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On June 26, 2015, the US Supreme Court ruled that gay marriage is a right protected by the US Constitution in all 50 states. Prior to their decision, same-sex marriage was already legal in 37 states and Washington DC, but was banned in the remaining 13. US public opinion had shifted significantly over the years, from 27% approval of gay marriage in 1996 to 55% in 2015, the year it became legal throughout the United States, to 61% in 2019.

Proponents of legal gay marriage contend that gay marriage bans are discriminatory and unconstitutional, and that same-sex couples should have access to all the benefits enjoyed by different-sex couples.

Opponents contend that marriage has traditionally been defined as being between one man and one woman, and that marriage is primarily for procreation. Read more background...

Pro & Con Arguments

Pro 1

To deny some people the option to marry would be discriminatory and would create a second class of citizens. Same-sex couples should have access to the same benefits enjoyed by heterosexual married couples.

On July 25, 2014 Miami-Dade County Circuit Court Judge Sarah Zabel ruled Florida's gay marriage ban unconstitutional and stated that the ban "serves only to hurt, to discriminate, to deprive same-sex couples and their families of equal dignity, to label and treat them as second-class citizens, and to deem them unworthy of participation in one of the fundamental institutions of our society."

As well as discrimination based on sexual orientation, gay marriage bans discriminated based on one's sex. As David S. Cohen, JD, Associate Professor at the Drexel University School of Law, explained, "Imagine three people-Nancy, Bill, and Tom... Nancy, a woman, can marry Tom, but Bill, a man, cannot... Nancy can do something (marry Tom) that Bill cannot, simply because Nancy is a woman and Bill is a man."

Over 1,000 benefits, rights and protections are available to married couples in federal law alone, including hospital visitation, filing a joint tax return to reduce a tax burden, access to family health coverage, US residency and family unification for partners from another country, and bereavement leave and inheritance rights if a partner dies.

Married couples also have access to protections if the relationship ends, such as child custody, spousal or child support, and an equitable division of property. Married couples in the US armed forces are offered health insurance and other benefits unavailable to domestic partners. The IRS and the US Department of Labor also recognize married couples, for the purpose of granting tax, retirement and health insurance benefits.

An Oct. 2, 2009 analysis by the New York Times estimated that same-sex couples denied marriage benefits incurred an additional $41,196 to $467,562 in expenses over their lifetimes compared with married heterosexual couples.

Additionally, legal same-sex marriage comes with mental and physical health benefits. The American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association, and others concluded that legal gay marriage gives couples "access to the social support that already facilitates and strengthens heterosexual marriages, with all of the psychological and physical health benefits associated with that support."

A study found that same-sex married couples were "significantly less distressed than lesbian, gay, and bisexual persons not in a legally recognized relationship."

A 2010 analysis found that after their states had banned gay marriage, gay, lesbian and bisexual people suffered a 37% increase in mood disorders, a 42% increase in alcohol-use disorders, and a 248% increase in generalized anxiety disorders.
Read More

Pro 3

Legal marriage is a secular institution that should not be limited by religious objections to same-sex marriage.

Religious institutions can decline to marry gay and lesbian couples if they wish, but they should not dictate marriage laws for society at large.

As explained by People for the American Way, "As a legal matter, marriage is a civil institution... Marriage is also a religious institution, defined differently by different faiths and congregations. In America, the distinction can get blurry because states permit clergy to carry out both religious and civil marriage in a single ceremony. Religious Right leaders have exploited that confusion by claiming that granting same-sex couples equal access to civil marriage would somehow also redefine the religious institution of marriage... this is grounded in falsehood and deception."

Nancy Cott, PhD, testified in Perry v. Schwarzenegger that "[c]ivil law has always been supreme in defining and regulating marriage."
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Pro 4

The concept of "traditional marriage" has changed over time, and the idea that the definition of marriage has always been between one man and one woman is historically inaccurate.

Harvard University historian Nancy F. Cott stated that until two centuries ago, "monogamous households were a tiny, tiny portion" of the world's population, and were found only in "Western Europe and little settlements in North America."

Official unions between same-sex couples, indistinguishable from marriages except for gender, are believed by some scholars to have been common until the 13th Century in many countries, with the ceremonies performed in churches and the union sealed with a kiss between the two parties.
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Pro 5

Gay marriage is a civil right protected by the US Constitution's commitments to liberty and equality, and is an internationally recognized human right for all people.

The US Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in the 1974 case Cleveland Board of Education v. LaFleur that the "freedom of personal choice in matters of marriage and family life is one of the liberties protected by the Due Process Clause" of the US Constitution. US District Judge Vaughn Walker wrote on Aug. 4, 2010 that Prop. 8 in California banning gay marriage was "unconstitutional under both the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses." The Due Process Clause in both the Fifth and 14th Amendments of the US Constitution states that no person shall be "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." The Equal Protection Clause in the 14th Amendment states that no state shall "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Amnesty International states that "this non-discrimination principle has been interpreted by UN treaty bodies and numerous inter-governmental human rights bodies as prohibiting discrimination based on gender or sexual orientation. Non-discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation has therefore become an internationally recognized principle."
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Con 1

The institution of marriage has traditionally been defined as being between a man and a woman. Civil unions and domestic partnerships could provide the protections and benefits gay couples need without changing the definition of marriage.

In upholding gay marriage bans in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee on Nov. 6, 2014, 6th US District Court of Appeals Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton wrote that "marriage has long been a social institution defined by relationships between men and women. So long defined, the tradition is measured in millennia, not centuries or decades. So widely shared, the tradition until recently had been adopted by all governments and major religions of the world."

In the Oct. 15, 1971 decision Baker v. Nelson, the Supreme Court of Minnesota found that "the institution of marriage as a union of man and woman, uniquely involving the procreation and rearing of children within a family, is as old as the book of Genesis."

2016 presidential candidate and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina stated that civil unions are adequate as an equivalent to marriage: "Benefits are being bestowed to gay couples [in civil unions]... I believe we need to respect those who believe that the word marriage has a spiritual foundation... Why can't we respect and tolerate that while at the same time saying government cannot bestow benefits unequally."

43rd US President George W. Bush expressed his support for same-sex civil unions while in office: "I don't think we should deny people rights to a civil union, a legal arrangement, if that's what a state chooses to do so... I strongly believe that marriage ought to be defined as between a union between a man and a woman. Now, having said that, states ought to be able to have the right to pass laws that enable people to be able to have rights like others." [158]
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Con 3

Gay marriage has accelerated the assimilation of gays into mainstream heterosexual culture to the detriment of the homosexual community.

The gay community has created its own vibrant culture. By reducing the differences in opportunities and experiences between gay and heterosexual people, this unique culture may cease to exist.

Lesbian activist M.V. Lee Badgett, PhD, Director of the Center for Public Policy and Administration at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, stated that for many gay activists "marriage means adopting heterosexual forms of family and giving up distinctively gay family forms and perhaps even gay and lesbian culture." [14]

Paula Ettelbrick, JD, Professor of Law and Women's Studies, wrote in 1989, "Marriage runs contrary to two of the primary goals of the lesbian and gay movement: the affirmation of gay identity and culture and the validation of many forms of relationships." [15]
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Con 4

Marriage is an outmoded, oppressive institution that should have been weakened, not expanded.

LGBT activist collective Against Equality stated, "Gay marriage apes hetero privilege... [and] increases economic inequality by perpetuating a system which deems married beings more worthy of the basics like health care and economic rights."

The leaders of the Gay Liberation Front in New York said in July 1969, "We expose the institution of marriage as one of the most insidious and basic sustainers of the system. The family is the microcosm of oppression."

Queer activist Anders Zanichkowsky stated in June 2013 that the then campaign for gay marriage "intentionally and maliciously erases and excludes so many queer people and cultures, particularly trans and gender non-conforming people, poor queer people, and queer people in non-traditional families... marriage thinks non-married people are deviant and not truly deserving of civil rights."
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Con 5

Gay marriage is contrary to the word of God and is incompatible with the beliefs, sacred texts, and traditions of many religious groups.

The Bible, in Leviticus 18:22, states: "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination," thus condemning homosexual relationships.

The Catholic Church, United Methodist Church, Southern Baptist Convention, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, National Association of Evangelicals, and American Baptist Churches USA all oppose same-sex marriage.

In Islamic tradition, several hadiths (passages attributed to the Prophet Muhammad) condemn gay and lesbian relationships, including the sayings "When a man mounts another man, the throne of God shakes," and "Sihaq [lesbian sex] of women is zina [illegitimate sexual intercourse]."
Read More

Did You Know?

1. The world's first legal gay marriage ceremony took place in the Netherlands on Apr. 1, 2001, just after midnight. The four couples, one female and three male, were married in a televised ceremony officiated by the mayor of Amsterdam.

2. On May 17, 2004, the first legal gay marriage in the United States was performed in Cambridge, MA between Tanya McCloskey, a massage therapist, and Marcia Kadish, an employment manager at an engineering firm.

3. The June 26, 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges US Supreme Court ruling made gay marriage legal in all 50 US states.

4. An estimated 293,000 American same-sex couples have married since June 26, 2015, bringing the total number of married same-sex couples to about 513,000 in the US.

5. On May 26, 2020, Costa Rica became the first Central American country to legalize same-sex marriage.

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On June 26, 2015, the US Supreme Court ruled that gay marriage is a right protected by the US Constitution in all 50 states. Prior to their decision, same-sex marriage was already legal in 37 states and Washington DC, but was banned in the remaining 13.

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Supreme Court ruling allows gay couples to marry

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Supreme Court ruling allows gay couples to marry

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Newsela | Supreme Court's same-sex marriage ruling cheered by many nationwide

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Can the president declare war without the approval of congress?

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Long title

Joint resolution concerning the War powers of Congress and the President.

Enacted by

the 93rd United States Congress

Effective

November 7, 1973

Citations

Public law
93-148

Statutes at Large

87 Stat. 555

Legislative history

Introduced in the House as H.J.Res. 542 by Clement J. Zablocki (D-WI) on May 3, 1973

Committee consideration by House Foreign Affairs

Passed the House on July 10, 1973 (244-170)

Passed the Senate on July 20, 1973 (75-20)

Reported by the joint conference committee on October 4, 1973; agreed to by the Senate on October 10, 1973 (75-20) and by the House on October 12, 1973 (238-122)

Vetoed by President Richard Nixon on October 24, 1973

Overridden by the House on November 7, 1973 (284-135)

Overridden by the Senate and became law on November 7, 1973 (75-18)

The War Powers Resolution (also known as the War Powers Resolution of 1973 or the War Powers Act) ( 50 U.S.C. 1541-1548) is a federal law intended to check the U.S. president's power to commit the United States to an armed conflict without the consent of the U.S. Congress. The resolution was adopted in the form of a United States congressional joint resolution. It provides that the president can send the U.S. Armed Forces into action abroad only by declaration of war by Congress, "statutory authorization," or in case of "a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces."

The War Powers Resolution requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of committing armed forces to military action and forbids armed forces from remaining for more than 60 days, with a further 30-day withdrawal period, without congressional authorization for use of military force (AUMF) or a declaration of war by the United States. The resolution was passed by two-thirds each of the House and Senate, overriding the veto of the bill by President Richard Nixon.

It has been alleged that the War Powers Resolution has been violated in the past - for example, by President Bill Clinton in 1999, during the bombing campaign in Kosovo. Congress has disapproved all such incidents, but none has resulted in any successful legal actions being taken against the president for alleged violations.

Under the United States Constitution, war powers are divided. Under Article I, Section 8, Congress has the power to:

declare War

grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal (i.e., license private citizens to capture enemy vessels)

raise and support Armies (for terms up to two years at a time)

provide and maintain a Navy

make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces

provide for calling forth the Militia

make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water

provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia; and

govern such Part of [the militia] as may be employed in the Service of the United States.

Section 8 further provides that the states have the power to:

Appoint the Officers of the militia; and

train the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.

Article II, Section 2 provides that:

"The president shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States"

It is generally agreed that the commander-in-chief role gives the President power to repel attacks against the United States and makes the President responsible for leading the armed forces. The President has the right to sign or veto congressional acts, such as a declaration of war, and Congress may override any such presidential veto. Additionally, when the president's actions (or inactions) provide "Aid and Comfort" to enemies or levy war against the United States, then Congress has the power to impeach and remove (convict) the president for treason. For actions short of treason, they can remove the president for "Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors", the definition of which the Supreme Court has left up to Congress. Therefore, the war power was intentionally split between Congress and the Executive to prevent unilateral executive action that is contrary to the wishes of Congress, and require a super-majority for legislative action that is contrary to the wishes of the president.

Background and passage

During the Vietnam War, the United States found itself involved for many years in situations of intense conflict without a declaration of war. Many members of Congress became concerned with the erosion of congressional authority to decide when the United States should become involved in a war or the use of armed forces that might lead to war. It was prompted by news leaking out that President Nixon conducted secret bombings of Cambodia during the Vietnam War without notifying Congress.

