Chapter 6 Quiz — Civil Rights

Twelve multiple-choice questions and four short-answer questions. Answers and explanations follow each question. Cover the answers; check yourself; then read the explanations.

Q1. Which of the following is a "civil right" rather than a "civil liberty"?

(a) The right to free speech against government censorship (b) The right not to be subject to unreasonable searches (c) The right to be served at a hotel without regard to race (d) The right against compelled self-incrimination

Answer: (c). Civil rights protect against unequal treatment, including by certain private actors under federal statutes like Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. (a), (b), and (d) are all civil liberties — limits on what government can do.

Q2. The Three-Fifths Clause of Article I, Section 2 of the original Constitution did which of the following?

(a) Counted enslaved persons as three-fifths of a person for purposes of representation in the House and direct taxation (b) Limited the importation of enslaved persons to three-fifths of the prior year's volume (c) Required that three-fifths of southern senators approve any law affecting slavery (d) Established that enslaved persons could vote at three-fifths the rate of free persons

Answer: (a). The clause counted enslaved persons as three-fifths for both representation (which advantaged slave states by inflating their House and Electoral College representation) and direct taxation (which marginally disadvantaged them).

Q3. Justice Harlan's "Our Constitution is color-blind" line appears in his dissent in:

(a) Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) (b) The Civil Rights Cases (1883) (c) Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) (d) Korematsu v. United States (1944)

Answer: (c). Harlan dissented in Plessy, opposing the Court's "separate but equal" doctrine. He had also dissented in (b) The Civil Rights Cases, but the "color-blind Constitution" line is from Plessy.

Q4. Brown v. Board of Education (1954) held that:

(a) "Separate but equal" facilities, if genuinely equal, satisfy the Equal Protection Clause (b) Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal (c) School desegregation must occur within five years of the decision (d) Private schools may continue to segregate

Answer: (b). The Court held that "in the field of public education, the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place," explicitly rejecting the Plessy doctrine in the educational context. Brown did not specify a remedy or a timeline; that came in Brown II (1955) with "all deliberate speed."

Q5. Which of the following played the most decisive role in breaking the 60-day Senate filibuster of the 1964 Civil Rights Act?

(a) President Johnson's threats to withhold patronage from southern Democrats (b) Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield's procedural maneuvers (c) Senate Republican Leader Everett Dirksen's negotiation of cloture votes from his caucus (d) Public pressure from the recent assassination of John F. Kennedy

Answer: (c). Although all four contributed, the cloture vote of June 10, 1964, succeeded because Dirksen, an Illinois Republican, delivered 27 of 33 Senate Republicans for cloture. The pivotal arithmetic was Republican.

Q6. The "Smith amendment" to Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act:

(a) Added "sex" to the list of prohibited grounds for employment discrimination (b) Excluded religious organizations from Title VII (c) Limited Title VII to employers of 50 or more employees (d) Required preemption of state employment-discrimination laws

Answer: (a). Howard W. Smith of Virginia, a segregationist, offered the amendment on the House floor on February 8, 1964. It passed and became the foundation of women's employment law.

Q7. Modern Equal Protection doctrine applies which of the following levels of scrutiny to sex-based classifications?

(a) Rational basis (b) Intermediate scrutiny (c) Strict scrutiny (d) Per se invalidity

Answer: (b). Craig v. Boren (1976) established intermediate scrutiny for sex classifications: the classification must be substantially related to an important government interest. United States v. Virginia (1996) sharpened this standard with the "exceedingly persuasive justification" requirement.

Q8. Shelby County v. Holder (2013) held that:

(a) Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional (b) The coverage formula in Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act, which determined which jurisdictions were subject to preclearance, was unconstitutional based on outdated data (c) State-issued voter ID laws are categorically permissible (d) The Voting Rights Act applies only to federal elections

Answer: (b). The 5-4 majority held that Section 4(b)'s coverage formula was unconstitutional because it relied on data from the 1960s and 1970s. Section 5 (preclearance) was not formally struck down but became dormant without a valid coverage formula.

