Are there legal definitions of ethnicities/races? I recently came across several unrelated articles discussing Afro-American topics in the USA. The topics were various, but generally around positive/negative discrimination, oppression (real vs felt), etc. The exact details were not important - the point is that they were around "we" (say - African-Americans) versus "them (say - Asians). The ethnicity does not matter. I was wondering whether under US law (I am French and we do not have racial concepts which are legally relevant) there is a legal definition of "African American". Could I, a white person with mostly European nordic ancestry (blond hair, blue eyed) claim to be "African American"? And be held liable for that because of [the definition I am asking about]? Beside the academic aspect of the question, I was wondering how "ethnicity" is measured when there are possible tangible advantages (positive discrimination in universities comes to mind). The exact ethnicity does not matter (I took African American because of the articles I read but any will do - provided they are all equivalent, legally speaking), it is more about how legally any of them are separated from the others. Note: I initially used the word "race" in the title of my question, changing to "ethnicity" afterwards because I am interested in the legal, and not biological aspect. When reading Wikipedia, however, I noticed that they are sometimes used interchangeably, and sometimes one after the other ("... the largest ethnic and racial group ..."). I finally put both in case this is relevant
The Leading Current Definition The U.S. Census Bureau in the United States Department of Commerce defines race as follows, in definitions often used in other areas of the law and in research studies: What is race? The Census Bureau defines race as a person’s self-identification with one or more social groups. An individual can report as White, Black or African American, Asian, American Indian and Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, or some other race. Survey respondents may report multiple races. What is ethnicity? Ethnicity determines whether a person is of Hispanic origin or not. For this reason, ethnicity is broken out in two categories, Hispanic or Latino and Not Hispanic or Latino. Hispanics may report as any race. Thus, ultimately the question is how you sincerely self-identify, but guidance is provided regarding what is meant by each term, which is framed in terms of &quot;origins&quot; from various large geographic regions of the world. The Definitions Have Changed Over Time The definitions of race and ethnicity, and the terms used, by the U.S. Census, have changed somewhat with almost each new decennial census. Practical Reality In reality, our culture and society is such that most people have a self-identify that corresponds to the predominant place of their remote genetic ancestors, and very few people who have remote genetic ancestors who are predominantly only from one place will self-identify otherwise, because it is not what is socially expected. Edge Cases But, there are plenty of edge cases and ambiguous cases. For example, famous golfer Tiger Woods has deep genetic ancestry from Africa, Southeast Asia and Europe in large proportions. Empirical Reality One of the leading scholarly works that shows the empirical relationship between racial and ethnic self-identification and deep regional genetic ancestry is a 2014 article in the American Journal of Human Genetics that used data from the consumer genetic self-testing firm 23andMe. African Americans Historical &quot;one drop rule&quot; notwithstanding, empirically, in the United States, people who are at least 75% European in deep genetic ancestry, whose remaining ancestry is African, usually identifies as &quot;white&quot;. But, people whose remote genetic ancestors are, for example, 38% traceable to Africa and 62% traceable to Europe, tend to identify as black or African-American, even though they are mostly European in genetic ancestry. In theory, the vast majority of people who identify as African-American in the U.S. have, on average, about 75% deep genetic African ancestry with most of the rest of their ancestry being Northern European ancestry, and could legitimately in a formal reading of the &quot;origins&quot; idea, identify as of more than one race. But, few people actually identify as more than one race unless they have parents of different races or at least grandparents with different racial identities. The African American designation, like most of the formal categories, also includes a multitude of subgroups. Descendants of U.S. slaves make up most African-Americans in the United States, but the category also usually includes recent immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa and Afro-Caribbean immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa. The Intersection Of Race and Hispanic Origins Many ambiguous cases regarding race arise among people who identify as Hispanic, in part, because socially accepted and bureaucratic understandings in race are different in the U.S. than in Latin America. Most Hispanic identifying people in the U.S. would identify their race in Latin America as &quot;mestizo&quot;, which usually means people with both European ancestry and a large component of pre-Columbian indigenous Central and South American ancestry. But, that isn't an option on census bureau forms, so many Hispanic people mark &quot;Other&quot; as their race, while many mark &quot;white&quot;, some mark &quot;black&quot; (even in cases where they have little African ancestry), and a few mark Native American (even though this would be a logical choice for someone who self-identifies as &quot;mestizo&quot;). Hispanic people in the U.S. and people in Latin America identifying as &quot;white&quot; tend to have less European ancestry than people who are not Hispanic in the U.S. who identify as &quot;white.