The War Powers Resolution was passed by both the House of Representatives and Senate but was vetoed by President Richard Nixon. By a two-thirds vote in each house, Congress overrode the veto and enacted the joint resolution into law on November 7, 1973.

Presidents have submitted 130 reports to Congress as a result of the War Powers Resolution, although only one (the Mayagüez incident) cited Section 4(a)(1) and specifically stated that forces had been introduced into hostilities or imminent danger.

Congress invoked the War Powers Resolution in the Multinational Force in Lebanon Act (P.L. 98-119), which authorized the Marines to remain in Lebanon for 18 months during 1982 and 1983. In addition, the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 1991 ( 102-1), which authorized United States combat operations against Iraqi forces during the 1991 Gulf War, stated that it constituted specific statutory authorization within the meaning of the War Powers Resolution.

On November 9, 1994, the House used a section of the War Powers Resolution to state that U.S. forces should be withdrawn from Somalia by March 31, 1994;[citation needed ] Congress had already taken this action in appropriations legislation. More recently, under President Clinton, war powers were at issue in former Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, and Haiti, and under President George W. Bush in responding to terrorist attacks against the U.S. after September 11, 2001. "[I]n 1999, President Clinton kept the bombing campaign in Kosovo going for more than two weeks after the 60-day deadline had passed. Even then, however, the Clinton legal team opined that its actions were consistent with the War Powers Resolution because Congress had approved a bill funding the operation, which they argued constituted implicit authorization. That theory was controversial because the War Powers Resolution specifically says that such funding does not constitute authorization." Clinton's actions in Kosovo were challenged by a member of Congress as a violation of the War Powers Resolution in the D.C. Circuit case Campbell v. Clinton, but the court found the issue was a non-justiciable political question. It was also accepted that because Clinton had withdrawn from the region 12 days prior the 90-day required deadline, he had managed to comply with the act.

After the 1991 Gulf War, the use of force to obtain Iraqi compliance with United Nations resolutions, particularly through enforcement of Iraqi no-fly zones, remained a war powers issue. In October 2002 Congress enacted the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq 107-243 (text) (pdf), which authorized President George W. Bush to use force as necessary to defend the United States against Iraq and enforce relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions. This was in addition to the Authorization for Use of Military Force of 2001.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified to congress in March 2011 that the Obama administration did not need congressional authorization for its military intervention in Libya or for further decisions about it, despite congressional objections from members of both parties that the administration was violating the War Powers Resolution. During that classified briefing, she reportedly indicated that the administration would sidestep the Resolution's provision regarding a 60-day limit on unauthorized military actions. Months later, she stated that, with respect to the military operation in Libya, the United States was still flying a quarter of the sorties, and the New York Times reported that, while many presidents had bypassed other sections of the War Powers Resolution, there was little precedent for exceeding the 60-day statutory limit on unauthorized military actions - a limit which the Justice Department had said in 1980 was constitutional. The State Department publicly took the position in June 2011 that there was no "hostility" in Libya within the meaning of the War Powers Resolution, contrary to legal interpretations in 2011 by the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel.

May 20, 2011, marked the 60th day of US combat in Libya (as part of the UN resolution) but the deadline arrived without President Obama seeking specific authorization from the US Congress. President Obama notified Congress that no authorization was needed, since the US leadership had been transferred to NATO, and since US involvement was somewhat "limited". In fact, as of April 28, 2011, the US had conducted 75 percent of all aerial refueling sorties, supplied 70 percent of the operation's intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, and contributed 24 percent of the total aircraft used in the operation. By September, the US had conducted 26 percent of all military sorties, contributing more resources to Operation Unified Protector than any other NATO country. The State Department requested (but never received) express congressional authorization.

On Friday, June 3, 2011, the US House of Representatives voted to rebuke President Obama for maintaining an American presence in the NATO operations in Libya, which they considered a violation of the War Powers Resolution. In The New York Times, an opinion piece by Yale Law Professor Bruce Ackerman stated that Obama's position "lacks a solid legal foundation. And by adopting it, the White House has shattered the traditional legal process the executive branch has developed to sustain the rule of law over the past 75 years."

In late 2012 or early 2013, at the direction of U.S. President Barack Obama, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was put in charge of Timber Sycamore, a covert program to arm and train the rebels who were fighting against Syrian President Bashar Assad, while the State Department supplied the Free Syrian Army with non-lethal aid. Following the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian Civil War on several occasions, including the Ghouta chemical attack on 21 August 2013, Obama asked Congress for authorization to use military force in Syria, which Congress rejected. Instead, Congress passed a bill that specified that the Defense Secretary was authorized "...to provide assistance, including training, equipment, supplies, and sustainment, to appropriately vetted elements of the Syrian opposition and other appropriately vetted Syrian groups and individuals...." The bill specifically prohibited the introduction of U.S. troops or other U.S. forces into hostilities. The bill said: "Nothing in this section shall be construed to constitute a specific statutory authorization for the introduction of United States Armed Forces into hostilities or into situations wherein hostilities are clearly indicated by the circumstances."

In spite of the prohibition, Obama, and later U.S. President Trump, introduced ground forces into Syria, and the United States became fully engaged in the country, though these troops were primarily for training allied forces. On April 6, 2017, the United States launched 59 BGM-109 Tomahawk missiles at Shayrat airbase in Syria in response to Syria's alleged use of chemical weapons. Constitutional scholar and law professor Stephen Vladeck has noted that the strike potentially violated the War Powers Resolution.

In 2018, Senators Bernie Sanders (I- VT), Chris Murphy ( D- CT), and Mike Lee ( R- UT) sponsored a bill to invoke the War Powers Resolution and to end U.S. support for the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen, which has resulted in thousands of civilian casualties and "millions more suffering from starvation and disease."

Sanders first introduced the bill in the 115th Congress in February 2018, but the Senate voted to table the motion in March 2018. Interest grew in the bill after the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018, with the Senate also approving a resolution holding Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman responsible for Khashoggi's death. The Senate voted 56-to-41 to invoke the War Powers Resolution in December 2018. However, the House of Representatives did not vote on the resolution before the conclusion of the 115th Congress.

The bill was introduced in the 116th Congress in January 2019 with Sanders announcing a vote to take place on March 13, 2019. The bill was approved by the Senate in a 54-46 vote and was approved by the House of Representatives 247-175.

The bill was vetoed by President Trump on April 16, 2019. On May 2, 2019, the Senate failed to reach the two-thirds majority vote in order to override the veto.

On January 4, 2020, the White House officially notified Congress that it had carried out a fatal drone strike against Iranian General Qasem Soleimani a day earlier. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that the entire document was classified and that it "raises more questions than it answers." Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he would set up a classified briefing for all senators.

Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) had already introduced a resolution to prevent the U.S. Armed Forces or any part of the government to use hostilities against Iran. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA) introduced an anti-funding resolution, also on January 3.

The Trump Administration stated that the attack on Qasem Soleimani was carried out in accordance with the War Powers Resolution under the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) resolution of 2001. The legalities of using the AUMF for endless conflicts has been a source of debate.

On February 13, 2020, the Senate passed a similar legally-binding privileged resolution by a vote of 55-45. Trump vetoed the Senate resolution on May 6, 2020, stating the resolution mistakenly "implies that the president's constitutional authority to use military force is limited to defense of the United States and its forces against imminent attack." Kaine stated Trump's veto could enable "endless wars" and "unnecessary war in the Middle East".

The War Powers Resolution has been controversial since it was passed. In passing the resolution, Congress specifically cites the Necessary and Proper Clause for its authority. Under the Necessary and Proper Clause, it is specifically provided that the Congress shall have the power to make all laws necessary and proper for carrying into execution, not only its own powers but also all other powers vested by the Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.

Because the Constitution Article 1 Section 8 limits the President's authority in the use of force without a declaration of war by Congress, there is controversy as to whether the provisions of the resolution are consistent with the Constitution. Presidents have therefore drafted reports to Congress required of the President to state that they are "consistent with" the War Powers Resolution rather than "pursuant to" so as to take into account the presidential position that the resolution is unconstitutional.

One argument for the unconstitutionality of the War Powers Resolution by Philip Bobbitt argues "The power to make war is not an enumerated power" and the notion that to "declare" war is to "commence" war is a "contemporary textual preconception". Bobbitt contends that the Framers of the Constitution believed that statutory authorization was the route by which the United States would be committed to war, and that 'declaration' was meant for only total wars, as shown by the history of the Quasi-War with France (1798-1800). In general, constitutional powers are not so much separated as "linked and sequenced"; Congress's control over the armed forces is "structured" by appropriation, while the President commands; thus the act of declaring war should not be fetishized.[clarification needed ] Bobbitt also argues that "A democracy cannot ... tolerate secret policies" because they undermine the legitimacy of governmental action.

A second argument concerns a possible breach of the 'separation of powers' doctrine, and whether the resolution changes the balance between the Legislative and Executive functions. This type of constitutional controversy is similar to one that occurred under President Andrew Johnson with the Tenure of Office Act (1867). In that prior instance, the Congress passed a law (over the veto of the then-President) that required the President to secure Congressional approval for the removal of Cabinet members and other executive branch officers. The Act was not declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States until 1926. When Andrew Johnson violated the Act, the House of Representatives impeached him; action in the Senate to remove him failed by one vote.

Here, the separation of powers issue is whether the War Powers Resolution requirements for Congressional approval and presidential reporting to Congress change the constitutional balance established in Articles I and II, namely that Congress is explicitly granted the sole authority to "declare war", "make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces" (Article 1, Section 8), and to control the funding of those same forces, while the Executive has inherent authority as Commander in Chief. This argument does not address the other reporting requirements imposed on other executive officials and agencies by other statutes, nor does it address the provisions of Article I, Section 8 that explicitly gives Congress the authority to "make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces".

The constitution specifically states that Congress is authorized "to provide and maintain a Navy" (Article 1 Section 8). The idea of "maintenance" of a Navy implies that Naval Forces would be a permanent fixture of national defense. Two types of Land Forces are described by the Constitution (Article 1 Section 8): the Militia (armed citizenry organized into local defense forces and state volunteer regiments) which Congress can "call forth" and prescribe the "organizing, arming, and disciplining [training]" of, as Congress did in the Militia acts of 1792; and the Army, which Congress can "raise and support", through regular appropriation acts limited to no more than two years. This division matches how the Revolutionary War was fought, by the Continental Army, raised and supported by the Continental Congress, and local Militias and Volunteer Regiments, raised by the separate Colonies. After the war, under the Articles of Confederation, a small standing Army, the First American Regiment was raised and gradually increased in size over time by Congress before, following the Constitution's ratification, being transformed into the Regular Army. The availability of a standing Army, and the President of the United States being authorized as "Commander in Chief", implies his ability as a military commander to employ forces necessary to fulfill his oath to defend the constitution.

There is also an unresolved legal question, discussed by Justice White in INS v. Chadha of whether a "key provision of the War Powers Resolution", namely 50 U.S.C. 1544(c), constitutes an improper legislative veto. (See Chadha, 462 U.S. 919, 971.) That section 1544(c) states "such forces shall be removed by the President if the Congress so directs by concurrent resolution". Justice White argues in his dissent in Chadha that, under the Chadha ruling, 1544(c) would be a violation of the Presentment Clause. The majority in Chadha does not resolve the issue. Justice White does not address or evaluate in his dissent whether that section would fall within the inherent Congressional authority under Article I Section 8 to "make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces".

A hearing was held before the Subcommittee on Federal Spending Oversight and Emergency Management of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, United States Senate, on June 6, 2018, on war powers and the effects of unauthorized military engagements on federal spending. The witnesses giving testimony before the subcommittee were law professors Andrew Napolitano and Jonathan Turley, and Christopher Anders of the ACLU.

Grimmett, Richard Z. (February 14, 2006). "CRS Report for Congress: War Powers Resolution: Presidential Compliance" (PDF). Federation of American Scientists.

United States Congress (November 7, 1973). "War Powers Resolution of 1973 (Public Law 93-148)". The Center for Regulatory Effectiveness.

United States Congress (October 31, 1998). "H.R.4655: Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 (Public Law 105-338)". IraqWatch.org. Archived from the original on June 30, 2009.

United States Congress (September 18, 2001). "Public Law 107-40: Joint Resolution: To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States (S.J. Res. 23)" (text). United States Government Printing Office.

United States Congress (October 16, 2002). "Public Law 107-243: Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 (H. J. Res. 114)" (text). United States Government Printing Office.

Kinkopf, Neil. "The Congress as Surge Protector" (PDF). American Constitution Society for Law and Policy. p. 2. The Supreme Court has been clear and unambiguous. When Congress, acting in the vast areas of overlapping power, tells the President 'no', the President must comply.

Doumar, Robert G. (January 8, 2003). "Hamdi v. Rumsfeld Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, at Norfolk (CA-02-439-2)" (PDF). United States Judiciary. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 4, 2012.

Young, D. Lindley (February 24, 2003). "Amicus Curiae Brief in Support of Plaintiff's Appeal" (PDF). United States Judiciary.

