AP GOVT – Civil Liberties Cases – Flashcards

bigamy and polygamy are unconsitutional

people can attend non-public schools (Catholic, Christian, Jewish, etc.)

busing is permitted to religious schools; has a secular purpose which is transportation; passes Lemon test; wall of separation between church and state

students can leave a non-essential class during the school day to attend religious instruction

unconstitutional for state officials to write an official school prayer and encourage its recitation in public schools

no required bible reading in school and no recitation of a school prayer

conscientious objection was upheld; it does have to be tied to a specific religion

law/action must have a secular purpose; law/action cannot advance or prohibit religion; law/action cannot create "excessive entanglement"

cannot post the 10 Commandments in a public school classroom

if you teach "Creation" in a public school, you must also teach "Evolution"; must be presented as beliefs, not facts; if you teach "Evolution," you don't have to teach "Creation"

you can have chaplains funded by government money; chaplain - a member of the clergy attached to a private chapel, institution, ship, branch of the armed forces, etc.

if you have a religious display out in front of a government building, then you must have non-religion items out ; items that represent other religions as well

you can have moments of silence, but you cannot suggest that prayer be done during that time

see Lynch v. Donnelly

ruled that using peyote in religious rituals does not entitle you to keep your job or unemployment benefits on "free exercise" clause grounds

Public school officials can not invite clergy to recite prayers at graduation

James Zobrest was deaf since birth and his parents requested that the local school board continue to provide their son with a sign-language interpreter. They denied the request on constitutional grounds.

Supreme Court prohibited school policy permitting student led prayer at high school football games; 6 votes for Doe and 3 against

Upheld a state providing families with vouchers that could be used to pay for tuition at religious schools; 5 votes for Zelman and 4 against

If the speech could lead to "clear and present danger", they could be shut down. Clear and present danger test established. The character of every act depends on the circumstances.

Some forms of expression, such as obscenity and fighting words (instigate a crowd), are not protected in the constitution; first amendment does not protect against "fighting words"; can't instigate a riot

The Smith Act upheld. It was allowed to stop Communist speech advocating overthrow of the government.

Set up rules to prove libel or slander case. The First Amendment protects the publication of all statements, along with false ones, about conduct of public officials except when statements are made with actual malice (with knowledge that they are false or in disregard of their truth or falsity).

cannot burn draft cards

Court held that students do not lose their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech when they step onto school property. In order to justify the suppression of speech, school officials must prove that the conduct in question would "materially and substantially interfere" with the operation of the school. The armbands were considered a representation of pure speech. Speech can only be shut down if it is disruptive; principle of symbolic speech*

Court held that the First Amendment did not protect obscene materials. The Court modified the test for obscenity established in Roth v. United States and Memoirs v. Massachusetts, holding that "[t]he basic guidelines for the trier of fact must be: (a) whether 'the average person, applying contemporary community standards' would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest. . . (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value."

The Court held that schools were not required under the First Amendment to affirmatively promote particular types of student speech. Schools must be able to set high standards for student speech that was distributed on the campus, and that schools retained the right to refuse to sponsor speech that was "inconsistent with 'the shared values of a civilized social order.'"

The Court held that Johnson's burning of a flag was a protected expression under the First Amendment. The Court found that Johnson's actions fell into the category of expressive conduct and had a distinctively political nature. The fact that an audience takes offense to certain ideas or expression, the Court found, does not justify prohibitions of speech. The Court also held that state officials did not have the authority to designate symbols to be used to communicate only limited sets of messages, noting that "[i]f there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the Government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable."

The Court held that the Communications Decency Act violated the First Amendment because its regulations amounted to a content-based blanket restriction of free speech. The Act failed to clearly define "indecent" communications, limit its restrictions to particular times or individuals, provide supportive statements from an authority on the unique nature of internet communications, or conclusively demonstrate that the transmission of "offensive" material is devoid of any social value.

The Court held that the Colorado statute's restrictions on speech-related conduct are constitutional. The Court concluded that the statute "is not a regulation of speech. Rather, it is a regulation of the places where some speech may occur."

The Court held that, because public libraries' use of Internet filtering software does not violate their patrons' First Amendment rights, Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) does not induce libraries to violate the Constitution and is a valid exercise of Congress's spending power.

The Court held that the provision in the Virginia statute treating any cross burning as prima facie evidence of intent to intimidate renders the statute unconstitutional in its current form.

The Court held that the First Amendment shields those who stage a protest at the funeral of a military service member from liability.

Dollree Mapp was convicted of possessing obscene materials after an illegal police search of her home. This case addressed whether evidence obtained through a search that was in violation of the Fourth Amendment (which prevents unreasonable searches and seizures and requires any warrant to be judicially sanctioned and supported by probable cause) could be admitted in a state criminal proceeding. The decision was 6 votes for Mapp, 3 votes against. The Court declared that "all evidence obtained by searches and seizures in violation of the Constitution is ... inadmissible in a state court."

