Power of Congress To Enforce Civil Rights
- Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States, 379 U.S. 241 (1964) Interstate commerce, and hence the Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 (prohibiting discrimination against blacks) applies to places of public accommodation patronized by interstate travelers.
- Katzenbach v. McClung, 379 U.S. 294 (1964), 379 U.S. 802 (1964) The power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce (Article I, section 8) extends to a restaurant not patronized by interstate travelers, but which serves food that has moved in interstate commerce. This ruling makes the Civil Rights Act of 1964 apply to virtually all businesses.
- City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507 (1997). The enforcement clause of the 14th Amendment does not permit Congress to substantially increase the scope of the rights determined by the Judiciary. (here, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993), but can only enact legislation that remedies or prevents actual violations of existing Court-determined rights.
Read more about this topic: List Of Landmark Court Decisions In The United States, Individual Rights
Famous quotes containing the words civil rights, power of, power, congress, enforce, civil and/or rights:
“A man’s real and deep feelings are surely those which he acts upon when challenged, not those which, mellow-eyed and soft-voiced, he spouts in easy times.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 2, ch. 13 (1962)
“In night when colours all to black are cast,
Distinction lost, or gone down with the light;
The eye—a watch to inward senses placed,
Not seeing, yet still having power of sight—
Gives vain alarums to the inward sense”
—Fulke Greville (1554–1628)
“Quintilian [educational writer in Rome about A.D. 100] hoped that teachers would be sensitive to individual differences of temperament and ability. . . . Beating, he thought, was usually unnecessary. A teacher who had made the effort to understand his pupil’s individual needs and character could probably dispense with it: “I will content myself with saying that children are helpless and easily victimized, and that therefore no one should be given unlimited power over them.””
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“Our decision about energy will test the character of the American people and the ability of the President and the Congress to govern this nation. This difficult effort will be the “moral equivalent of war,” except that we will be uniting our efforts to build and not to destroy.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“The kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“Standards of conduct appropriate to civil society or the workings of a democracy cannot be purely and simply applied to the Church.”
—Joseph Ratzinger (b. 1927)
“In the course of the actual attainment of selfish ends—an attainment conditioned in this way by universality—there is formed a system of complete interdependence, wherein the livelihood, happiness, and legal status of one man is interwoven with the livelihood, happiness, and rights of all. On this system, individual happiness, etc. depend, and only in this connected system are they actualized and secured.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)