Library of Congress (March 12, 2012). "Research Help: War Powers" (text). United States Government Library of Congress.

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Long title Joint resolution concerning the War powers of Congress and the President. Enacted by the 93rd United States Congress Effective November 7, 1973 Citations Public law 93-148 Statutes at Large 87 Stat. 555 Legislative history Introduced in the House as H.J.Res. 542 by Clement J.

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The debate over whether abortion should be a legal option has long divided people around the world. Split into two groups, pro-choice and pro-life, the two sides frequently clash in protests.

Proponents of legal abortion believe abortion is a safe medical procedure that protects lives, while abortion bans endanger pregnant people not seeking abortions, and deny bodily autonomy, creating wide-ranging repercussions.

Opponents of legal abortion believe abortion is murder because life begins at conception, that abortion creates a culture in which life is disposable, and that increased access to birth control, health insurance, and sexual education would make abortion unnecessary. Read more background...

Pro & Con Arguments

Pro 1

Abortion is a safe medical procedure that protects lives.

The death rate for legal abortions is 0.7 deaths for every 100,000 abortions. By contrast, there are one to two deaths per 100,000 plastic surgery procedures, three deaths for every 100,000 colonoscopies, and three to six deaths per 100,000 tonsillectomies. Childbirth has nine deaths per 100,000 deliveries.

Pregnancy-related maternal deaths could increase 20% in US states with abortion bans. Amanda Stevenson, Sociology Professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, explained, "People with resources are more likely to make it out of state or find out about medication abortions. People who can't are more likely to have health issues, to live in poverty and have less access to resources." People of color are especially likely to be in the latter category and, thus, negatively impacted by abortion bans.

The predicted 20% maternal death rate does not include those who will die from "back alley" or illegal abortions because legal options were not available.

Globally 45% of abortions are unsafe, 97% of which take place in developing countries. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), "Evidence shows that restricting access to abortions does not reduce the number of abortions; however, it does affect whether the abortions that women and girls attain are safe and dignified. The proportion of unsafe abortions are significantly higher in countries with highly restrictive abortion laws than in countries with less restrictive laws."
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Pro 2

Abortion bans endanger healthcare for those not seeking abortions.

Medical treatment for nonviable pregnancies is often exactly the same as an abortion.

Ectopic pregnancies occur when a fertilized egg implants somewhere other than the uterine cavity. About one in 50 pregnancies are ectopic, and they are nonviable. Bleeding from ectopic pregnancies caused 10% of all pregnancy-related deaths, and ectopic pregnancies were the leading cause of maternal death in the first trimester.

One out of every ten pregnancies ends in miscarriage. The drugs used for medication abortions are the only treatment recommended for early miscarriages. For later or complicated miscarriages, the same surgical procedure used for abortions is recommended.

While some abortion bans include specific exceptions for nonviable pregnancies and miscarriages, other bans are too vague to be practicable. Healthcare providers may refuse to perform a procedure that could be interpreted as an "on-demand" abortion for fear of liability or prosecution.

Further, bans are a slippery slope to contraceptive and other healthcare restrictions. For example, some already wrongly view Plan B (the morning after pill) as an abortifacient and are thinking of including it in abortion bans.
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Pro 3

Abortion bans deny bodily autonomy, creating wide-ranging repercussions.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen stated, "eliminating the rights of women to make decisions about when and whether to have children would have very damaging effects on the economy and would set women back decades.... In many cases, abortions are of teenage women, particularly low-income and often Black, who aren't in a position to be able to care for children, have unexpected pregnancies, and it deprives them of the ability often to continue their education to later participate in the workforce."

After being denied an abortion, household poverty increased and lasted four or more years, resulting in an inability to cover basic expenses including food, housing and transportation. A denied abortion was associated with a lowered credit score, increased debt, and an increase in negative public records including evictions and bankruptcies. The households were also more reliant on government assistance. Transgender and nonbinary people denied abortions may face even worse outcomes.

And the consequences can be much more dire. "If a woman of childbearing age dies, it has enormous economic consequences.... It's someone who society has invested in and who has many productive economic years ahead of them," according to David Slusky, Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Kansas. Often, death also removes a wage-earner and caregiver from the household.

60% of women seeking abortions already had other children. Being denied an abortion worsened the well-being of their older children, including not meeting childhood development markers.

The Turnaway Study concluded, "Abortion does not harm women," and "Women who receive a wanted abortion are more financially stable, set more ambitious goals, raise children under more stable conditions, and are more likely to have a wanted child later."
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Con 1

Life begins at conception, making abortion murder.

Conception is the moment a sperm cell fertilizes an egg cell, which begins the process of cell division that creates a human.

Tara Sander Lee, Senior Fellow and Director of Life Sciences at the Charlotte Lozier Institute, stated, "life begins from the moment of conception when the sperm fertilizes the egg, because there is the creation of a new, totally distinct, integrated organism or a human being, which is going to be biologically distinct from all other life forms on this planet." The first cell is biologically distinct because it has its own DNA that is different from either biological parent and all other humans.

Ending a life is murder legally and ethically, even a life that is only a few growing cells at the time of death.

Pope Francis explained, "Abortion is murder. Those who carry out abortions kill.... At the third week after conception, often even before the mother is aware (of being pregnant), all the organs are already (starting to develop). It is a human life. Period. And this human life has to be respected. It is very clear.... Scientifically, it is a human life."

That people may face difficulties without abortion as an option does not excuse or justify murder. A reader of The Atlantic, who gave only the initial K., clarified the moral dilemma: "I wish that I could be pro-choice because the awful circumstances so many women face-that I can't even imagine facing-seem so much more real to me than the rights of a fetus who doesn't even always look human. But abortion is the intentional killing of a human being and we look back with horror at anyone in history who decided a group of people did not actually count as people. We cannot solve the problem of injustice against women with more injustice. We need solutions that support women without killing fetuses."
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Con 2

Legal abortion promotes a culture in which life is disposable.

Echoing a 2014 remark by Pope Francis that connected abortion to " throwaway culture," Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, stated, "abortion represents a failure to recognize the sanctity of human life and promotes a culture in which human life in its most vulnerable moment is perceived as disposable. Such a proposal targets poor women as needing an expedient solution to a complex problem."

Tobin previously declared legal abortion a "brutalization of the American heart" on par with the "dehumanization of the undocumented" immigrants.

Alveda King, former Georgia state representative and niece of Martin Luther King, Jr., also connected abortion to other societal ills: "Abortion and racism are both symptoms of a fundamental human error. The error is thinking that when someone stands in the way of our wants, we can justify getting that person out of our lives. Abortion and racism stem from the same poisonous root, selfishness. We create the deceptions that the other person is less important, less worthy, less human. We are all fully human. When we face this truth, there is no justification for treating those who look different than us as lesser beings. If we simply treat other people the way we'd like to be treated, racism, abortion, and other forms of inhumanity will be things of the past."

As King notes, some fetuses are treated as less than human. This ideology combined with legal abortion could create a slippery slope to designer babies, gender selection, termination of disabled but healthy fetuses, and other trait-selection-based abortions. The slippery slope can then extend to the mentally disabled and elderly in general.

"[A]bortion is an act rife with the potential for eugenic manipulation," according to US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. "Technological advances have only heightened the eugenic potential for abortion, as abortion can now be used to eliminate children with unwanted characteristics, such as a particular sex or disability."
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Con 3

Increased access to birth control, health insurance, and sexual education would make abortion unnecessary.

Experts largely contribute the decline in abortions in the United States and elsewhere to the improved safety and availability of LARC (long-acting reversible contraception) including IUDs and contraceptive implants that can last up to 10 years.

Access to health insurance to pay for contraceptives also contributed to a drop in abortions. With the passage of Obamacare (Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act), more people were insured with access to free or low-cost contraceptives and reproductive care.

Linda Rosenstock, Public Health Professor of Health Policy and Management at UCLA, summarized the simplicity of the connection: "In the United States each year, about half of pregnancies are unintended and about 40% of those lead to abortion. Access to birth control leads to fewer abortions."

Further, teens are having sex later in life than their parents. 38.4% of American high schoolers reported they have had sex (down from 54% in 1991) and only 27.4% reported they were currently sexually active (37.5% in 1991).

Because teen birth control use has not increased significantly, experts attribute the decline in part to better sex education. A 2021 study found that students who received comprehensive sexual education initiated sex later than students who did not participate in sex ed. The later teens have sex, the less chance there is for them to become pregnant unintentionally, which leads to fewer abortions.
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Did You Know?

1. Throughout much of Western history, abortion was not considered a criminal act as long as it was performed before "quickening" (the first detectable movement of the fetus, which can occur between 13-25 weeks of pregnancy).

2. In 1821, Connecticut became the first US state to criminalize abortion.

3. The death rate for legal abortions is 0.7 deaths for every 100,000 abortions. By contrast, there are one to two deaths per 100,000 plastic surgery procedures, three deaths for every 100,000 colonoscopies, and three to six deaths per 100,000 tonsillectomies. Childbirth has nine deaths per 100,000 deliveries.

4. Abortion rates in the United States have fallen at what the CDC called a "slow yet steady pace" since a peak in 1981. That year there were 29.3 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44. The rate fell to 11.4 abortions per 1,000 women in 2019.

5. 60% of women seeking abortions already had other children.

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Abortion - Top Arguments For and Against - ProCon.org

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The Pro Choice side says women should have control of their bodies. Pro Lifers say abortion is murder. Explore both sides of the debate.

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Roe v. Wade, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on January 22, 1973, ruled (7-2) that unduly restrictive state regulation of abortion is unconstitutional. In a majority opinion written by Justice Harry A. Blackmun, the Court held that a set of Texas statutes criminalizing abortion in most instances violated a constitutional right to privacy, which it found to be implicit in the liberty guarantee of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment ("...nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law"). Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2022.

The case began in 1970 when "Jane Roe"-a fictional name used to protect the identity of the plaintiff, Norma McCorvey (1947-2017)-instituted federal action against Henry Wade, the district attorney of Dallas county, Texas, where Roe resided. The Supreme Court disagreed with Roe's assertion of an absolute right to terminate pregnancy in any way and at any time. Instead, it attempted to balance what it regarded as a "fundamental" right to privacy with the state's "compelling" interests in protecting the health of pregnant persons and the "potentiality of human life." In doing so, the Court formulated a timetable based on the notions of trimester and fetal viability (i.e., the "capability of meaningful life outside the mother's womb"). During the first trimester of pregnancy, the Court ruled, the state could not intervene in a person's decision to have an abortion under normal circumstances. During the second trimester the state could regulate abortion procedures to protect the health of pregnant persons, but it could not prohibit abortions altogether. From the end of the second trimester, which the Court identified as the starting point of viability, the state could regulate or prohibit abortions in order to protect the pregnant person's health or to preserve fetal viability. In no case, however, could the state criminalize abortions that were necessary to protect the life or health of the pregnant person.

Repeated challenges to Roe v. Wade after 1973 narrowed the decision's scope but did not overturn it. In Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992), the Supreme Court established that restrictions on abortion are unconstitutional if they place an "undue burden" on a person seeking an abortion before the fetus is viable. In Gonzales v. Carhart (2007), the Court upheld the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act (2003), which prohibited a rarely used abortion procedure known as intact dilation and evacuation. In Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt (2016), the Court invoked its decision in Casey to strike down two provisions of a Texas law requiring that abortion clinics meet the standards of ambulatory surgical centers and that doctors performing abortions have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. Four years later, in June Medical Services L.L.C. v. Russo (2020), the Court invoked Whole Woman's Health to declare unconstitutional a Louisiana statute that was, as the majority noted, nearly identical to Texas's admitting-privileges law.

In May 2021 the Supreme Court agreed to review in its October 2021 term a lower court's decision to strike down a Mississippi state law, adopted in 2018, that banned most abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy, well before the point of fetal viability. Although the law was plainly unconstitutional under Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Mississippi lawmakers passed the measure in the hope that an inevitable legal challenge would eventually make its way to the Supreme Court, where a conservative majority of justices would overturn or drastically reduce the scope of those decisions. The single question that the Court agreed to consider in the case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, was whether bans on all pre-viability abortions are unconstitutional. In May 2022 an apparent draft of a majority opinion in the case, written by Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., was leaked to a political news publication in an extraordinary breach of the traditional secrecy in which the Court conducts its deliberations. The opinion, dated February 2022, indicated that the Court had voted to uphold the Mississippi law and to overturn both Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. As expected, both Roe and Casey were overturned (5-4) in the Court's official decision in Dobbs, issued in June 2022, in which Alito held that there is no constitutional right to abortion. Soon after the decision was handed down, several states adopted laws that drastically limited the availability of abortion.

In 1998, having undergone two religious conversions, McCorvey publicly declared her opposition to abortion. However, in the documentary AKA Jane Roe (2020), a dying McCorvey claimed that she had been paid by antiabortion groups to support their cause.

