japanese internment in the U.S. during World War II, and the Supreme Court should not make the same mistake today. The Education Department is proposing to delay by two years an Obama-era rule that would push states to ensure that students of color are not over-represented in special education and put in programs because of racial bias.

12/4/17  //  Daily Update

President Trump shared videos from a fringe British ultranationalist party purportedly showing Muslims committing acts of violence. The tax bill poses a serious threat to diversity in academia.

11/26/17  //  Daily Update

DOJ announced plans to investigate Harvard's admissions policies. Attorney General Sessions indicated that DOJ will no longer offer binding administrative guidance to any groups or entities aside from executive agencies.

10/21/17  //  Daily Update

A lawsuit filed against the organizers of the Charlottesville rally is a serious suit and deserves to be covered as such. The FBI may be scrutinizing activities of black activists.

10/8/17  //  Daily Update

The NAACP is preparing to sue the Commerce Department over preparations for the 2020 census.

9/24/17  //  Daily Update

The Trump administration continues to push for increased voter restrictions that restrict minorities' ability to vote. The argument that Congress has to “unambiguously” state funding conditions in the text of statutes could threaten protections imposed by regulation under Titles VI and IX.

8/24/17  //  In-Depth Analysis

DOJ’s investigation into Harvard’s affirmative action program is bigger than it looks (and it already looked big).

6/26/18  //  Commentary

The real problem is the Trump Administration itself. What feels like damage today is largely the echo of damage that already happened, rather than something new.

3/22/17  //  In-Depth Analysis

In the landmark Texas Voter ID case, DOJ has begun its official retreat from the protection of minority voting rights. This is the wrong decision and an ominous sign for the future.

5/8/18  //  Uncategorized

Michigan legislators want to exempt rural residents from Medicaid work requirements, but not extend the same accommodation to people who live in cities. The racial disparities are obvious—and unlawful.

1/16/18  //  Commentary

In increasingly vile and shocking ways, Trump has proven himself an unreformed racist on the model of the authors of Massive Resistance.

7/10/17  //  Commentary

In a challenge to Texas's strict voter ID law, DOJ has just turned its back on minority voters and victims of discrimination in Texas.

8/24/17  //  Commentary

Here I explore the interests asserted by GoDaddy and Google in denying service to neo-Nazis and their ilk. I then consider implications of my analysis for the pending Supreme Court case of Masterpiece Cake Shop v. Colorado Civil Rights Comm'n.

7/6/18  //  In-Depth Analysis

Ironically but thankfully, the result of Justice Alito's deeply mistaken analysis in Abbott v. Perez is an opinion that makes less bad law than it might have.

5/2/17  //  Commentary

100 days in and 25 years after the unrest in Los Angeles, the Trump Administration is failing communities entitled to fair and just policing.

4/11/17  //  Quick Reactions

The video of the United flight reveals more than just what happened. It also shows why DOJ oversight is so important.

7/31/17  //  Commentary

By Saul Cornell: The opinion striking down D.C.'s gun law under the Second Amendment relies heavily on a selective culling of historical evidence—and a shocking ignorance of the most important facts about Anglo-American criminal law and its history.

5/30/17  //  In-Depth Analysis

The president’s proposed budget reveals an intent to roll back protections for the most vulnerable members of society.

5/7/17  //  Commentary

In its Muslim Ban brief, DOJ favorably cites Palmer v. Thompson (1971)—which allowed Jackson, Mississippi to close public pools rather than integrate them. The Fourth Circuit should question DOJ about this stunning citation and make clear that Palmer, an odious ruling, has no place in anti-discrimination law today.

5/12/17  //  Commentary

President Donald Trump is known for changing his political views after a ten-minute history lesson. In this continuing feature, I encourage the president to take a few minutes to learn about the historical background of things he says. This first edition, on his signing statement regarding HBCUs, concerns one of his favorite historical topics: A nineteenth-century general who saw the Civil War coming, was angry, and did something about it.

12/4/17  //  Commentary

Trump isn’t just reckless, and he doesn’t just seem to think he is above the law. He has an authoritarian’s hostility to the very idea of a principled inquiry into the truth.

7/27/17  //  Commentary

The case against felon disenfranchisement is overwhelming as a matter of public policy. This matters for the constitutional analysis.

2/14/19  //  Commentary

Key takeaways from the briefs in the ongoing litigation to "bail-in" Texas under Section 3(c) of the Voting Rights Act

3/30/17  //  Commentary

The Trump Administration's recent reversal on the Dakota Access Pipeline can (and must) be carefully examined in court.

1/25/19  //  In-Depth Analysis

On this week's episode of Versus Trump, Jason asks Charlie to take us through the mammothly long, massively important opinion from the Southern District of New York invalidating the proposed citizenship question on the 2020 Census. Listen now!