&quot; Hispanic people in the U.S. and people in Latin America identifying as &quot;black&quot; tend to have less African ancestry than people who are not Hispanic in the U.S. who identify as &quot;black.&quot; Due to this muddle, many statistical and research studies distinguish between non-Hispanic whites and non-Hispanic blacks while lumping all Hispanic identifying people in one category regardless of their self-identified racial identity. Native American People in the U.S. tend to identify as &quot;Native American&quot; without including other races at a fairly low percentage of deep genetic ancestry that is pre-Columbian indigenous American (many people who have 15% Native American ancestry, for example, would identify as exclusively Native American), and usually tend to do so only if their Native American ancestors are from North of the U.S.-Mexico border, even though indigenous Americas from the territory of the Continental U.S. and indigenous Americans from Latin America, are genetically very similar. Many recognized Indian Tribes in the United States have blood quantum rules for membership that require members to have a certain proportion of ancestors who were members of the tribe, which is a genealogical test, rather than a genetic one, because Indian Tribes, like countries, can make someone a member via naturalization or adoption in addition to by birth. But, one does not have to be affiliated with a specific Indian Tribe to be legitimately considered Native American under the law. And, a large share of people who do not physically appear to be Native American but claim a Native American ancestor many generations earlier as part of family lore, like Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren and like many African Americans in the U.S., actually do have a distant Native American ancestor. Asian-American Asian American is one of the most heterogeneous U.S. racial categories. People who have origins in India, Southeast Asia, East Asia and Central Asia, who look very different from each other physically and have very different cultures, are currently lumped in one presumptive group. Historically, the U.S. distinguished between &quot;Hindus&quot; (meaning &quot;South Asian&quot; rather than as a religious identifier), and East Asians such as people from China and Japan, although it no longer does so. This also illustrates the complication that while race is mostly a function of social and ethic background, genetic ancestry usually influences one's self-identification. For example, in the U.S., someone adopted into a white family as a baby from China (there are probably hundreds of thousands of such people, at least, in the United States) usually self-identifies as Asian-American, despite having zero linguistic and first hand cultural connection to anyplace in China or Asia. Why Self-Identification? The self-identification rule is the powerful blunt instrument by which the edge cases are resolved in a basically unreviewable manner. As a result, the U.S. is not plunged into the arcane debates of racial identity that prevailed in the 19th century in U.S. Courts. Blatant attempts to defy social convention by claiming a self-identification different from the one that would be ascribed socially to a person in what are not edge cases, are sometimes resolved on the grounds that the judge or jury, as the case may be, does not believe that the person's expression of self-identification in court is sincere based upon circumstantial evidence. An example of the issues that judges and scholars sought to avoid with the self-identification rule is famous case Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), in the U.S. which established that &quot;separate but equal&quot; satisfied the equality requirements of the 14th Amendment to the United States, started out as a test case, but turned in part into a racial classification case when it turns into a criminal prosecution, over whether the mixed race plaintiff in the case (who could &quot;pass&quot; as white and would probably identify as &quot;white&quot; in the U.S. today), was black or was white. Homer Plessy, a free man who was seven-eighths white and one-eighth of African descent, agreed to participate in a test case to challenge a Louisiana law known as the Separate Car Act. This law required that railroads provide separate cars and other accommodations for whites and African-Americans. The Comite des Citoyens (Committee of Citizens) was a group of New Orleans residents from a variety of ethnic backgrounds that sought to repeal this law. They asked Plessy, who was technically African-American under Louisiana law, to sit in a whites-only car. He bought a first-class ticket and boarded the whites-only car of the East Louisiana Railroad in a train for Covington. The railroad cooperated in the test case because it viewed the law as imposing unnecessary additional costs through the purchase of more railroad cars. It knew about the intention to challenge the law, and the Committee of Citizens also enlisted a private detective to detain Plessy on the train so that he could be charged under the Separate Car Act. When