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Roe v. Wade | Summary, Origins, Right to Privacy, & Overturning

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Roe v. Wade, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on January 22, 1973, ruled (7-2) that unduly restrictive state regulation of abortion is unconstitutional. The Court held that a set of Texas statutes criminalizing abortion in most instances violated a constitutional right to privacy.

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Note: This report was updated on August 29, 2023 to incorporate new data on abortion statistics.

On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court issued a ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization that overturned the constitutional right to abortion as well as the federal standards of abortion access, established by prior decisions in the cases Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Prior to the Dobbs ruling, the federal standard was that abortions were permitted up to fetal viability. That federal standard has been eliminated, allowing states to set policies regarding the legality of abortions and establish limits. Access to and availability of abortions varies widely between states, with some states banning almost all abortions and some states protecting abortion access.

This report answers some key questions about abortion in the United States and presents data collected before and new data that was published shortly after the overturn of Roe v. Wade.

What is abortion?

Abortion is the medical termination of a pregnancy. It is a common medical service that many women obtain at some point in their life. There are different types of abortion methods, which the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) places in four categories:

Medication Abortion - Medication abortion, also known as medical abortion or abortion with pills, is a pregnancy termination protocol that involves taking oral medications. There are two widely accepted protocols for medication abortion. In the U.S., the most common protocol involves taking two different drugs, Mifepristone and Misoprostol. Typically, an individual using medication abortion takes Mifepristone first, followed by misoprostol 24-48 hours later. In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved this protocol of medication abortion for use up to the first 70 days (10 weeks) of pregnancy, and its use has been rising for years. Another medication abortion protocol uses misoprostol alone. Patients can take 800 µg (4 pills) of misoprostol sublingually or vaginally every three hours for a total of 12 pills. The regimen is also recommended for up to 70 days (10 weeks) of pregnancy, but it is not currently approved by the FDA and is more commonly used in other countries.
Guttmacher Institute estimates that in 2020, medication was used for more than half (53%) of all abortions. While medication abortion has been available in the U.S. for more than 20 years, studies have found that many adults and women of reproductive age have not heard of medication abortion. Many have confused emergency contraception ( EC) pills with medication abortion pills, but EC does not terminate a pregnancy. EC works by delaying or inhibiting ovulation and will not affect an established pregnancy.

Aspiration, a minimally invasive and commonly used gynecological procedure, is the most common form of procedural abortion. It can be used to conduct abortions up to 14-16 weeks of gestation. Aspiration is also commonly used in cases of early pregnancy loss (miscarriage).

Dilation and evacuation abortions (D&E) are usually performed after the 14th week of pregnancy. The cervix is dilated, and the pregnancy tissue is evacuated using forceps or suction.

Induction abortions are rare and conducted later in pregnancy. They involve the use of medications to induce labor and delivery of the fetus.

How safe are abortions?

Decades of research have shown that abortion is a very safe medical service.

Despite its strong safety profile, abortion is the most highly regulated medical service in the country and is now banned in several states. In addition to bans on abortion altogether and telehealth, many states impose other limitations on abortion that are not medically indicated, including waiting periods, ultrasound requirements, gestational age limits, and parental notification and consent requirements. These restrictions typically delay receipt of services.

NASEM completed an exhaustive review on the safety and effectiveness of abortion care and concluded that complications from abortion are rare and occur far less frequently than during childbirth.

NASEM also concluded that safety is enhanced when the abortion is performed earlier in the pregnancy. State level restrictions such as waiting periods, ultrasound requirements, and gestational limits that impede access and delay abortion provision likely make abortions less safe.

When medication abortion pills, which account for the majority of abortions, are administered at 9 weeks' gestation or less, the pregnancy is terminated successfully 99.6% of the time, with a 0.4% risk of major complications, and an associated mortality rate of less than 0.001 percent (0.00064%).

Medication abortion pills can be provided in a clinical setting or via telehealth (without an in-person visit). Research has found that the provision of medication abortion via telehealth is as safe and effective as the provision of the pills at an in person visit.

Studies on procedural abortions, which include aspiration and D&E, have also found that they are very safe. Research on aspiration abortions, the most common procedural method, have found the rate of major complications of less than 1%.

How often do abortions occur?

There are three major data sources on abortion incidence and the characteristics of people who obtain abortions in the U.S: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Guttmacher Institute, and most recently, the Society of Family Planning's (SFP) #WeCount project.

The federal CDC Abortion Surveillance System requests data from the central health agencies of the 50 states, DC, and New York City to document the number and characteristics of women obtaining abortions. Most states collect data from facilities where abortions are provided about the clinicians providing abortions, demographic characteristics of patients, gestational age, and type of abortion procedure. Reporting these data to the CDC is voluntary and not all states participate in the surveillance system. Notably, California, Maryland, and New Hampshire have not reported data on abortions to the CDC system for years. CDC publishes available data from the surveillance system annually.

Guttmacher Institute, an independent research and advocacy organization, is the other major source of data on abortions in the U.S. Periodically, Guttmacher conducts the Abortion Provider Census (APC) which provides data on abortion incidence, abortion facilities, and characteristics of abortion patients. Data from this Census are based primarily on questionnaires collected from all known facilities that provide abortion in the country, information obtained from state health departments, and Guttmacher estimates for a small portion of facilities.

The CDC and Guttmacher data differ in terms of methods, timeframe, and completeness, but both show similar trends in abortion rates over the past decade. One notable difference is that Guttmacher's study includes continuous reporting from California, D.C., Maryland, and New Hampshire, which explains at least in part the higher number of abortions in their data.

Society of Family Planning's (SFP) #WeCount is a national reporting effort that measures changes in abortion access following the Dobbs ruling. The project reports on the number of abortions per month by state and includes data on abortions provided through clinics, private practices, hospitals, and virtual-only providers. The report does not include data on self-managed abortions that are performed without clinical supervision. The first #WeCount report analyzes data from April 2022 to data from August 2022, the second report up to December 2022, and the third report up to March 2023. The effort represents 82% of all providers known to #WeCount who agreed to participate in their research.

This KFF report uses data from the CDC, Guttmacher, and SFP as well as other research organizations.

How has the abortion rate changed over time?

For most of the past decade, there was a steady decline in abortion rates nationally, but there was a slight increase in the years just before the Dobbs ruling.

In their most recent national data, Guttmacher Institute reported 930,160 abortions in 2020 and a rate of 14.4 per 1,000 women. CDC reported 615,991 abortions in 2020 and a rate of 11.2 abortions per 1,000 women (excludes CA, DC, MD, NH). Guttmacher's study showed an upward trend in abortion from 2017 to 2020 whereas CDC's report showed an increase in abortions from 2017 to 2019 followed by a slight decrease from 2019 to 2020.

While most attribute the long-term decline in abortion rates to increased use of more effective methods of contraception, several states had reduced access to low- or no-cost contraceptive care as a result of reductions in the Title X network under the Trump Administration, which may have contributed to the slight rise in abortions prior to the Dobbs ruling. Other factors that may have contributed to the increase could include greater coverage under Medicaid that subsequently made abortions more affordable in some states and broader financial support from abortion funds to help individuals pay for the costs of abortion care.

Even prior to the Dobbs ruling, abortion rates varied widely between states.

National averages can mask local and more granular differences. Lower state-level abortion rates do not reflect less need. Some of the variation has been due to the wide differences in state policies, with some states historically placing restrictions on abortion that make access and availability to nearly out of reach and, on the other side, some states enshrining protections in state Constitutions and legislation.

In 2020, the abortion rate (per 1,000 women ages 15-44) ranged from 0.1 in Missouri to 48.9 in the District of Columbia (DC). Trends also varied between states. While the national rate of abortion increased between 2017 and 2019, some states saw declines, with particularly sharp drops in states where heavy restrictions were put into place.

However, the number of abortions in the U.S. dropped immediately following the ruling inDobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization in June 2022.

SFP's #WeCount estimates there were 25,640 cumulative fewer abortions from July 2022 to March 2023, representing a monthly average of 2,849 fewer abortions compared to April 2022. Note, this figure is an underestimate due to Texas' six-week ban going into effect prior to the Dobbs ruling. States without abortion bans experienced an increase of abortions following the Dobbs ruling likely due to interstate travel for abortion access, rising from an estimated monthly average of 79,280 abortions in April 2022 to an estimated monthly average of 88,020 abortions in March 2023. In the nine months after the Dobbs ruling, an average of 7,324 fewer people per month received abortions in states with abortion bans (data not shown). By October 2022, states that have implemented abortion bans saw fewer than 10 abortions per month, on average. These estimates, however, do not include abortions that may have been performed through self-managed means.

Who gets abortions?

In 2020, women across a range of age groups, socioeconomic status, and racial and ethnic backgrounds obtained abortions, but the majority were obtained by women who were in their twenties, low-income, and women of color.

Women in their twenties accounted for more than half (57%) of abortions. Nearly one-third (30%) were among women in their thirties and a small share were among women in their 40s (4%) and teens (9%).

More than half of abortions were among women of color. Black women comprised 39% of abortion recipients, 33% were provided to White women, 21% to Hispanic women, and 7% were among women of other races/ethnicities.

Many women who sought abortions have children. Nearly six in 10 (61%) abortion patients in 2020 had at least one previous birth.

At what point in pregnancy do abortions occur?

The vast majority (92%) of abortions occur during the first trimester of pregnancy according to data available from before the Dobbs decision.

Before the 2022 ruling in Dobbs, there was a federal constitutional right to abortion before the pregnancy is considered to be viable, that is, can survive outside of a pregnant person's uterus. Viability is generally considered around 24 weeks of pregnancy. Most abortions, though, occur well before the point of fetal viability.

Data from 2020 found that four in ten (40%) abortions occurred by six weeks of gestation, another four in ten (39%) occurred between seven and nine weeks, and 13% at 10-13 weeks. Just 8% of abortions occurred after the first trimester.

Prior to the decision in the Dobbs case, almost half of states (22) had enacted laws that ban abortion at a certain gestational age. Most of these limits are in the second trimester, but some are in the first trimester, well before fetal viability. Many of these laws were blocked because they violated the federal standard established by Roe v Wade. Some states have enacted laws banning abortions after fetal cardiac activity can be detected, or around 6 weeks of pregnancy, which is often before a person knows they are pregnant. In addition to banning abortion, states can now establish pre-viability gestational restrictions because the federal standard has been overturned.

Where do people get abortion care?

Just over half of abortions were provided at clinics that specialize in abortion care in 2020. Others were provided at clinics that offer abortion care in addition to other family planning services.

Guttmacher Institute estimated that 96% of abortions were provided at clinics and just 4% were provided in doctors' offices or hospitals in 2020. Most clinic-based abortions were provided at clinics that specialize in providing abortion care, but many were provided at clinics that offer a wide range of other sexual and reproductive health services like contraception and STI care. Most abortions are provided by physicians. However, in 19 states and D.C., Advanced Practice Clinicians (APCs) such as Nurse Practitioners and midwives may provide medication abortions. Conversely, 31 states prohibit clinicians other than physicians from providing abortion care.

Even prior to the ruling in Dobbs, access to abortion services was very uneven across the country though. The proliferation of restrictions in many states, particularly in the South, had greatly shrunk the availability of services in some areas. In the wake of overturning Roe v. Wade, these geographic disparities are likely to widen as more states ban abortion services altogether.

Telehealth has grown as a delivery mechanism for abortion services.

While procedural abortions must be provided in a clinical setting, medication abortion can be provided in a clinical setting or via telehealth. Access to medication abortion via telehealth had been limited for many years by a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) restriction that had permitted only certified clinicians to dispense mifepristone in a health care setting. The drug could not be mailed or picked up at a retail pharmacy. However, in December 2021, the FDA permanently revised its policy and no longer requires clinicians to dispense the drug in person. Additionally, in January 2023, the FDA finalized a change that allows retail pharmacies to dispense medication abortion pills to patients with a prescription.

While some states are regulating the use of mifepristone as an abortion method, the Biden Administration has asserted that the FDA has regulatory power over all drugs, including mifepristone. This could result in future legal action as the authority of the state to regulate health care will be pitted against the authority of the federal government to regulate drugs through the FDA will be contested.

In a telehealth abortion, the patient typically completes an online questionnaire to assess (1) confirmation of pregnancy, (2) gestational age and (3) blood type. If determined eligible by a remote clinician, the patient is mailed the medications. This model does not require an ultrasound for pregnancy dating if the patient has regular periods and is sure of the date of their last menstrual period (in line with ACOG's guidelines for pregnancy dating). If the patient has irregular periods or is unsure how long they have been pregnant, they must obtain an ultrasound to confirm gestational age and rule out an ectopic pregnancy³and send in the images for review before receiving their medications. If the patient does not know their blood type or has Rh negative blood, the provider may prompt the patient to visit a nearby clinic for an injection to prevent adverse reactions between maternal and fetal blood (RhoGAM), The follow-up visit with a clinician can also happen via a telehealth visit.

