Civic Literacy Exam: Judicial- Landmark supreme court cases

This case was the consolidation of cases arising in Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware, and Washington D.C. relating to the segregation of public schools on the basis of race. In each of the cases, African American students had been denied admittance to certain public schools based on laws allowing public education to be segregated by race. They argued that such segregation violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The plaintiffs were denied relief in the lower courts based on Plessy v. Ferguson, which held that racially segregated public facilities were legal so long as the facilities for blacks and whites were equal. (This was known as the separate but equal doctrine.) The Supreme Court agreed that segregation violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment since the facilities created for blacks and whites were inherently unequal. It overturned the precedent set by Plessy and ordered that schools nationwide begin the process of desegregating.

Citizens United, an organization, sought an injunction against the Federal Election Commission in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia to prevent the application of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) to its film Hillary: The Movie. The Movie expressed opinions about whether Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton would make a good president. In an attempt to regulate "big money" campaign contributions, the BCRA applies a variety of restrictions to "electioneering communications." Section 203 of the BCRA prevents corporations or labor unions from funding such communication from their general treasuries. Sections 201 and 311 require the disclosure of donors to such communication and a disclaimer when the communication is not authorized by the candidate it intends to support. Citizens United argued that: 1) Section 203 violates the First Amendment on its face and when applied to the Movieand its related advertisements, and that 2) Sections 201 and 203 are also unconstitutional as applied to the circumstances. The Supreme Court effectively sided with Citizens United. In a 5-4 decision, the Court stated that independent corporate expenditures in support of a particular candidate, but not funded directly by the candidate's campaign, were protected as free speech under the First Amendment. The Court upheld some restrictions, such as those for direct contributions to candidates by corporations, and disclosure requirements.