Equal Protection and Samoan Credit Law In American Samoa, a person of Samoan descent and a person of other descent are treated differently under bankruptcy law. Per A.S.C.A. § 43.1528(a): No real property of a Samoan may be subject to sale under a writ of a court to satisfy any judgment other than a judgment foreclosing a valid mortgage. “Samoan” includes American Samoans of at least one-half Samoan blood and persons born on other islands in the Pacific Ocean who are of at least one-half Polynesian, Melanesian or Micronesian blood and who reside in American Samoa. It was my understanding that the 14th amendment provided equal protection of the law, and that laws with an explicit race test have been deemed unconstitutional. What exception allows this law to be considered constitutional?
This is a law of American Samoa. American Samoa is not a state of the US. American Samoans are not automatic citizens under the 14th Amendment. The 14th Amendment says &quot;No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws&quot;.
18 U.S. Code § 611 is the relevant law. (a) It shall be unlawful for any alien to vote in any election held solely or in part for the purpose of electing a candidate for the office of President, Vice President, Presidential elector, Member of the Senate, Member of the House of Representatives, Delegate from the District of Columbia, or Resident Commissioner, unless— (1) the election is held partly for some other purpose; (2) aliens are authorized to vote for such other purpose under a State constitution or statute or a local ordinance; and (3) voting for such other purpose is conducted independently of voting for a candidate for such Federal offices, in such a manner that an alien has the opportunity to vote for such other purpose, but not an opportunity to vote for a candidate for any one or more of such Federal offices. This is not the most straightforward of law on the books. It says &quot;you can't vote unless...&quot; three things. It has to be locally legal to vote for something other than a federal office, the election has to include something other than voting for federal office, and it cannot be possible to vote for a federal office at the same time. Given that, it is impossible for any alien (even documented) to vote for president. Extant alien-voting laws are no higher than municipality, most being in Maryland. Violation of the law is a crime. Because non-citizens are not allowed to vote in state-wide elections, the theory is that they literally cannot vote, so they will not receive a ballot, which comes from the state. Here are the election laws for Maryland. There isn't a provision for &quot;disqualifying&quot; a vote, instead a person is prevented from voting in the first place if they are successfully challenged, because they can't prove who they are or the person they claim to be is not registered to vote (a non-citizen will never be registered with the state to vote, assuming no fraudulent documentation). Takoma Park non-citizen residents can vote in city elections and they register with the local gov't, not the state.
Every court in the United States from municipal traffic court to a state court to a U.S. District Court has both the right and the obligation to consider claims of unconstitutionality just like any other legal question that a case presents. Contrary to popular misconception, constitutional law issues are not the exclusive province of the U.S. Supreme Court. Indeed, constitutional issues are only ruled upon in the first instance in the U.S. Supreme Court (or even in a direct appeal from a trial court to the U.S. Supreme Court) in rare and isolated cases. Usually, at least one trial court judge and at least three appellate court judges, and often more appellate court judges, have ruled upon a constitutional issue before the U.S. Supreme Court considers it. This is just as true in Louisiana and Puerto Rico, which have legal systems based upon the civil law legal system, as it is in other U.S. jurisdictions, which have a common law legal system. There is usually only one difference between a case in which the constitutionality of a statute is called into question and one in which it is not. When the constitutionality of a statute is called into question, many state and federal rules of civil procedure require or permit the attorney general of the state whose statute's constitutionality (or the U.S. attorney general when a federal law's constitutionality is at issue) to be joined as a party for the purpose of litigating that issue. This allows the court to receive arguments on the constitutional issue from the public's perspective as well as the perspectives of the parties. A few states also provide that appeals from trial court decisions finding that a statute is unconstitutional are directly to the state supreme court, rather than to the intermediate court of appeals as they would usually be in those states. Notably, the distinct treatment of constitutional issues in many civil law systems is not inherently a part of the civil law system. Constitutional courts are mostly a post-World War II constitutional innovation in the countries where they are found. For example, the &quot;law-screen&quot; doctrine and the existence of a constitutional court in France, is much younger than core of the rest of the civil law system in France, which invented the civil law system in its modern form more than two hundred years ago. Neither France, at the time Louisiana adopted its civil law legal system through the time of the Louisiana Purchase, nor Spain at the time that Puerto Rico was ceded to the United States after the Spanish-American war, had constitutional courts. Footnote Regarding Treaties Also, it is worth remarking that in Europe and much of the rest of the world, the function of protecting individual rights against government authority in a way that is entrenched so that it is not easily overcome by domestic legislation of a current political regime is accomplished through international treaties, rather than only through entrenched rights in a constitution as they are in the United States. Although even then, in many European countries, ordinary courts apply only domestic law and the country in question has to adopt domestic law to conform to the treaties. This treaty mechanism is not very effective in the U.S., because in the U.S., unlike most countries, an ordinary domestic law can override an earlier adopted and ratified international treaty.