However, even in some of the states that have not banned abortion altogether, telehealth may not be available. Many states had established restrictions prior to the Dobbs ruling that limit the use of telehealth abortions by either requiring abortion patients to take the pills at a physical clinic, require ultrasounds for all abortions, set their own policies regarding the dispensing of the medications used for abortion care, or directly ban the use of telehealth for abortion care. As of November 2022, of the 33 states that have not banned abortion, eight had at least one of these restrictions, effectively prohibiting telehealth for medication abortion.

Medication abortion has emerged as a major legal front in the battle over abortion access across the nation. Multiple cases have been filed in federal courts regarding aspects of the FDA's regulation of medication abortion as well as the mailing of medications. One notable ongoing case is Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA, where the plaintiffs are challenging the FDA's authority and approval process for mifepristone. The plaintiffs also contend that an 1873 anti-obscenity law, the Comstock Act, prohibits the mailing of any medication used for abortion. In April 2023, a US Supreme Court ruling allowed current FDA rules to remain in effect as the case proceeds through the courts. This means that mifepristone remains available for medication abortion either in a clinic or via telehealth where state law permits.

Data from SFP's June 2023 #WeCount report show that abortions provided by virtual-only clinics represent approximately 5% of all abortions post- Roe. The number of telehealth abortions increased 85% from a monthly average of 4,025 abortions April and May 2022 to 7,461 abortions per month in the nine months post- Dobbs. Nearly all of these abortions occurred in states that permit abortions.

Self-managed abortions are provided without a clinician visit.

Self-managed abortions typically involve obtaining medication abortion pills from an online pharmacy that will send the pills by mail or by purchasing the pills from a pharmacy in another country. This does not typically involve a direct consultation with a clinician either in person or via telehealth.

Research has found that prior to Dobbs, more than one in ten patients who obtained abortions at clinics had considered self-managing their abortions. This is likely to increase going forward since abortion care is not available in many states, and there have already been reports of people ordering pills from online markets outside the U.S. medical system. Tracking information on these online orders can help fill in gaps in abortion count estimates but can also be difficult. Some companies may not share data on purchases, and it would also be unclear whether patients take the abortion medication after receiving it in the mail.

How much do abortions cost?

The median costs of abortion services exceed $500.

Obtaining an abortion can be costly. On average, the costs are higher for abortions in the second trimester than in the first trimester. State restrictions can also raise the costs, as people may have to travel if abortions are prohibited or not available in their area. Many people pay for abortion services out of pocket, but some people can obtain assistance from local abortion funds.

In 2021, the median costs for people paying out of pocket in the first trimester were $568 for a medication abortion and $625 for a procedural abortion. The Federal Reserve estimates that nationally about one-third of people do not have $400 on hand for unexpected expenses. For low-income people, who are more likely to need abortion care, these costs are often unaffordable.

The costs of abortion are higher in the second trimester compared to the first, with median self-pay of $775. In the second trimester, more intensive procedures may be needed, more are likely to be conducted in a hospital setting (although still a minority), and local options are more limited in many communities that have fewer facilities. This results in additional nonmedical costs for transportation, childcare, lodging, and lost wages. nonmedical costs for transportation, childcare, lodging, and lost wages.

Abortion funds are independent organizations that help some people pay for the costs of abortion services. Most abortion funds are regional and have connections to clinics in their area. Funds vary, but they typically provide assistance with the costs of medical care, travel, and accommodations if needed. However, they do not reach all people seeking services, and many people are not able to afford the costs of obtaining an abortion because they cannot pay for the abortion itself or cover the costs of travel, lodging or missed work.

Does private insurance or Medicaid cover abortions?

Insurance coverage for abortion services is heavily restricted in certain private insurance plans and public programs like Medicaid and Medicare.

Private insurance covers most women of reproductive age, and states have the responsibility to regulate fully insured private plans in their state, whereas the federal government regulates self-funded plans under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). States can choose whether abortion coverage is included or excluded in private plans that are not self-insured.

Prior to the Dobbs ruling, several states had enacted private plan restrictions and banned abortion coverage from ACA Marketplace plans. Currently, there are 11 states that have policies restricting abortion coverage in private plans and 26 that ban coverage in any Marketplace plans. Since the Dobbs ruling, some of these states have also banned the provision of abortion services altogether.

A handful of states (7), however, have enacted laws that require private plans to cover abortion.

The Medicaid program covers approximately one in five women of reproductive age and four in ten who are low-income. For decades, the Hyde Amendment has banned the use of federal funds for abortion in Medicaid and other public programs unless the pregnancy is a result of rape, incest, or it endangers the woman's life.

States have the option to use state-only funds to cover abortions under other circumstances for women on Medicaid, which 16 states do currently. However, more than half (56%) of women covered by Medicaid live in Hyde states.

According to a Guttmacher Institute survey of patients in the year prior to the Dobbs ruling, a quarter (26%) of abortion patients in the study used Medicaid to pay for abortion services, 11% used private insurance, and 60% paid out of pocket. People in states with more restrictive abortion policies were less likely to use Medicaid or private insurance and more likely to pay out of pocket compared to people living in less restrictive states.

Federal law also restricts abortion funding under the Indian Health Service, Medicare, and the Children's Health Insurance Program. Over the years, language similar to that in the Hyde Amendment has been incorporated into a range of other federal programs that provide or pay for health services to women including: the military's TRICARE program, federal prisons, the Peace Corps, and the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.

What are public opinions about abortion?

National polls have consistently found that a majority of the public did not want to see Roe v. Wade overturned and that most people feel that abortion is a personal medical decision. The public also strongly opposes the criminalization of abortion both among people who get abortion and the clinicians who provide abortion services.

Prior to the ruling in Dobbs, most adults (64%) said they do not want to see the Supreme Court overturn its decision in Roe v. Wade. This share rises to 71% among reproductive age women, who are most affected by abortion policies.

Nearly three quarters of adults (74%) and 79% of reproductive age women say that obtaining an abortion should be a personal choice rather than regulated by law.

Majorities of the public oppose policies that greatly limit access and availability of abortion services, including restrictions that effectively block abortion access altogether. Large majorities oppose imposing criminal penalties on doctors who perform abortions or women who obtain them as well as state laws that impose civil penalties on those who provide or assist women who get abortions like the SB8 law in Texas.

Additional KFF resources:

Abortion in the US Dashboard

Access and Coverage of Abortion Services

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Key Facts on Abortion in the United States | KFF

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This report answers some key questions about abortion in the United States and presents data collected before and after the overturn of Roe v. Wade.

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Affirmative action, also known as positive discrimination, involves sets of policies and practices within a government or organization seeking to include particular groups based on their gender, race, sexuality, creed or nationality in areas in which such groups are underrepresented - such as education and employment. Historically and internationally, support for affirmative action has sought to achieve goals such as bridging inequalities in employment and pay, increasing access to education, promoting diversity, and redressing apparent past wrongs, harms, or hindrances.

The nature of affirmative-action policies varies from region to region and exists on a spectrum from a hard quota to merely targeting encouragement for increased participation. Some countries use a quota system, reserving a certain percentage of government jobs, political positions, and school vacancies for members of a certain group; an example of this is the reservation system in India.

In some other jurisdictions where quotas are not used, minority-group members are given preference or special consideration in selection processes. In the United States, affirmative action in employment and education has been the subject of legal and political controversy. In 2003, the Supreme Court of the United States, in Grutter v. Bollinger, held that the University of Michigan Law School could consider race as a plus-factor when evaluating applicants holistically and maintained the prohibition on the use of quotas.

In the United Kingdom, hiring someone simply because of their protected-group status, without regard to their performance, is illegal. However, the law in the United Kingdom does allow for membership in a protected and disadvantaged group to be considered in hiring and promotion when the group is under-represented in a given area and if the candidates are of equal merit (in which case membership in a disadvantaged group can become a "tie-breaker"). An alternative approach, common in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe, is positive action. Under this approach, the focus tends to be on ensuring equal opportunity and, for example, targeted advertising campaigns to encourage ethnic minority candidates to join police forces. This is often described as being "color blind", although the social viability of that concept is heavily contested by certain elements in the United States.

In the United States, affirmative action is controversial and public opinion on the subject is divided. Supporters of affirmative action argue that it promotes equality and representation for groups which are socio-economically disadvantaged or have faced historical discrimination or oppression.[need quotation to verify ] Opponents of affirmative action have argued that it is a form of reverse discrimination, that it tends to benefit the most privileged within minority groups at the expense of the least fortunate within majority groups, or that-when applied to universities-it can hinder minority students by placing them in courses too difficult for them.

The term "affirmative action" was first used in the United States in " Executive Order No. 10925", signed by President John F. Kennedy on 6 March 1961, which included a provision that government contractors "take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and employees are treated [fairly] during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin". It was used to promote actions that achieve non-discrimination. In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson issued Executive Order 11246 which required government employers to "hire without regard to race, religion and national origin" and "take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, color, religion, sex or national origin."

In 1968, gender was added to the anti-discrimination list.[clarification needed ]

Affirmative action is intended to promote the opportunities of defined minority groups within a society to give them equal access to that of the majority population.

It is often instituted for government and educational settings to ensure that certain designated groups within a society are able to participate in all provided opportunities including promotional, educational, and training opportunities.

The stated justification for affirmative action by its proponents is to help compensate for past discrimination, persecution or exploitation by the ruling class of a culture, and to address existing discrimination.

Quotas

Marketing/advertising to groups that the affirmative action is intended to increase

Specific training or emulation actions for identified audiences

Relaxation of selection criteria applied to a target audience

Several different studies investigated the effect of affirmative action on women. Kurtulus (2012) in her review of affirmative action and the occupational advancement of minorities and women during 1973-2003 showed that the effect of affirmative action on advancing black, Hispanic, and white women into management, professional, and technical occupations occurred primarily during the 1970s and early 1980s. During this period, contractors grew their shares of these groups more rapidly than non-contractors because of the implementation of affirmative action. But the positive effect of affirmative action vanished entirely in the late 1980s, which Kurtulus says may be due to the slowdown into advanced occupation for women and minorities because of the political shift of affirmative action that started by President Reagan. Becoming a federal contractor increased white women's share of professional occupations by 0.183 percentage points, or 9.3 percent, on average during these three decades, and increased black women's share by 0.052 percentage points (or by 3.9 percent). Becoming a federal contractor also increased Hispanic women's and black men's share of technical occupations on average by 0.058 percent and 0.109 percentage points respectively (or by 7.7 and 4.2 percent). These represent a substantial contribution of affirmative action to overall trends in the occupational advancement of women and minorities over the three decades under the study. A reanalysis of multiple scholarly studies, especially in Asia, considered the impact of four primary factors on support for affirmative action programs for women: gender; political factors; psychological factors; and social structure. Kim and Kim (2014) found that, "Affirmative action both corrects existing unfair treatment and gives women equal opportunity in the future."

Law regarding quotas and affirmative action varies widely from nation to nation.

Caste-based and other group-based quotas are used in the reservation system.

In some countries that have laws on racial equality, affirmative action is rendered illegal because it does not treat all races equally. This approach of equal treatment is sometimes described as being " color blind", in hopes that it is effective against discrimination without engaging in reverse discrimination.

In such countries, the focus tends to be on ensuring equal opportunity and, for example, targeted advertising campaigns to encourage ethnic minority candidates to join the police force. This is sometimes called positive action.

The apartheid government, as a matter of state policy, favoured white-owned, especially Afrikaner-owned companies. The aforementioned policies achieved the desired results, but in the process, they marginalised and excluded black people. Skilled jobs were also reserved for white people, and blacks were largely used as unskilled labour, enforced by legislation including the Mines and Works Act, the Job Reservations Act, the Native Building Workers Act, the Apprenticeship Act and the Bantu Education Act, creating and extending the "colour bar" in South African labour. Then the whites successfully persuaded the government to enact laws that highly restricted the blacks' employment opportunities.

Since the 1960s the apartheid laws had been weakened. Consequently, from 1975 to 1990 the real wages of black manufacturing workers rose by 50%, while those of whites rose by 1%.

The variation in skills and productivity between groups of people ultimately caused disparities in employment, occupation and income within labour markets, which provided advantages to certain groups and characteristics of people. This in due course was the motivation to introduce affirmative action in South Africa, following the end of apartheid.

Post-apartheid - the Employment Equity Act

Following the transition to democracy in 1994, the African National Congress-led government chose to implement affirmative action legislation to correct previous imbalances (a policy known as employment equity). As such, all employers were compelled by law to employ previously disenfranchised groups (blacks, Indians, and Coloureds). A related, but distinct concept is Black Economic Empowerment.

The Employment Equity Act and the Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment Act aim to promote and achieve equality in the workplace (in South Africa termed "equity"), by advancing people from designated groups. The designated groups who are to be advanced include all people of colour, women (including white women) and people with disabilities (including white people). Employment Equity legislation requires companies employing more than 50 people to design and implement plans to improve the representativity of workforce demographics, and report them to the Department of Labour.