Plessy was told to vacate the whites-only car and sit in the African-American car, he refused and was arrested by the detective. The train was stopped so that he could be removed, and a trial proceeded. Plessy's lawyers argued that the Separate Car Act violated the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. Their theory failed, and the judge found that Louisiana could enforce this law insofar as it affected railroads within its boundaries. Plessy was convicted and fined. The self-identification rule has been popular with judges and scholars, in part, out of a desire to avoid returning to having courts decide those issues, which in light of contemporary American sensibilities seems unseemly. There is also a sense that accuracy in classification isn't an important feature of a definition of race, because for many purposes, such as the purposes of discrimination laws in the U.S., the beliefs and intent and motives of the person discriminating are what matter legally, not some absolute Platonic truth regarding the person's genetic makeup or culture.
The law on the web page is not current: as of the beginning of the year, RCW 23.86.030(1) reads (you'll find this under Sec. 9103) "The name of any association subject to this chapter must comply with part I, Article 3 of this act" and is otherwise unchanged. In Article 3, sec. 1301 governs names, giving the sec'y some discretion to deem a name to not be distinguishable from another, saying in (3) "A name may not be considered distinguishable on the records of the secretary of state from the name of another entity by virtue of...variation in the words, phrases, or abbreviations indicating the type of entity, such as "corporation," "corp.," "incorporated," "Inc.,". It does not list "co-op", but there is no legal requirement that the list be exhaustive. This discretion is, however, related to distinguishability. However, (4) then says An entity name may not contain language stating or implying that the entity is organized for a purpose other than those permitted by the entity's public organic record. and I think that means "no". Note that LLCs, LPs, LLPs, business corporations, nonprofit corporations and cooperative associations all have name requirements of the type "must contain" and "may not contain" (a cooperative association, oddly, has no "must contain" requirements). I would say that we have to conclude that "legislative intent" was to more closely align names and legal status, and the new "purpose-implication" language isn't brilliantly clear, but that is what the intent of the law is. This is one of those issues that could easily work its way to the Supreme Court, if someone wanted to make a state case of it.
No, each state is a "sovereign" and whenever a statute describes a crime it is always some act committed by a "person" and these two categories are mutually exclusive. See, for example, US Supreme Court in U.S. v. United Mine Workers of America, 330 U.S. 258, 67 SCt 677 (1947): "In common usage, the term `person' does not include the sovereign and statutes employing it will ordinarily not be construed to do so." Repeated by US Supreme Court in Wilson v. Omaha Indian Tribe 442 US 653, 667 (1979): "In common usage, the term 'person' does not include the sovereign, and statutes employing the word are ordinarily construed to exclude it."
What appears to be the controlling case is DC v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570. In Heller, the meaning of "Right of the People" is relevant, and the court finds that in three instances in The Constitution, these instances unambiguously refer to individual rights, not 'collective' rights, or rights that may be exercised only through participation in some corporate body" However, Art. 1 Sec 2 of The Constitution says that "the people" will select members of The House, and then there is the 10th: Heller says that Those provisions arguably refer to 'the people' acting collectively—but they deal with the exercise or reservation of powers, not rights In other words, "the people" can act collectively, but "the people" have individual rights. In the remaining cases of "the people", the expression "unambiguously refers to all members of the political community, not an unspecified subset". We are then directed to US v. Verdugo-Urquidez 494 U.S. 259, which is a warrantless search case involving a Mexican citizen and a search in Mexico, and the part that Heller finds relevant is that ‘[T]he people’ seems to have been a term of art employed in select parts of the Constitution… . [Its uses] sugges[t] that ‘the people’ protected by the Fourth Amendment, and by the First and Second Amendments, and to whom rights and powers are reserved in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, refers to a class of persons who are part of a national community or who have otherwise developed sufficient connection with this country to be considered part of that community." In other case law, Underwager v. Channel 9 Australia, F.3d 361 which cites US v. Barona, 56 F.3d 1087 it is likewise said that constitutional rights expressly limited to the "people," such as those created by the Fourth Amendment, are held only by "a class of persons who are part of a national community or who have otherwise developed sufficient connection with this country to be considered part of that community" "The People" thus starts from identifying "a national community", and then if the context is about rights, each such individual has the right, but in the context of powers, the collective has it.
