Are our rights secure?
Some believe that proponents of an Article V Convention want to take the United States back to a time when women and minorities had no rights. This assumption is based on the understandable but erroneous belief that the federal government has been the sole champion and protector of our civil rights and is rooted in our recent history with Jim Crow laws and other forms of race-based discrimination. A more complete examination of our history demonstrates that neither the federal government nor the states have a consistent record as champions of racial justice in the United States. State and federal courts, legislatures, executive branch leaders, as well as both the convention and Congressional execution of Article V have all played a role in what can best be described as a vacillating ambivalence surrounding the rights of minorities in America.
States
8 states outlaw slavery
Pennsylvania is the first of 9 states to pass sanctuary state laws prohibiting state & local officials from returning enslaved persons who had escaped
8 states pass personal liberty laws extending habeas corpus & jury trial rights to enslaved persons who had escaped
3 states pass resolutions to hold an Article V Convention to address slavery
Reconstruction Amendments ratified within 2 years of Congressional approval
Louisiana elects the first Black Congressmen
Southern states implement Jim Crow laws
New York passes Human Rights Law
Minnesota creates Department of Human Rights; Arizona desegregates Phoenix public schools and city housing
1777-1804
1842
1850s
1860s
1870-90
1913
1942
1945
1955
1965
1986
2010
Federal Government
Congress enacts the first fugitive slave law
The Supreme Court vacates Pennsylvania's sanctuary state law
The Supreme Court hands down its infamous Dred Scott decision
Congress passes the Reconstruction Amendments
Congress refuses to seat the Black members of Louisiana's congressional delegation
The Supreme Court will uphold Jim Crow for over 70 years
Congress passes Civil Rights Act of 1875
The Supreme Court overturns it
President Woodrow Wilson segregates a previously desegregated federal workforce
120,000 Japanese Americans interned by FDR's Executive Order 9066
Brown v. Board
Civil Rights & Voting act of 1965
Congress passes mandatory sentencing minimums making posessionof crack coaine (more common in Black communities) comparable to possession of 100x the amount of powder: Black incarceration skyrockets
Congress passes the Fair Sentencing Act, reducing cocaine disparity to "only" 18:1
It is not federal supremacy, but rather, the separation of powers and the ability of the states and the federal government to check and challenge each another that has led us to the place at which we find ourselves today. In the Hofstra Labor & Employment Law Journal, Steven Andrew Smith & Adam Hansen point out that state civil rights laws are, in many states, superior to federal statutes; they describe the states as the rightful “primary protector of individual rights,” and argue for a greater role for the state supreme courts in the federal appeals process.
America still grapples with important issues like Black incarceration, access to quality education, and economic enfranchisement. It is crucial that we recognize that federal policy, however well-intended, has exacerbated these problems. The time has come to reinvigorate the role of the states in checking the federal government when Washington cannot muster the political will to walk back its own errors.