Employment Equity also forms part of a company's Black Economic Empowerment scorecard: in a relatively complex scoring system, which allows for some flexibility in the manner in which each company meets its legal commitments, each company is required to meet minimum requirements in terms of representation by previously disadvantaged groups. The matters covered include equity ownership, representation at employee and management level (up to the board of director level), procurement from black-owned businesses and social investment programs, amongst others.

The policies of Employment Equity and, particularly, Black Economic empowerment have been criticised both by those who view them as discriminatory against white people, and by those who view them as ineffectual.

These laws cause disproportionally high costs for small companies and reduce economic growth and employment. The laws may give the black middle-class some advantage but can make the worse-off blacks even poorer. Moreover, the Supreme Court has ruled that in principle blacks may be favored, but in practice this should not lead to unfair discrimination against the others.

Affirmative action purpose

Many embraced the act; however some concluded that the act contradicted itself. The act eliminates unfair discrimination in certain sectors of the national labour market by imposing similar constraints on another.

With the introduction of Affirmative Action, black economic empowerment (BEE) rose further in South Africa. The BEE was not a moral initiative to redress the wrongs of the past but to promote growth and strategies that aim to realize a country's full potential. The idea was targeting the weakest link in economics, which was inequality and which would help develop the economy. This is evident in the statement by the Department of Trade and Industry, "As such, this strategy stresses a BEE process that is associated with growth, development and enterprise development, and not merely the redistribution of existing wealth". Similarities between the BEE and affirmative action are apparent; however there is a difference. BEE focuses more on employment equality rather than taking wealth away from the skilled white labourers.

The main goal of affirmative action is for the country to reach its full potential. This would result in a completely diverse workforce in economic and social sectors, thus broadening the economic base and stimulating economic growth.

Once applied within the country, many different outcomes arose, some positive and some negative. This depended on the approach to and the view of The Employment Equality Act and affirmative action.

Positive: Pre-Democracy, the apartheid governments discriminated against non-white races, so with affirmative action, the country started to redress past discriminations. Affirmative action also focused on combating structural racism and racial inequality, hoping to maximize diversity in all levels of society and sectors. Achieving this would elevate the status of the perpetual underclass and to restore equal access to the benefits of society.

Negative: As with all policies, there have also been negative outcomes. A quota system was implemented, which aimed to achieve targets of diversity in a workforce. This target affected the hiring and level of skills in the workforce, ultimately impacting the free market. Affirmative action created marginalization for coloured and Indian races in South Africa, as well as developing and aiding the middle and elite classes, leaving the lower class behind. This created a bigger gap between the lower and middle class, which led to class struggles and a greater segregation. Entitlement began to arise with the growth of the middle and elite classes, as well as race entitlement. Some[who? ] assert that affirmative action is discrimination in reverse. Negative consequences of affirmative action, specifically the quota system, drove skilled labour away, resulting in bad economic growth. This is due to very few international companies wanting to invest in South Africa. As a result of the outcomes of affirmative action, the concept is continually evolving.

South African jurist Martin van Staden argues that the way affirmative action and transformation policies have been implemented in South Africa has eroded state institutions, grown corruption, and undermined the rule of law in the country.

There is affirmative action in education for minority nationalities. This may equate to lowering minimum requirements for the National University Entrance Examination, which is a mandatory exam for all students to enter university. Some universities set quotas for minority (non-Han) student intake. Further, minority students enrolled in ethnic minority-oriented specialties (e.g. language and literature programs) are provided with scholarships and/or pay no tuition, and are granted a monthly stipend.[citation needed ]

In her study of gender politics in Israel, Dafna Izraeli showed that the paradox of affirmative action for women directors is that the legitimation for legislating their inclusion on boards also resulted in the exclusion of women's interested as a legitimate issue on the boards' agendas. "The new culture of the men's club is seductive token women are under the pressure to become "social males" and prove that their competence as directors, meaning that they are not significantly different from men. In the negotiation for status as worthy peers, emphasizing gender signals that a woman is an "imposter", someone who does not rightfully belong in the position she is claiming to fill." And once affirmative action for women is fulfilled, and then affirmative action shares the element, as Izraeli put it, the "group equality discourse," making it easier for other groups to claim for a fairer distribution of resources. This suggests that affirmative action can have applications for different groups in Israel.

Reservation in India is a form of affirmative action designed to improve the well-being of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SC/ST), and Other Backward Classes (OBC), defined primarily by their caste. Members of these categories comprise about two-thirds of the population of India. According to the Constitution of India, up to 50% of all government-run higher education admissions and government job vacancies may be reserved for members of the SC/ST/OBC-NCL categories, and 10% for those in Economically Weaker Sections (EWS), with the remaining unreserved. In 2014, the Indian National Sample Survey found that 12% of surveyed Indian households had received academic scholarships, with 94% being on account of SC/ST/OBC membership, 2% based on financial weakness and 0.7% based on merit.

Indonesia has offered affirmative action for native Papuans in education, government civil worker selection, and police & army selection. After the 2019 Papua protests, many Papuan students chose to abandon their scholarship and return to their respective provinces. The program has been subject to criticism, with complaints made towards a lack of sufficient quotas and alleged corruption. Prabowo Subianto, Indonesian defense minister, has expressed that he will direct more effort towards recruiting Papuans to the Indonesian National Armed Forces. Education scholarship by Ministry of Education and Culture, called ADik to the native Papuans and students from perhipery regions close to Indonesian border.

The Malaysian New Economic Policy or NEP is a form of ethnicity-based affirmative action. Malaysia provides affirmative action to those that are deemed "Bumiputera", which includes the Malay population, Orang Asli, and the indigenous people of Sabah and Sarawak, who together form a majority of the population. However, the indigenous people of Malaysia (Orang Asli) do not have the same special rights of the rest of the Bumiputera as granted under Article 153, as the Orang Asli are not referenced within the article 153 itself.

The historical/common argument is that the Malays have lower incomes than the Chinese and Indians, who have traditionally been involved in businesses and industries, who were also general migrant workers. Malaysia is a multi-ethnic country, with Malays making up the majority of close to 52% of the population. About 23% of the population is of Chinese descent, while those of Indian descent comprise about 7% of the population.

The Malaysian New Economic Policy (NEP) has been dubbed a failure as of recent years, as evidence has pointed to the ever-growing wealth disparity among Malays, that have widened the gap between the rich and poor Malays, while the Malaysian New Economic Policy has been shown to benefit the existing rich Malays instead of achieving its intention of helping poor Malays.

( See also Bumiputra) The mean income for Malays, Chinese and Indians in 1957/58 were 134, 288 and 228 respectively. In 1967/68 it was 154, 329 and 245, and in 1970 it was 170, 390 and 300. Mean income disparity ratio for Chinese/Malays rose from 2.1 in 1957/58 to 2.3 in 1970, whereas for Indians/Malays the disparity ratio also rose from 1.7 to 1.8 in the same period.

In 1981 the Standardization policy of Sri Lankan universities was introduced as an affirmative action program for students from areas which had lower rates of education than other areas due to missionary activity in the north and east, which essentially were the Tamil areas. Successive governments cultivated a historical myth after the colonial powers had left that the British had practised communal favouritism towards Christians and the minority Tamil community for the entire 200 years they had controlled Sri Lanka. However, the Sinhalese in fact benefitted from trade and plantation cultivations over the rest of the other groups and their language and culture as well as the religion of Buddhism was fostered and made into mediums for schools over the Tamil language, which did not have the same treatment and Tamils learned English instead as there was no medium for Tamil until near independence. Tamils' knowledge of English and education came from the very American missionary activity by overseas Christians that the British were concerned will anger the Sinhalese and destroy their trading relationships, so they sent them to the Tamil areas instead to teach, thinking it would have no consequences and due to their small numbers. The British sending the missionaries to the north and east was for the protection of the Sinhalese and in fact, showed favouritism to the majority group instead of the minorities to maintain trading relationships and benefits from them. The Tamils, out of this random benefit from learning English and basic education excelled and flourished and were able to take many civil service jobs to the chagrin of the Sinhalese. The myth of Divide and Rule is untrue. The 'policy of standardisation' was typical of affirmative action policies, in that it required drastically lower standards for Sinhalese students than for the more academic Tamils who had to get about ten more marks to enter into universities. The policy in fact is an example of discrimination against the Tamil ethnic group.

A 2004 legislation requires that, for a firm with 100 employees or more wishing to compete for government contracts, at least 1 percent of its employees must be Taiwanese aborigines. Ministry of Education and Council of Aboriginal Affairs announced in 2002 that Taiwanese Aboriginal students would have their high-school or undergraduate entrance exams boosted by 33% for demonstrating some knowledge of their tribal language and culture. The percentage of boost have been revised several times, and the latest percentage is 35% in 2013.

Greenlanders have special advantages when applying for university, college or vocation university degrees in Denmark. With these specific rules, Greenlanders can get into degrees without the required grade averages by fulfilling certain criteria. They need to have a grade average of over 6,0 and have lived a certain number of years in Greenland. These rules have been in force since 1 January 2014.

In certain university education programs, including legal and medical education, there are quotas for persons who reach a certain standard of skills in the Swedish language; for students admitted in these quotas, the education is partially arranged in Swedish. The purpose of the quotas is to guarantee that a sufficient number of professionals with skills in Swedish are educated for nationwide needs. The quota system has met with criticism from the Finnish speaking majority, some of whom consider the system unfair. In addition to these linguistic quotas, women may get preferential treatment in recruitment for certain public sector jobs if there is a gender imbalance in the field.

No distinctions based on race, religion or sex are allowed under the 1958 French Constitution. Since the 1980s, a French version of affirmative action based on neighborhood is in place for primary and secondary education. Some schools, in neighborhoods labeled "Priority Education Zones", are granted more funds than the others. Students from these schools also benefit from special policies in certain institutions (such as Sciences Po).

The French Ministry of Defence tried in 1990 to make it easier for young French soldiers of North-African descent to be promoted in rank and obtain driving licenses. After a strong protest by a young French lieutenant in the Ministry of Defence newspaper ( Armées d'aujourd'hui), the driving license and rank plan was cancelled. After the Sarkozy election, a new attempt in favour of Arab-French students was made, but Sarkozy did not gain enough political support to change the French constitution. However, some French schools do implement affirmative action in that they are obligated to take a certain number of students from impoverished families.

Additionally, following the Norwegian example, after 27 January 2014, women must represent at least 20% of board members in all stock exchange listed or state-owned companies. After 27 January 2017, the proportion will increase to 40%. All appointments of males as directors will be invalid as long as the quota is not met, and monetary penalties may apply for other directors.

Article 3 of the German Basic Law provides for equal rights of all people regardless of sex, race or social background. There are programs stating that if men and women have equal qualifications, women have to be preferred for a job; moreover, the disabled should be preferred to non-disabled people. This is typical for all positions in state and university service as of 2007, typically using the phrase "We try to increase diversity in this line of work". In recent years, there has been a long public debate about whether to issue programs that would grant women a privileged access to jobs in order to fight discrimination. Germany's brought up the discussion about affirmative action in Germany's school system. According to Stefan Zillich, quotas should be "a possibility" to help working class children who did not do well in school gain access to a (University-preparatory school). Headmasters of Gymnasien have objected, saying that this type of policy would "be a disservice" to poor children.

In all public stock companies (ASA) boards, either gender should be represented by at least 40%. This affects roughly 400 companies of over 300,000 in total.

Seierstad & Opsahl in their study of the effects of affirmative action on presence, prominence, and social capital of women directors in Norway found that there are few boards chaired by a woman, from the beginning of the implementation of the affirmative action policy period to August 2009, the proportion of boards led by a woman has increased from 3.4% to 4.3%. This suggests that the law has had a marginal effect on the sex of the chair and the boards remain internally segregated. Although at the beginning of our observation period, only 7 of 91 prominent directors were women. The gender balance among prominent directors has changed considerably throughout the period, and at the end of the period, 107 women and 117 men were prominent directors. By applying more restrictive definitions of prominence, the proportion of directors who are women generally increases. If only considering directors with at least three directorships, 61.4% of them are women. When considering directors with seven or more directorships, all of them are women. Thus, affirmative action increases the female population in the director position.

Quota systems existed in the USSR for various social groups including ethnic minorities (as compensation of their " cultural backwardness"), women and factory workers.

Soon after the 1918 revolution, Inessa Armand, Lenin's secretary and lover, was instrumental in creating Zhenotdel, which functioned until the 1930s as part of the international egalitarian and affirmative action movements.

Quotas for access to university education, offices in the Soviet system and the Communist Party existed: for example, the position of First Secretary of a Soviet Republic's (or Autonomous Republic's) Party Committee was always filled by a representative of this republic's " titular ethnicity".

Modern Russia retains this system partially. Quotas are abolished, but preferences for some ethnic minorities and inhabitants of certain territories remain.

The Constitutional Court declared in October 2005 that affirmative action i.e. "providing advantages for people of an ethnic or racial minority group" as being against its Constitution.

