If elected officials are exempt from CRA Title VII, what protects their civil rights? According to the answers to Are county clerks exempt from Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964?, elected officials of pretty much any sort are exempted from the protections offered citizens under Title VII. But it seems that without this protection, municipalities could enact laws such as "no Muslim or person with a physical or mental disability may hold an elected position." Something clearly protects this from happening. Yes, it is a violation of the constitution, but from my understanding laws are what establish protections against constitutional violations.
The protection lies in the fact that these sorts of restrictions are expressed in state laws, and states are Constitutionally forbidden from denying to any citizen the equal protection of the law, or from interfering with religion. The First Amendment, as applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, forbids states from making any law impeding free exercise of religion, or having the effect of establishing a state religion. This means that any law that forbids people of any religious denomination (including atheists) from holding any office (elected or not) under any level of government is unconstitutional. See Torcaso v. Watkins. Moreover, Title VII's protected classes are also (with the exception of sex) suspect classes under the Equal Protection Clause. A state or local government may not pass a law discriminating against a suspect class unless it is a narrowly tailored law which is the least intrusive way to achieve a compelling state interest. In practice, that means a state can't pass a law discriminating on the grounds of national origin, race, or religion. Sex is a quasi-suspect class; government discrimination on the grounds of sex must further an important state interest in a way reasonably related to that interest; again, in practice this will tend to rule out laws saying "no women can be elected to this post." The Americans with Disabilities Act actually does not exclude elected officials. It defines "employee" as "an individual employed by an employer." The Equal Pay Act doesn't apply to elected officials, but again, sex is a quasi-suspect class. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act also excludes elected officials, and this is the one case where a state really could discriminate -- the applicable test is whether the law is rationally related to a legitimate state interest, which is not an especially high bar.
Prior to Shelley v. Kramer, racial covenants were considered to be outside the scope of the 14th Amendment, because as stated in Corrigan v. Buckley, &quot;the prohibitions of the Fourteenth Amendment 'have reference to state action exclusively, and not to any action of private individuals'&quot;. Therefore, a private agreement to exclude blacks does not run afoul of the 14th Amendment. The Shelley court also noted: But here there was more. These are cases in which the purposes of the agreements were secured only by judicial enforcement by state courts of the restrictive terms of the agreements. This leads to the primary holding of this case: We hold that, in granting judicial enforcement of the restrictive agreements in these cases, the States have denied petitioners the equal protection of the laws, and that, therefore, the action of the state courts cannot stand. That is, the racially-restrictive agreements are not themselves forbidden by the 14th Amendment, but enforcement of such agreements is forbidden. An obvious question is, why had nobody advanced that argument before, but legal arguments often suffer from the forest / trees disability. As far as I have been able to determine, that part of the Oregon Constitution excluding blacks became a legal nullity when the 14th Amendment was ratified, though it remained in the Constitution until 1926. The various anti-Chinese laws which were enforced were not enforced against Chinese who were citizens, see US v. Wong Kim Ark.
A Presidential candidate has no legal immunity for litigation or prosecution different from that of any other political candidate. The First Amendment provides significant protections for expressive conduct of a candidate for political office. Presidential candidates do have a few special privileges, most notably, secret service protection and at a late stage, access to certain intelligence briefings not available to the general public. Judges and prosecutors often seek to avoid the appearance of impropriety interfering with a Presidential election campaign and this may influence, for example, the scheduling of proceeding against a candidate. But there is no actual immunity from either criminal or civil liability for a Presidential candidate that is different from anyone else.
The Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment requires government restrictions on churches to satisfy a compelling government interest, such as preventing massive deaths from disease. The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment prohibits the government from granting special privileges to a specific religion or to all religions (Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 – government may not "pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions or prefer one religion over another"). Exempting only religious gatherings (however defined) would be unconstitutional. Restricting all gatherings (including religious gatherings) would be constitutional (subject to the general restrictions being itself constitutional).
In the case of the US, the only anti-discrimination laws that would cover an event is the Civil Rights Act of 1964, under the rubric "public accommodation", in Title II. But that law does not prohibit sex discrimination. The extent of "public accommodation" is not clearly defined, but generally is held to be about "a place", and would include "entrance into this facility". It might be illegal in California, though, since the Unruh Civil Rights Act is more generic, not excluding sex on this point. The main issue would be whether this organization is a "business".
According to the ACLU, there are certain questions you have to answer when entering the US, and in some states you may have to identify yourself when stopped and told to identify yourself. Nonimmigrant non-citizen may be required to answer questions about immigrant status posed by an immigration officer. Otherwise, you are not required to answer questions by police. A judge can order you to answer questions, but the police cannot. Also, "obstruction of justice" covers things such as destroying evidence, assaulting a process server, communicating with a juror, and can cover investigative demands by prosecutors, but not being uncooperative with police.
There is no current authorization to bar any member of the house from the floor, so the answer depends heavily on what actually happens. Since remote voting was approved, no constituency would be disenfranchised. But we could imagine the house adopting a rule barring remote participation, and also barring entry to the House floor for any person not wearing a mask. The House is constitutionally allowed to set its own rules. The House did bar Adam Clayton Powell from being seated, and he did indeed sue. SCOTUS, most importantly, asserted that this is a justiciable question, and most importantly &quot;In judging the qualifications of its members under Art. I, § 5, Congress is limited to the standing qualifications expressly prescribed by the Constitution&quot;. This could be overcome by expelling the member who refuses to wear a mask (Congress has the power to expel, but not exclude). There would be a significant conflict of rights in this case. Residents of the district has a right to representation (equal protection clause), but Congress has the right to expel members. But Congress has expelled 5 members, and most recently, Ohio's 17th district was without representation in the US House for a half a year after Traficant was expelled. That did not prevent the House from exercising its right to expel a member.
Is it a correct inference that the right &quot;to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects&quot; extends to even a private corporation? No. It's not even a correct inference that it extends by its own terms to state and local governments. In Barron v. Baltimore (1833), the Supreme Court held that the Bill of Rights was enacted as part of the federal constitution and only restricts the exercise of the federal government's authority. State and local governments are instead bound by the Fourteenth Amendment, which says that 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. Over the years, the courts have held that state action that deprives someone of fundamental rights deprives them of life, liberty, or property without due process of law in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. In Wolf v. Colorado (1949), the Supreme Court held that the right against unreasonable searches and seizures is a fundamental right, so state action violating it is a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Most of the Bill of Rights has been held to be &quot;fundamental,&quot; and people routinely say &quot;the state violated the Fourth Amendment&quot; instead of &quot;the state violated the Fourteenth Amendment by conducting an unreasonable search of the sort that would violate the Fourth Amendment if conducted by the federal government.&quot; Courts will say &quot;the Fourth Amendment, made applicable to the States through the Fourteenth.&quot; But the point is that the Fourth Amendment itself is not applicable to anyone except the federal government. The Fourteenth Amendment, by its terms, only restricts the states. The Fourth Amendment only restricts the federal government. With rare exceptions, neither applies to private entities.