Equal opportunity

Equal opportunity is not discriminating against people based on their race, religion, age, disability, or other conditions. Many governments protect individuals from being discriminated against, while others do not, or limit protections. Some bodies and individuals argue that protections are adequate, while others say more protections should be clearly stated to remove ambiguity in the laws.

In the past, many court cases were dismissed based on an individual’s citizenship status. For example, formerly enslaved people born in the United States were once not regarded as citizens. In the United States, the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution contains an Equal Protection clause, which states that all citizens are guaranteed equal protection under US laws. However, many Indigenous Americans born on Tribal properties were not granted citizenship with these amendments. Their rights were not guaranteed until Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.

Background

Legislation regarding equal opportunity in the United States dates to the nineteenth century. A number of court cases decided against individuals in matters of fairness because of citizenship. Prior to the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment in July 1868, African Americans born on US soil were not entitled to citizenship. This included free African Americans.

Citizenship entitles individuals to rights, including the right of residence. This right means that people may live where they choose and may not be removed from that place. Some abolitionists who opposed slavery fought to eliminate the practice in the United States because they wanted to remove African Americans from the country by colonizing or relocating them to Africa, the Caribbean, or Canada. This pressure on African Americans to leave was described as self-deportation, banishment, or exile. African Americans were subject to so-called Black laws that limited their options, such as where they could work or travel, and were enacted to pressure them to go elsewhere. In 1832, Maryland legislator Octavius Taney proposed a statute to remove free African Americans from Maryland and the country, in large part because he believed they were not citizens and had no protection from removal. African Americans feared such laws could remove them, as laws at that time were removing Native Americans.

Many African Americans anxiously watched the 1857 Supreme Court case Dred Scott v. Sandford. US Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney, brother of Octavius Taney, found that the US Constitution included no protections for free African Americans. He left the power to regulate African Americans in states’ hands, which enabled states to pass more Black laws and encourage the push for removal. African American activists refused to accept this decision, however. They continued to argue that they were citizens by birth and entitled to all rights afforded to citizens.

President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, during the American Civil War (1861–1865). Following the war, the nation passed a number of Constitutional amendments abolishing slavery and granting citizenship and voting rights to Black men. The Fourteenth Amendment of 1868 guaranteed citizenship rights to those born on US soil. In 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment stated that the right to vote could not be denied based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude. If the states did not ensure these freedoms, the federal government was empowered to do so. This did not stop states from passing laws that disenfranchised voters, such as poll taxes, or voter registration fees, that many African Americans could not afford.

While African Americans’ rights were protected, at least in theory, Native Americans continued to be shut out. When they were removed from land in various states, they were declared separate Nations on reservation land within the United States. They only became citizens in 1924 with the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act. Even so, many were barred from exercising the right to vote by state laws until 1957.

Through much of the twentieth century, racial and religious minorities, women, and immigrants continued to struggle for equal opportunity. Following World War II (1939–1945), minorities returned home from military service and fought the segregation and discriminatory laws in the United States. They organized sit-ins, boycotts, Freedom Rides, and other nonviolent demonstrations. Finally, in 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act. It includes Title VII, which outlawed discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. This federal law overrode all state laws, including the so-called Jim Crow laws that enforced segregation in the South.

Another front in the fight for equal opportunity was the decades-long fight for women's suffrage. Women in many countries gained the right to vote before American women succeeded. The Nineteenth Amendment, ratified in 1920, guaranteed all American women the right to vote.

Overview

Equal opportunity in modern times frequently involves questions of how the laws are applied and to whom they apply. In many states, workplace discrimination against LGBTQIA+ employees remained legal well into the twenty-first century. A number of court cases challenged this by arguing that this constitutes discrimination based on sex. Critics argued that sex refers only to gender, and not sexual orientation, and was meant to provide protections for women. The fight to interpret the law and apply it passed through courts in multiple states and on to the federal level.

In 2019, the US Supreme Court was considering whether civil rights laws bar employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and transgender status. Several lawsuits involved gay men who claimed they were fired because of their sexual orientation. Another was filed by a transgender woman who was fired when she told her employer she was going to adhere to her gender identity at work. About half of the US states, territories, and the District of Columbia had legislation prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity by the mid-2020s. In those states without protections, some cities and townships enacted statutes to protect members of the LGBTQIA+ community from workplace discrimination. In 2020, two landmark cases, Bostock v. Clayton County and R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, found that employers who discriminate against employees based on their sexual identity or gender can be held legally liable for violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Bibliography

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