5.5 Equal protection for other groups  (Page 11/22)

In another irony, many Christians have recently argued that they are being deprived of their rights because of their religious beliefs and have used this claim to justify their refusal to acknowledge the rights of others. The owner of Hobby Lobby Stores, for example, a conservative Christian, argued that his company’s health-care plan should not have to pay for contraception because his religious beliefs are opposed to the practice. In 2014, in the case of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. , the Supreme Court ruled in his favor.

Many Hispanics and Latinos were deprived of their right to vote and forced to attend segregated schools. Asian Americans were also segregated and sometimes banned from immigrating to the United States. The achievements of the African American civil rights movement, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, benefited these groups, however, and Latinos and Asians also brought lawsuits on their own behalf. Many, like the Chicano youth of the Southwest, also engaged in direct action. This brought important gains, especially in education. Recent concerns over illegal immigration have resulted in renewed attempts to discriminate against Latinos, however.

For a long time, fear of discovery kept many LGBT people closeted and thus hindered their efforts to form a united response to discrimination. Since World War II, however, the LGBT community has achieved the right to same-sex marriage and protection from discrimination in other areas of life as well. The Americans with Disabilities Act, enacted in 1990, has recognized the equal rights of people with disabilities to employment, transportation, and access to public education. People with disabilities still face much discrimination, however, and LGBT people are frequently victims of hate crimes.

Some of the most serious forms of discrimination today are directed at religious minorities like Muslims, and many conservative Christians believe the recognition of LGBT rights threatens their religious freedoms.

Suggested reading

Anderson, Terry H. 2004. The Pursuit of Fairness: A History of Affirmative Action . New York: Oxford University Press.

Baker, Jean H., ed. 2002. Votes for Women: The Struggle for Suffrage Revisited . New York: Oxford University Press.

Blackmon, Douglas A. 2008. Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II . New York: Doubleday.

Catsam, Derek Charles. 2011. Freedom’s Main Line: The Journey of Reconciliation and the Freedom Rides . Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.

Chappell, David L. 2014. Waking from the Dream: The Struggle for Civil Rights in the Shadow of Martin Luther King, Jr. New York: Random House.

Faderman, Lillian. 2015. The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle . New York: Simon&Schuster.

Fairclough, Adam. 2002. Better Day Coming: Blacks and Equality, 1890–2000 . New York: Penguin Books.

Flexner, Eleanor, and Ellen Fitzpatrick. 1996. Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights Movement in the United States , 3rd ed. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.

Magnuson, Stewart. 2013. Wounded Knee 1973: Still Bleeding: The American Indian Movement, the FBI, and their Fight to Bury the Sins of the Past . Arlington, VA: Courtbridge Publishing.

Rosales, Arturo F., and Francisco A. Rosales. 1997. Chicano! The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement , 2nd ed. Houston, TX: Arte Público Press.

Soennichsen, John. 2011. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 . Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood.

Wilkins, David E., and K. Tsianina Lomawaima. 2002. Uneven Ground: American Indian Sovereignty and Fede