In Torcaso v. Watkins, 367 U.S. 488 (1961), the US Supreme Court ruled unanimously that a similar provision in Maryland's constitution violated the First Amendment and could not be enforced. So presumably the North Carolina provision is similarly unconstitutional and unenforceable. It's not clear why it wasn't removed in 1971. I found references to a 2009 incident in which an avowed atheist named Cecil Bothwell was elected to the Asheville, NC city council. Opponents apparently threatened to mount a legal challenge to his eligibility under the Article VI provision. It's not clear if they actually tried to do so, but in any event, Bothwell served his full four-year term and was then re-elected for another.
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, in effect since 1976 and currently signed by about 179 countries, has in Article 12 Paragraph 4: No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country. It's not absolute, as it would allow for a person to be deprived of that right if it weren't &quot;arbitrary&quot;. But it's the strongest statement I've found so far.
The classificational scheme "White; black or African American; American Indian and Alaska Native; Asian; and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander" was instituted on May 12, 1977 through Office of Management and Budget Directive 15, which articulates "standard classifications for record keeping, collection, and presentation of data on race and ethnicity in Federal program administrative reporting and statistical activities". In the case of Mostafa Hefny, his classification as white would be a consequence of being from North Africa (Egypt), and the fact that "white" is defined as "A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, North Africa, or the Middle East". A possible point of contention is that he is not from North Africa: the directive does not say where North Africa (as opposed to unmodified Africa) is. Discussion was published in the Federal Register, August 28, 1995, about these standards, and to make a really long story short, there's a problem, and no solution. The October 30, 1997 decision states the current law. This is what you should consult for the current situation: a propos the case of Nubians, the conflict still remains regarding the definition of "white" as "A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa", and "black" as "person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa" (Nubians fall into both categories: a black racial group of Northern Africa). In non-immigration cases, racial and ethnic data are based on self-reporting. There is no strict rule, but "self-identification is the preferred means of obtaining information about an individual's race and ethnicity" (not possible in some instances, such as birth and death records). The set of categories which the census makes available is somewhat changeable. They currently report that they comply with the 1997 standards, but this report indicates that they had intended to drop "some other race" for 2010, but did not because of a Congressional mandate. The government does not "recognize" individuals racially, instead they "report" them in a particular manner, so that counts can be made for whatever purposes (usually Civil Rights Act compliance). The rules apply to new and revised records, and not to existing records. One would have to look at the record of Hefny's suit, but it is likely that lack of standing and failure to state a legal claim figured prominently in the dismissal, if the case was dismissed.
The last part, about equal suffrage in the Senate, does not expire. The question is whether it can be itself amended out of existence. There has been no test of that possibility. This article argues that this may not be subject to amendment. There is only one way to find out for sure. The idea is that the original intent was that this is supposed to be an absolute clause, but of course that only speaks to original intention (and the original intention is not clear, as the article discusses).
What that church is doing is legal. There is a statutory exception in the Fair Housing Act for religious and non-profit organizations. 42 U.S. Code § 3607 - Religious organization or private club exemption Nothing in this subchapter shall prohibit a religious organization, association, or society, or any nonprofit institution or organization operated, supervised or controlled by or in conjunction with a religious organization, association, or society, from limiting the sale, rental or occupancy of dwellings which it owns or operates for other than a commercial purpose to persons of the same religion, or from giving preference to such persons, unless membership in such religion is restricted on account of race, color, or national origin. Nor shall anything in this subchapter prohibit a private club not in fact open to the public, which as an incident to its primary purpose or purposes provides lodgings which it owns or operates for other than a commercial purpose, from limiting the rental or occupancy of such lodgings to its members or from giving preference to its members.