The only one I can find so far relates to a Brazilian citizen getting married abroad, called a: Consular Declaration of Civil Status These are issued by the Consular Authority to: Brazilian citizens who intend to marry before a foreign authority within their jurisdiction. The document is issued in English. Source: gov.br (I have yet to find if a comparable certificate is available in-country, for marriage or otherwise, but none of the official guidance sites I have trawled though mention it)
Justice Gorsuch attempts to explain (at p. 20 of his concurrence): In the years following Bakke, this Court hewed to Justice Powell's and Justice Brennan's shared premise that Title VI and the Equal Protection Clause mean the same thing. ... As a result, for over four decades, every case about racial preferences in school admissions under Title VI has turned into a case about the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. A journalist's account on scotusblog also notes that the tests under Title VI and under the 14th amendment have been understood as identical: Private universities like Harvard are not subject to the 14th Amendment, but Title VI applies the same test to private universities that receive federal funds, as Harvard does. See also commentary from a law firm blog in 2022: Harvard, as a private university, is not explicitly regulated by the Fourteenth Amendment. Instead, the case against Harvard relies on Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits any entity receiving federal financial assistance – as Harvard does – from discriminating on the basis of “race, color, or national origin.” The Supreme Court has held that Title VI’s protections match those of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, and thus, the analyses are essentially identical. I read the majority reasons to be a continuance of this conflated meaning. In footnote 2, Chief Justice Roberts is careful to say that the Court is evaluating Harvard's admissions program &quot;under the standards of the Equal Protection Clause&quot; (emphasis mine), rather than stating that the Equal Protection Clause applies against Harvard. Later, he does slip back into language that could be read as suggesting the Equal Protection Clause is being applied directly: &quot;For the reasons provided above, the Harvard and UNC admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause,&quot; but a better reading is that he is merely recognizing that Title VI imports the same guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause. Justice Gorsuch would prefer to re-introduce the analytical clarity about the source of the constraints.
This case was filed in federal court under diversity jurisdiction, meaning that it’s a lawsuit between citizens of different states. In most cases, diversity jurisdiction requires “complete” diversity: every plaintiff has to be a citizen of a different state than every defendant. If one of 12 plaintiffs is a Maryland resident and one of 15 defendants is also a Maryland resident, that tiny overlap means the entire lawsuit is kicked back to state court. In this case, the defendants are an Ohio fraternity, an Illinois resident, a Wyoming company, and a person whose residence is unclear. Defendant Smith might be a Wyoming resident, a Utah resident, or a Washington resident. The plaintiffs aren’t sure. However, as long as the plaintiffs aren’t residents of any of those states, there’s complete diversity of citizenship. It doesn’t matter whether Doe II is from Alaska or Florida, just that she isn’t from the same state as any defendant.
The ICERD would not apply to the natural born citizens clause by its own definitions. Part 1, Article 1, secs 2 and 3 read: This Convention shall not apply to distinctions, exclusions, restrictions or preferences made by a State Party to this Convention between citizens and non-citizens. Nothing in this Convention may be interpreted as affecting in any way the legal provisions of States Parties concerning nationality, citizenship or naturalization, provided that such provisions do not discriminate against any particular nationality.