Clarence Earl Gideon was charged in Florida state court with a felony. When he appeared in court without a lawyer, Gideon requested that the court appoint one for him. According to Florida state law, however, an attorney may only be appointed to a poor defendant in capital cases, so the trial court did not appoint one. Gideon represented himself in trial, and was found guilty and sentenced to five years in prison. He then filed a habeas corpus petition (a writ requiring a person to be brought before a judge or court for investigation of a restraint of the person's liberty, used as a protection against illegal imprisonment) and argued that the trial court's decision violated his constitutional right to be represented, but he was denied habeas corpus relief, which would have secured his release. This case addressed whether the Sixth Amendment's right to counsel in criminal cases extended to felony defendants in state courts. The court voted unanimously in Gideon's favor, and held that the framers of the Constitution placed a high value on the right of the accused to have the means to put up a proper defense, and the state as well as federal courts must respect that right. The Court held that it was consistent with the Constitution to require state courts to appoint attorneys for defendants who could not afford to retain counsel on their own.

Ernesto Miranda was charged with rape, kidnapping, and robbery, and was not informed of his rights prior to the police interrogation. He had no counsel present and confessed to committing the crimes during interrogation. At trial, the prosecution's case consisted solely of his confession and he was convicted of rape and kidnapping and sentenced 20-30 years in prison. Miranda appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, claiming that the police had unconstitutionally obtained his confession. This case addressed whether the police practice of interrogating individuals without notifiying them of their right to counsel and their protection against self-incrimination violated the Fifth Amendment. The decision was 5 votes for Miranda, 4 against. The Court held that prosecutors could not use statements stemming from custodial interrogation of defendants unless they demonstrated the use of procedural safeguards " to secure the privilege against self- incrimination."

The exclusionary rule requires that evidence illegally seized must be excluded from criminal trials. Alberto Leon was indicted for violating federal drug laws, however, a judge decided that the evidence for the search warrant of Leon's home was insufficient in the frist place, and that the evidence obtained under the warrant could not be introduced at Leon's trial. This case asked whether there was a "good faith" exception to the exclusionary rule, and the decision was 6 votes for United States, and 3 votes against. The justices held that evidence seized on the basis of a mistakenly issued search warrant could be introduced at trial. The exclusionary rule, argued the majority, is not a right but a remedy justified by its ability to deter illegal police conduct.

universities affirmative action policy must meet a "strict scrutiny" test

Classifications by gender must serve important governmental objectives and must be substantially related to achievement of those objectives

Congress's decision to exempt women from registration "was not the 'accidental by-product of a traditional way of thinking about females'" and did not violate the Due Process Clause

male-only admissions policy was unconstitutional. Because it failed to show "exceedingly persuasive justification" for VMI's gender-biased admissions policy, Virginia violated the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause

no constitutional protection for acts of sodomy, and that states could outlaw those practices

In a five to four decision, the Supreme Court ruled that opposition to homosexuality is part of BSA's "expressive message" and that allowing homosexuals as adult leaders would interfere with that message. It reversed a decision of the New Jersey Supreme Court that had determined that New Jersey's public accommodations law required the BSA to readmit assistant Scoutmaster James Dale, who had made his homosexuality public and whom the BSA had expelled from the organization.

Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 is a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court. In the 6-3 ruling the Court struck down the sodomy law in Texas and, by extension, invalidated sodomy laws in 13 other states, making same-sex sexual activity legal in every U.S. state and territory. The Court overturned its previous ruling on the same issue in the 1986 case Bowers v. Hardwick, where it upheld a challenged Georgia statute and did not find a constitutional protection of sexual privacy.

Hollingsworth (Brown) v. Perry refers to a series of United States federal court cases that legalized gay marriage in the State of California. The case began in 2009 under the name Perry v. Schwarzenegger in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, where Judge Walker ruled that banning gay marriage bans gay people's right to equal protection under the law. This decision overturned the ballot initiative Proposition 8, which had banned gay marriage. After two governors of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown, refused to defend Proposition 8, gay marriage opponents appealed to the Supreme Court. It reached the United States Supreme Court as Hollingsworth v. Perry, who held that in line with prior precedent, the official sponsors of a ballot initiative measure did not have Article III standing to appeal an adverse federal court ruling when the state refused to do so.

Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, is a landmark case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the Constitution protected a right to privacy. The case involved a Connecticut statute that prohibits any person from using "any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception." By a vote of 7-2, the Supreme Court invalidated the law on the grounds that it violated the "right to marital privacy".

Decision: 7 votes for Roe, 2 vote(s) against. The Court held that a woman's right to an abortion fell within the right to privacy (recognized in Griswold v. Connecticut) protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. The decision gave a woman total autonomy over the pregnancy during the first trimester and defined different levels of state interest for the second and third trimesters. As a result, the laws of 46 states were affected by the Court's ruling.

new standard to determine the validity of laws restricting abortions. The new standard asks whether a state abortion regulation has the purpose or effect of imposing a "substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion before the fetus attains viability."

Congress's ban on partial-birth abortion was not unconstitutionally vague and did not impose an undue burden on the right to an abortion

All justices agreed to uphold the law allowing police to investigate someone if there is reasonable suspicion. However, they may not detain the them for a prolonged amount of time for not carrying immigration documents

The individual mandate is constitutional and the Medicaid expansion violates the Constitution.