The Equality Act 2010 established the principles of equality and their implementation in the UK. In the UK, any discrimination, quotas or favouritism due to sex, race and ethnicity among other "protected characteristics" is illegal by default in education, employment, during commercial transactions, in a private club or association, and while using public services, although exceptions exist, to wit: "Section 159 of the Equality Act 2010 allows an employer to treat an applicant or employee with a protected characteristic (eg race, sex or age) more favourably in connection with recruitment or promotion than someone without that characteristic who is as qualified for the role. The employer must reasonably think that people with the protected characteristic suffer a disadvantage or are under-represented in that particular activity. Taking the positive action must be a proportionate means of enabling or encouraging people to overcome the disadvantage or to take part in the activity.")

Specific exemptions include:

The equality section of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms explicitly permits affirmative action type legislation, although the Charter does not require legislation that gives preferential treatment. Subsection 2 of Section 15 states that the equality provisions do "not preclude any law, program or activity that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups including those that are disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability".

The Canadian Employment Equity Act requires employers in federally-regulated industries to give preferential treatment to four designated groups: Women, persons with disabilities, aboriginal peoples, and visible minorities. Less than one-third of Canadian Universities offer alternative admission requirements for students of aboriginal descent. Some provinces and territories also have affirmative action-type policies. For example, in the Northwest Territories in the Canadian north, aboriginal people are given preference for jobs and education and are considered to have P1 status. Non-aboriginal people who were born in the NWT or have resided half of their life there are considered a P2, as well as women and people with disabilities.

The policy of affirmative action dates to the Reconstruction Era in the United States, 1863-1877. Current policy was introduced in the early 1960s in the United States, as a way to combat racial discrimination in the hiring process, with the concept later expanded to address gender discrimination. Affirmative action was first created from Executive Order 10925, which was signed by President John F. Kennedy on 6 March 1961 and required that government employers "not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, creed, color, or national origin" and "take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin".

On 24 September 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed Executive Order 11246, thereby replacing Executive Order 10925 and affirming Federal Government's commitment "to promote the full realization of equal employment opportunity through a positive, continuing program in each executive department and agency". Affirmative action was extended to women by Executive Order 11375 which amended Executive Order 11246 on 13 October 1967, by adding "sex" to the list of protected categories. In the U.S. affirmative action's original purpose was to pressure institutions into compliance with the nondiscrimination mandate of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Civil Rights Acts do not cover discrimination based on veteran status, disabilities, or age that is 40 years and older. These groups may be protected from discrimination under different laws.

Affirmative action has been the subject of numerous court cases, and has been questioned upon its constitutional legitimacy. In 2003, a Supreme Court decision regarding affirmative action in higher education (Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 US 244 - Supreme Court 2003) permitted educational institutions to consider race as a factor when admitting students. Alternatively, some colleges use financial criteria to attract racial groups that have typically been under-represented and typically have lower living conditions. Some states such as California ( California Civil Rights Initiative), Michigan ( Michigan Civil Rights Initiative), and Washington ( Initiative 200) have passed constitutional amendments banning public institutions, including public schools, from practicing affirmative action within their respective states. In 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court held that "States may choose to prohibit the consideration of racial preferences in governmental decisions". By that time eight states, Oklahoma, New Hampshire, Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska, Michigan, Florida, Washington and California, had already banned affirmative action. Conservative activists have alleged that colleges quietly use illegal quotas to discriminate against people of Asian, Jewish, and Caucasian backgrounds and have launched numerous lawsuits to stop them.

Individuals of Maori or other Polynesian descent are often afforded improved access to university courses, or have scholarships earmarked specifically for them. Such access to University courses have in the past faced criticism, particularly at the University of Auckland due to a phenomenon known as Mismatch theory, accusations of setting the kids up to fail have been made due to a lack of transparency as to the preferred groups graduation rates and the university informing the students of such historical statistics dating back to the 1970s. Affirmative action is provided for under section 73 of the Human Rights Act 1993 and section 19(2) of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990.

Some Brazilian universities (state and federal) have created systems of preferred admissions (quotas) for racial minorities (blacks and Amerindians), the poor and people with disabilities. There are also quotas of up to 20% of vacancies reserved for people with disabilities in the civil public services. The Democrats party, accusing the board of directors of the University of Brasília for "resurrecting Nazist ideals", appealed to the Supreme Federal Court against the constitutionality of the quotas the university reserves for minorities. The Supreme Court unanimously approved their constitutionality on 26 April 2012.

The principle of affirmative action is to promote societal equality through the preferential treatment of socioeconomically disadvantaged people. Often, these people are disadvantaged for historical reasons, such as oppression or slavery. Historically and internationally, support for affirmative action has sought to achieve a range of goals: bridging inequalities in employment and pay; increasing access to education; enriching state, institutional, and professional leadership with the full spectrum of society; redressing apparent past wrongs, harms, or hindrances, in particular addressing the apparent social imbalance left in the wake of slavery and slave laws.

A 2017 study of temporary federal affirmative action regulation in the United States estimated that the regulation "increases the black share of employees over time: in 5 years after an establishment is first regulated, the black share of employees increases by an average of 0.8 percentage points. Strikingly, the black share continues to grow at a similar pace even after an establishment is deregulated. [The author] argue[s] that this persistence is driven in part by affirmative action inducing employers to improve their methods for screening potential hires."

According to a poll taken by in 2005, the majority of Americans support affirmative action for women, while views on minority groups were more split. Men are only slightly more likely to support affirmative action for women; though a majority of both do. However, a slight majority of Americans do believe that affirmative action goes beyond ensuring access and goes into the realm of preferential treatment. More recently, a Quinnipiac poll from June 2009 finds that 55% of Americans feel that affirmative action, in general, should be discontinued, though 55% support it for people with disabilities. A Gallup poll from 2005 showed that 72% of black Americans and 44% of white Americans supported racial affirmative action (with 21% and 49% opposing), with support and opposition among Hispanics falling between those of blacks and whites. Support among blacks, unlike among whites, had almost no correlation with political affiliation.

A Leger poll taken in 2010 found 59% of Canadians opposed considering race, gender, or ethnicity when hiring for government jobs.

A 2014 Pew Research Center poll found that 63% of Americans thought affirmative action programs aimed at increasing minority representation on college campuses were "a good thing", compared to 30% who thought they were "a bad thing". The following year, Gallup released a poll showing that 67% of Americans supported affirmative action programs aimed at increasing female representation, compared to 58% who supported such programs aimed at increasing the representation of racial minorities.

Some opponents of affirmative action argue that it is a form of reverse discrimination, that any effort to cure discrimination through affirmative action is wrong because it, in turn, is another form of discrimination. Some critics claim that court cases such as Fisher v. University of Texas, which held that colleges have some discretion to consider race when making admissions decisions, demonstrate how discrimination occurs in the name of affirmative action.

Critics of affirmative action suggest that programs may benefit the members of the targeted group that least need the benefit, that is those who have the greatest social, economic and educational advantages within the targeted group. Other beneficiaries may be described as wholly unqualified for the opportunity made available through affirmative action. They may argue that at the same time the people who lose the most to affirmative action are the least fortunate members of non-preferred groups.

Another criticism of affirmative action is that it may reduce the incentives of both the preferred and non-preferred to perform at their best. Beneficiaries of affirmative action may conclude that it is unnecessary to work as hard, and those who do not benefit may perceive hard work as futile.

Mismatching is the term given to the supposed negative effect that affirmative action has when it places a student into a college that is too difficult for them. For example, in the absence of affirmative action, a student will be admitted to a college that matches their academic ability and has a good chance of graduating. However, according to the mismatching hypothesis, affirmative action often places a student into a college that is too difficult, and this increases the student's chance of dropping out of the college or of their desired major. Thus, affirmative action hurts its intended beneficiaries, because it increases their dropout rates. Mismatching has also been cited as a contributing factor in lowered pursuit and completion of STEM degrees among certain populations.

Evidence in support of the mismatching theory was presented by Gail Heriot, a professor of law at the University of San Diego and a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, in a 24 August 2007 article published in The Wall Street Journal. Richard Sander concluded that there were 7.9% fewer black attorneys than there would have been if there had been no affirmative action. The article also states that because of mismatching, blacks are more likely to drop out of law school and fail bar exams.

Sander's paper on mismatching has been criticized by several law professors, including Ian Ayres and Richard Brooks from Yale who argue that eliminating affirmative action would actually reduce the number of black lawyers by 12.7%. A 2008 study by Jesse Rothstein and Albert H. Yoon confirmed Sander's mismatch findings, but also found that eliminating affirmative action would "lead to a 63 percent decline in black matriculants at all law schools and a 90 percent decline at elite law schools". These high numbers predictions were doubted in a review of previous studies by Peter Arcidiacono and Michael Lovenheim. Their 2016 article found a strong indication that affirmative action results in a mismatch effect. They argued that the attendance by some African-American students to less-selective schools would significantly improve the low first attempt rate at passing the state bar, but they cautioned that such improvements could be outweighed by decreases in law school attendance.

A 2016 study on affirmative action in India finds evidence for the mismatching hypothesis. In India 90% IIT-Roorkee dropouts are members of a backward caste.

Anderson, Elizabeth S. (2002). "Integration, affirmative action, and strict scrutiny". NYU Law Review. 77: 1195-271. Pdf.

Anderson, Kristin J. (2010). "'Affirmative Action is reverse racism': The myth of merit". Benign Bigotry: The Psychology of Subtle Prejudice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. pp. 278-334. ISBN 978-0-52-187835-7.

Anderson, Terry H. (2004). The pursuit of fairness: a history of affirmative action. Oxford New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195157642.

Bernstein, David E. (2022) Classified: The untold story of racial classification in America. Bombardier Books, NY. ISBN 1637581734.

Boxill, Bernard; Boxill, Jan (2005), "Affirmative action", in Frey, R.G.; Heath Wellman, Christopher (eds.), A companion to applied ethics, Blackwell Companions to Philosophy, Oxford, UK Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 89-101, doi:10.1002/9780470996621.ch9, ISBN 9781405133456.

Bolick, Clint (2008). "Affirmative Action". In Hamowy, Ronald (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage; Cato Institute. pp. 6-8. doi:10.4135/9781412965811.n5. ISBN 978-1-4129-6580-4. LCCN 2008009151. OCLC 750831024.

Bossuyt, Marc (17 June 2002). "United Nations Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights". UN Economic and Social Council. Archived from the original on 16 October 2015. E/CN.4/Sub.2/2002/21 Pdf.

Condit, Deirdre M.; Condit, Celeste M.; Achter, Paul J. (Spring 2001). "Human equality, affirmative action, and genetic models of human variation". Rhetoric & Public Affairs. 4 (1): 85-108. doi:10.1353/rap.2001.0003. JSTOR 41939651. S2CID 144851327.

Featherman, David L.; Hall, Martin; Krislov, Marvin, eds. (2010). The next twenty-five years: affirmative action in higher education in the United States and South Africa. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 9780472033775. Forewords by: Mary Sue Coleman, President of the University of Michigan and Njabulo Ndebele, Former Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of Cape Town. Details.

Ghorbal, Karim (2015). "Essence coloniale d'une politique contemporaine: pour une approche fanonienne de la discrimination positive en France". Culture & History Digital Journal. 4 (2): e016. doi:10.3989/chdj.2015.016.

Golland, David Hamilton (2008). Constructing affirmative action: federal contract compliance and the building construction trades, 1956-1973 (PhD thesis). City University of New York. OCLC 279305174. Order No. DA3325474.

Harpalani, Vinay (November 2012). "Diversity within racial groups and the constitutionality of race-conscious admissions". University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law. 15 (2): 463-537.

Harpalani, Vinay (February 2013). "Fisher's fishing expedition". University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law. 15 (1): 57-74. Pdf.

Heriot, Gail & Somin, Alison, Affirmative Action for Men?: Strange Silence and Strange Bedfellows in the Public Debate Over Discrimination Against Women in College Admissions, Engage (November 2011).

Stohler, Stephan (2021). "Untangling the Partisan Roots of Affirmative Action". Polity. 53 (1): 41-74.

Pollak, Oliver B. (1983). "Antisemitism, the Harvard Plan, and the roots of reverse discrimination". Jewish Social Studies. 45 (2): 113-22. JSTOR 4467214.

Vieth-Entus, Susanne (29 December 2008). Sozialquote: Berliner Gymnasien sollen mehr Schüler aus armen Familien aufnehmen. Der Tagesspiegel

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Affirmative action, also known as positive discrimination, involves sets of policies and practices within a government or organization seeking to include particular groups based on their gender, race, sexuality, creed or nationality in areas in which such groups are underrepresented - such as education and employment.

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General Reference (not clearly pro or con)

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) published a report on Dec. 15, 2004 titled "Affirmative Action Revisited: A Legal History and Prospectus":

"The origins of affirmative action law may be traced to the early 1960's... Judicial rulings from this period recognized an 'affirmative duty,' cast upon local school boards by the Equal Protection Clause, to desegregate formerly 'dual school' systems and to eliminate 'root and branch' the last 'vestiges' of state-enforced segregation...