6/20/18  //  In-Depth Analysis

By Carolyn Shapiro & Joanna Martin: Separating parents from their children without regard for the children’s rights and interests is unconstitutional

4/24/18  //  Commentary

Both the travel ban case and the Texas redistricting litigation raise questions about the staying power of discriminatory intent.

2/8/19  //  In-Depth Analysis

Career attorneys at DOJ rightly refused to sign a deeply flawed brief arguing that Texas should be let off the hook for its repeated intentional efforts to minimize the voting power of its minority population

6/12/18  //  Commentary

Will SCOTUS minimize its view of religious animus as applied to Muslims, despite having just magnified it as applied to conservative Christians?

5/10/18  //  Commentary

The Supreme Court has held that there's no private right of action to enforce Title VI. But the civil rights laws can still form the basis of a challenge to a waiver allowing states to impose work requirements.

5/13/19  //  In-Depth Analysis

The story of reproductive justice extends far beyond courts and involves all the conditions in which individuals make decisions about having and not having children

5/17/19  //  In-Depth Analysis

President Trump's rhetoric draw upon a familiar narrative that pathologizes immigration and immigrant reproduction as a threat while protecting and supporting the nation’s “good” mothers, families, and neighborhood

8/29/17  //  Commentary

Like so much of what Trump has done, the Arpaio pardon raises multiple challenges to our constitutional system.

12/7/17  //  Commentary

Robust protection of speech does not require gutting laws that help ensure that all persons—regardless of race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation—can buy the good and services they desire, free from discrimination.

5/17/19  //  In-Depth Analysis

Race and class are intricately entwined with laws like the Hyde Amendment, and no advocacy on the issue can ignore this fact

8/25/17  //  In-Depth Analysis

Why State Anti-Removal Laws are Oppressive and Unconstitutional

8/17/17  //  Commentary

We honor Washington and Jefferson despite the fact that they owned slaves, whereas memorials to the likes of Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and Stonewall Jackson honor them because they fought for a secessionist movement that had the preservation of slavery as its organizing principle.

4/19/17  //  In-Depth Analysis

The Trump Administration may already have the tools it would need to predict with high accuracy the religious identity of a significant percentage of U.S. citizens and visiting Muslims. And software engineers, not lawyers, may be our first line of alarm and defense.

5/9/17  //  Commentary

In a new op-ed, Erwin Chemerinsky and I argue that the entry ban is unconstitutional because it was driven by animus toward Muslims.

7/20/17  //  Commentary

On this week’s episode of Versus Trump, we discuss the litigation against the newly-created Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, that has Kansas Secretary of State—and repeat defendant in voting rights litigation—Kris Kobach as its now-infamous Vice Chair. Listen now!

5/11/17  //  Quick Reactions

By Jed Shugerman. Trump is using the Comey firestorm as a smoke screen for a potentially more dangerous move: appointing Kris Kobach vice chair of a new “election integrity” commission, with Mike Pence as chair. Kobach will make it a voter-suppression/vote rigging commission, fomenting anti-immigrant and racist fears.

4/11/17  //  Quick Reactions

Cutting-edge analysis by Gerry Hebert and Danielle Lang of yesterday's ruling that the controversial Texas Voter ID law was enacted with racially discriminatory intent.

10/11/17  //  In-Depth Analysis

By Mark Joseph Stern: From the NFL to Puerto Rico to the impending ban on transgender troops, Trump uses his “free speech rights” to bully minority communities into silence.

10/31/18  //  Commentary

In rigidly classifying people based on theories of biological determinism, we ignore history at our own peril

4/4/17  //  Quick Reactions

AG Sessions’s eleventh-hour effort to avoid a consent decree in Baltimore is indefensible and unmistakably political. The court should not allow it.

4/5/18  //  Commentary

On a new episode of Versus Trump, Jason and Easha discuss lawsuits challenging the Trump Administration's decision to ask a question about citizenship on the 2020 census. Listen now!

4/3/17  //  Commentary

Vice President Mike Pence’s policy of not dining with women is unconstitutional. It also suggests how far this administration will go to cut back on anti-discrimination law.

10/4/17  //  In-Depth Analysis

Anti-Muslim animus on the face of the second travel ban requires clear proof that the third one is free of such bigotry.

10/15/18  //  Commentary

Although Shelby County had a dramatic and immediate real-world impact, its future doctrinal importance is likely minimal.

11/16/17  //  Commentary

On this week’s episode of Versus Trump, Jason and Charlie discuss a new lawsuit that forces courts to answer the question of whether the federal government needs a warrant to search people's electronic devices at the U.S. border, and they also respond to a discussion on the Supreme Court podcast First Mondays regarding the government's recent filing in the Hargan v. Garza abortion case. Listen now!

8/23/18  //  Commentary

On this week's episode of Versus Trump, Jason and Charlie talk about an unusual and surprising case where the Trump Administration has filed a brief in support of fair housing advocates who have sued Facebook for its part in enabling discriminatory advertising. Listen now!