Q9. Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) held that:

(a) Title IX requires schools to admit transgender students to athletic teams matching their gender identity (b) The Equal Protection Clause prohibits state laws restricting medical care for transgender minors (c) Title VII's prohibition of "sex" discrimination in employment includes discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity (d) State public-accommodations laws cannot apply to expressive services

Answer: (c). Justice Gorsuch's textualist opinion held that firing an employee because of sexual orientation or gender identity necessarily involves consideration of the employee's sex, and so violates Title VII. The opinion was explicitly limited to Title VII employment context.

Q10. Mendez v. Westminster (1947) was a federal court of appeals decision involving:

(a) Native American tribal jurisdiction (b) Japanese-American incarceration (c) Mexican-American school segregation in California (d) Chinese-American immigration restrictions

Answer: (c). Mendez held that California's segregation of Mexican-American children into separate schools violated the Equal Protection Clause. It was decided seven years before Brown and was an important predecessor to it; Thurgood Marshall and Robert Carter wrote amicus briefs.

Q11. Korematsu v. United States (1944):

(a) Has been overruled (b) Was formally repudiated in the 2018 Trump v. Hawaii decision in dictum (c) Remains the controlling precedent on emergency executive power (d) Was the first application of strict scrutiny to a racial classification

Answer: (b). Korematsu was formally repudiated in dictum (commentary not necessary to the holding) by Chief Justice Roberts in Trump v. Hawaii (2018): "Korematsu was gravely wrong the day it was decided." It has not been formally overruled by direct precedent. (d) is partly correct — Korematsu did apply strict scrutiny, but it had been hinted at earlier.

Q12. Under current Equal Protection doctrine, classifications based on wealth or income receive:

(a) Strict scrutiny (b) Intermediate scrutiny (c) Rational basis review (d) Per se invalidity

Answer: (c). San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez (1973) held that wealth is not a "suspect classification" and that the Equal Protection Clause does not require equal school funding. Rational-basis review applies — a much more deferential standard than the scrutiny applied to race or sex.

Short Answer

SA1. In two or three sentences, explain how the Slaughter-House Cases (1873) shaped the development of civil-rights doctrine, even though the case itself was about a New Orleans slaughterhouse monopoly.

Sample answer: Slaughter-House gutted the Fourteenth Amendment's Privileges or Immunities Clause by reading it to protect only a narrow set of federal citizenship rights. This deprived later civil-rights litigants of what would have been the most natural textual home for their claims, forcing the development of doctrine through the more awkward Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses. Modern Equal Protection doctrine and "substantive due process" both do work that the Privileges or Immunities Clause was supposed to do.

SA2. Briefly state the strongest argument for race-conscious admissions in higher education and the strongest argument against. Two or three sentences each.

Sample answer: The strongest argument for is that race-blind admissions in unequal societies reproduce racial disparities; that the Reconstruction Amendments were enacted to enable race-conscious remediation, not to forbid it; and that diversity in elite institutions is essential to their legitimacy and educational mission. The strongest argument against is that the Constitution treats individuals, not groups; that racial classifications are constitutionally suspect under Brown and Justice Harlan's Plessy dissent; that race-neutral alternatives can produce diverse student bodies; and that race-conscious admissions impose costs (mismatch, stigma, resentment) that defenders underweight.

SA3. What was the political significance of the Senate cloture vote on June 10, 1964?

Sample answer: The cloture vote ended the longest filibuster in Senate history and was the first time the Senate had ever invoked cloture on a civil-rights bill. The arithmetic was decided by Senate Republicans, led by Everett Dirksen — 27 of 33 Republicans voted yes; only the southern Democratic bloc voted unanimously no. The vote signaled the break-up of the southern Democratic coalition that had blocked civil-rights legislation since Reconstruction, and presaged the long realignment of southern white voters into the Republican Party.

SA4. Why is Olmstead v. L.C. (1999) sometimes called the "Brown of disability rights"?

Sample answer: Because Olmstead held that the unjustified institutional segregation of persons with disabilities violates Title II of the ADA — drawing the parallel between racial segregation and the segregation of disabled persons in institutions. The decision's "integration mandate" required states to administer services in the most integrated setting appropriate, leading to the long deinstitutionalization of state psychiatric and developmental-disability facilities and a substantial reshaping of disability services in the United States.