7/10/17  //  Commentary

As disenfranchisement and voter suppression efforts are on the rise, one partial response is reenfranchisement.

4/7/17  //  Commentary

A letter about how to fix DOJ’s Civil Rights Division simultaneously maintains that we live in a “post-racial world” and urges the Division to take measures that will disenfranchise people of color.

1/15/18  //  Commentary

Racial bias and white privilege both contribute to racism. To our country’s great detriment, Trump has displayed both of them.

12/6/17  //  In-Depth Analysis

If the baker loses in Masterpiece, could the government compel an African American sculptor to sculpt a cross for a Klan service? No, it could not.

4/21/17  //  Commentary

A letter about how to fix DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has some interesting parallels to a recent voting rights dissent.

4/17/18  //  In-Depth Analysis

The government can't act based on animus toward particular religions. But that's exactly what Trump did.

8/17/17  //  Commentary

On this week’s episode of Versus Trump, we have an interview about voting laws and litigation with former Hillary for America General Counsel and current voting rights superlawyer Marc Elias. Listen now!

12/8/17  //  Commentary

By Vicki Jackson & Judith Resnik: Upholding the third travel ban out of deference to the President on matters of foreign affairs would be a tragic mistake.

4/11/17  //  Commentary

Even in these strange and trying times, we would like to think that our Attorney General will follow the law while staffing the division of DOJ charged with realizing the Constitution’s promise of a democracy that’s worth a damn—one open to all citizens, regardless of the color of their skin.

8/30/17  //  Commentary

Insights from a recent lawsuit about Arizona’s decision to force the Tucson Unified School District to eliminate its successful Mexican American Studies program

10/11/18  //  In-Depth Analysis

On this week's episode of Versus Trump, Jason and Charlie talk about the fight over Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross's potential testimony in an important lawsuit over the census. Listen now!

11/14/17  //  In-Depth Analysis

Tom Berg and Douglas Laycock defend a novel theory that could eviscerate civil rights laws

4/12/17  //  Commentary

On the first full day of Passover, the Trump Administration offered several lessons about institutionalized racism and ethnic cleansing.

4/13/17  //  Commentary

Given the nativist overtones of his campaign and his administration’s signature policies — from the Muslim ban to an immigration crackdown that equates being a foreign-born minority with criminality — Trump has exploded the fiction that we live in a post-racial society.

8/28/17  //  Commentary

DOJ's troubling shift on voting rights rightly failed to save a discriminatory Texas law

3/16/17  //  Commentary

The president has continued existing policies, but also signaled a misplaced (and dangerous) reliance on immigration enforcement and incarceration to protect the public.

5/9/18  //  Uncategorized

Low-income residents in Michigan’s cities are significantly less able to travel for work than people in rural communities. But Michigan legislators wants to exempt only the latter from their new work requirements. That's both immoral and illegal.

4/25/18  //  Commentary

Korematsu holds that in a case like this one the obligation to strictly scrutinize invidiously discriminatory policies remains even when the government asserts a facially plausible national security justification.

5/25/17  //  Commentary

Mitch Landrieu’s speech defending the removal of Confederate war monuments in the heart of New Orleans is an eloquent reminder that the Constitution forbids acts that subordinate or denigrate, whether in the context of religion, LGBT rights, or racial equality.

4/30/17  //  Daily Update

President Trump's proposed budget would significantly hurt people of color.

8/24/17  //  Daily Update

Commentary on President Trump's response to white supremacist violence in Charlottesville continued.

7/16/17  //  Daily Update

The Legal Defense Fund filed a FOIA request seeking information on the Department of Education's policing of race- and disability-based discipline disparities in school.

4/16/17  //  Daily Update

On Monday, a federal judge in Texas found discriminatory purpose behind the Texas Voter ID law. On Take Care, Joshua Matz and Leah Litman argued that the Trump Administration's plans for the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division raise grave concerns. Nikolas Bowie explained that the internal review of the Civil Rights Division's consent decrees threatens its value as an unbiased source. Danielle Lang noted that courts are still rooting out racial discrimination behind state laws relating to districting and voter identification, despite a shift by the Department of Justice.

8/20/17  //  Daily Update

The violence in Charlottesville raises questions about the First Amendment and domestic terrorism. The President's responses drew sharp and widespread criticism from public officials and corporate leaders.

5/14/17  //  Daily Update

President Trump’s statements questioning the constitutionality of providing federal funding to historically black colleges and universities could seriously threaten these institutions.

4/9/17  //  Daily Update

Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered a nationwide review of consent decrees implemented to curb civil rights abuses. Chiraag Bains offered analysis of the Department of Justice's request to delay a hearing on a consent decree regarding the Baltimore police force.

8/6/17  //  Daily Update

The DOJ signaled its intention to initiate investigations targeting affirmative action programs.

6/4/17  //  Daily Update

Multiple race- and religion-related hate incidents this week highlight the sharp rise of hate in the Trump era.