Congress and the Executive Branch soon followed by adopting a panoply of laws and regulations authorizing, either directly or by judicial or administrative interpretation, 'race-conscious' strategies to promote minority opportunity in jobs, education, and governmental contracting. The basic statutory framework for affirmative action in employment and education derives from the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Public and private employers with 15 or more employees are subject to a comprehensive code of equal employment opportunity regulations under Title VII of the 1964 Act...

Official approval of 'affirmative action' remedies was further codified by federal regulations construing the 1964 Act's Title VI, which prohibits racial or ethnic discrimination in all federally assisted 'programs' and activities, including public or private educational institutions. The Office of Civil Rights of the Department of Education interpreted Title VI to require schools and colleges to take affirmative action to overcome the effects of past discrimination and to encourage 'voluntary affirmative action to attain a diverse student body.'"
Dec. 15, 2004 - "Affirmative Action Revisited: A Legal History and Prospectus" Congressional Research Service

PRO (yes)

Pro

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) stated the following in its Mar. 21, 2008 publication "Striving for Equal Opportunity: Why the ACLU Supports Affirmative Action," available at www.aclu.org:

"We have come a long way since the Civil Rights Movement, and many Americans feel that the time for affirmative action is over. Opportunities for women and people of color have expanded, and many believe that the unequal conditions that once justified affirmative action no longer exist. Sadly, this is just not true. Millions of Americans continue to experience race and gender barriers in education, contracting and employment. Existing laws help to prevent outright discrimination on the basis of race and gender, but they alone are not enough to create equal opportunities for every American.

Affirmative action programs - including targeted outreach and recruitment efforts, the use of non-traditional criteria for hiring and admissions, after-school and mentorship programs, and training and apprenticeship opportunities - are tailored to fit specific instances where race and gender must be taken into account in order to provide fair and equal access to minorities and women. These programs recognize and strive to correct the barriers that continue to block the paths of many individual Americans, including women, Native Americans, Arab Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and African Americans. Affirmative action helps ensure equal access to opportunities and brings our nation closer to the ideal of giving everyone a fair chance. We support affirmative action and other race- and gender-conscious policies as vital tools in the struggle to provide all Americans with equal opportunity, to promote diversity in academic and professional settings, and to give each and every one of us a fair chance to compete."
Mar. 21, 2008 - American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)

Pro

Reginald T. Shuford, JD, Senior Staff Attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation Racial Justice Program, stated the following in his May 21, 2009 article "Why Affirmative Action Remains Essential in the Age of Obama," published in the Campbell Law Review:

"[W]hether in the arenas of housing, employment, education, wealth, health care, or the justice system, African- Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans continue to lag way behind others. By way of example, according to one study of over 1300 employers in Boston and Chicago, job applicants with 'white-sounding' names are twice as likely to be called back for interviews as equally qualified applicants with 'black-sounding' names. More than one million students will not graduate from high school this year, and a disproportionate number of them will be African-American, Latino, or Native American. African-American women, moreover, earn only sixty-three cents per hour and Hispanic women only fiftytwo cents per hour for every dollar a white man earns for similar employment. Given its well-documented effectiveness, affirmative action is an appropriate tool for combating these and other ongoing disparities...

While it is abundantly clear that America has made laudable progress towards racial equality- as reflected, in part, by the election of Barack Obama as the nation's forty-fourth president... America's promise of a fully inclusive society has not materialized. In light of all the relevant evidence, America has not fulfilled Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream of a truly equal society. While Obama's election qualifies as a down payment on equality, much more remains to be done. Affirmative action- which is just one of many effective tools for expanding opportunity- remains essential for the full inclusion of all of those who historically have been and continue to be structurally relegated to the margins of society, and who are increasingly left further behind in the race to achieve the American Dream."
May 21, 2009 - Reginald T. Shuford, JD

Pro

Barack Obama, JD, 44th President of the United States, provided the following statement on affirmative action to the NAACP "2008 Voter Action Center," (accessed Nov. 16, 2009):

"I support affirmative action. When there is strong evidence of prolonged and systemic discrimination by organizations, affirmative action may be the only meaningful remedy available. Given the dearth of black and Latino Ph.D. candidates in mathematics and the sciences, for example, a scholarship program for minorities interested in getting advanced degrees in these fields won't keep white students out of such programs, but can broaden the pool of talent that we need to prosper in the new economy. We shouldn't ignore that race continues to matter: To suggest that our racial attitudes play no part in the socio-economic disparities that we often observe turns a blind eye to both our history and our experience - and relieves us of the responsibility to make things right."
Nov. 16, 2009 - Barack Obama, JD

Pro

Scott Plous, PhD, Professor of Psychology at Wesleyan University, wrote in his article "Ten Myths About Affirmative Action," posted on his website (accessed Aug. 17, 2005):

Pro

The National Organization for Women (NOW), a national feminist organization, stated the following in its article "Talking About Affirmative Action," available at www.now.org (accessed Nov. 19, 2009):

"Affirmative Action levels the playing field so people of color and all women have the chance to compete in education and in business. White men hold 95% to 97% of the high-level corporate jobs. And that's with affirmative action programs in place. Imagine how low figures would be without affirmative action...

Despite the enormous gains made by the civil rights and women's rights movements, women and people of color still face unfair obstacles in business and education. An astonishing 70% of schools are not in compliance with Title IX, the federal equal education opportunity law...

Affirmative Action programs merely acknowledge that hundreds of years of discrimination cannot be erased in a few decades and still hold women and people of color back. Affirmative Action is the bridge between changing the laws and changing the culture.

The radical right wing would have us believe that women and people of color earn less because we don't work as hard or we're not as smart. That simply isn't the case. Laws have changed, but discrimination persists. Affirmative Action only opens doors, women and people of color have to walk through those doors by themselves."
Nov. 19, 2009 - National Organization for Women (NOW)

CON (no)

Con

John A. Farrell, Contributing Editor at US News and World Report, stated the following in his June 10, 2009 article "Obama's Election Shows That Affirmative Action's Day Has Passed," published in US News and World Report:

"In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Barbara Grutter, a [white] college grad who sued the University of Michigan law school because it employed racial preferences in its admissions process to achieve academic diversity.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor joined the court's four liberal justices to keep affirmative action alive that day, in a 5-to-4 decision. But the moment was fast approaching, O'Connor said, when the promotion of people of color, solely because of their race, would not be justified.

No one knew precisely when the tipping point would be reached, O'Connor wrote, but 'the court expects that 25 years from now the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary.' Five years later, Barack Obama was elected president of the United States.

Obama's election was the sign we've been waiting for. It is time we do away with preferences and recognize people, as Martin Luther King urged us, by the content of their character. Today, a black man sits in the Oval Office, having narrowly defeated a woman for the Democratic nomination whom, to considerable acclaim, he then appointed secretary of state."
June 10, 2009 - John A. Farrell

Con

Clint Bolick, JD, Director of the Goldwater Institute, stated the following in his June 29, 2009 article "The Supreme Court and New Haven's Firefighters," published in Forbes:

"When blacks and Hispanics flunk examinations, the cause is less likely to be discrimination than the appalling educational conditions to which most economically disadvantaged black and Hispanic children are consigned. 'Affirmative action' programs that leap-frog less-qualified minorities over more-qualified non-minorities sweep those systemic problems under the carpet. As such, race-based affirmative action programs perpetuate fraud upon the very groups they are designed to help."
June 29, 2009 - Clint Bolick, JD

Con

Ward Connerly, former University of California Regent, in his Mar. 27. 2000 interview with Salon.com titled "A 'Poison' Divides Us," stated:

Con

Jeff Jacoby, JD, Columnist at the Boston Globe, wrote in his Mar. 19, 2004 article titled "On Flattering Minorities" for Townhall.com:

Con

Dana White, International Communications Associate at the Heritage Foundation, wrote in her June 27, 2003 article titled "Who Says I'm Inferior?":

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Does the US Need Affirmative Action? - ACLU - ProCon.org

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The Congressional Research Service (CRS) published a report on Dec. 15, 2004 titled "Affirmative Action Revisited: A Legal History and Prospectus": "The origins of affirmative action law may be traced to the early 1960's...

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This article was most recently revised and updated by

Affirmative action, in the United States, an active effort to improve employment or educational opportunities for members of minority groups and for women. Affirmative action began as a government remedy to the effects of long-standing discrimination against such groups and has consisted of policies, programs, and procedures that give limited preferences to minorities and women in job hiring, admission to institutions of higher education, the awarding of government contracts, and other social benefits. The typical criteria for affirmative action are race, disability, gender, ethnic origin, and age.

Affirmative action was initiated by the administration of President Lyndon Johnson (1963-69) in order to improve opportunities for African Americans while civil rights legislation was dismantling the legal basis for discrimination. The federal government began to institute affirmative action policies under the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and an executive order in 1965. Businesses receiving federal funds were prohibited from using aptitude tests and other criteria that tended to discriminate against African Americans. Affirmative action programs were monitored by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Subsequently, affirmative action was broadened to cover women and Native Americans, Hispanics, and other minorities and was extended to colleges and universities and state and federal agencies.

By the late 1970s the use of racial quotas and minority set-asides led to court challenges of affirmative action as a form of " reverse discrimination." The first major challenge was Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (5-4) that quotas may not be used to reserve places for minority applicants if white applicants are denied a chance to compete for those places. Although the court outlawed quota programs, it allowed colleges to use race as a factor in making admissions decisions. Two years later a fragmented court upheld a 1977 federal law requiring that 10 percent of funds for public works be allotted to qualified minority contractors.

The Supreme Court began to impose significant restrictions on race-based affirmative action in 1989. In several decisions that year, the court gave greater weight to claims of reverse discrimination, outlawed the use of minority set-asides in cases where prior racial discrimination could not be proved, and placed limits on the use of racial preferences by states that were stricter than those it applied to the federal government. In Adarand Constructors v. Pena (1995), the court ruled that federal affirmative action programs were unconstitutional unless they fulfilled a "compelling governmental interest."

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Opposition to affirmative action in California culminated in the passage in 1996 of the California Civil Rights Initiative (Proposition 209), which prohibited all government agencies and institutions from giving preferential treatment to individuals on the basis of their race or sex. The Supreme Court effectively upheld the constitutionality of Proposition 209 in November 1997 by refusing to hear a challenge to its enforcement. Legislation similar to Proposition 209 was subsequently proposed in other states and was passed in Washington in 1998. The Supreme Court also upheld a lower-court ruling that struck down as unconstitutional the University of Texas's affirmative action program, arguing in Hopwood v. University of Texas Law School (1996) that there was no compelling state interest to warrant using race as a factor in admissions decisions. Afterward, there were further legislative and electoral challenges to affirmative action in many parts of the country. In the Bollinger decisions (2003), two landmark rulings involving admissions to the University of Michigan and its law school, the Supreme Court reaffirmed the constitutionality of affirmative action ( v. Bollinger), though it also ruled that race could not be the preeminent factor in such decisions, striking down the university's undergraduate admissions policy that awarded points to students on the basis of race ( v. Bollinger). Three years later admissions policies of the kind approved in Grutter were outlawed in Michigan under a state constitutional amendment banning race-based and other discrimination or preferential treatment "in public employment, public education, or public contracting." The Supreme Court upheld the amendment as it applied to admissions policies in Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action (2014). In 2013 in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, the Supreme Court vacated and remanded an appeals court decision that had rejected a challenge to an affirmative action program modeled on the one approved in Gratz, finding that the lower court had not subjected the program to strict scrutiny, the most-demanding form of judicial review. After the appeals court upheld the program a second time, the Supreme Court affirmed that decision (2016), determining that strict scrutiny had been satisfied.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Brian Duignan, Senior Editor.

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affirmative action | Definition, History, & Cases

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This article was most recently revised and updated by Affirmative action, in the United States, an active effort to improve employment or educational opportunities for members of minority groups and for women.

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gerrymandering, in U.S. politics, the practice of drawing the boundaries of electoral districts in a way that gives one political party an unfair advantage over its rivals (political or partisan gerrymandering) or that dilutes the voting power of members of ethnic or linguistic minority groups (racial gerrymandering). The term is derived from the name of Gov. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, whose administration enacted a law in 1812 defining new state senatorial districts. The law consolidated the Federalist Party vote in a few districts and thus gave disproportionate representation to Democratic-Republicans. The outline of one of these districts was thought to resemble a salamander. A satirical cartoon by Elkanah Tisdale that appeared in the Boston Gazette graphically transformed the districts into a fabulous animal, "The Gerry-mander," fixing the term in the popular imagination.

A basic objection to gerrymandering of any kind is that it tends to violate two tenets of electoral apportionment-compactness and equality of size of constituencies. The constitutional significance of the latter principle was set forth in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling issued in 1962, Baker v. Carr, in which the Court held that the failure of the legislature of Tennessee to reapportion state legislative districts to take into account significant changes in district populations had effectively reduced the weight of votes cast in more populous districts, amounting to a violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In 1963, in Gray v. Sanders, the Court first articulated the principle of "one person, one vote" in striking down Georgia's county-based system for counting votes in Democratic primary elections for the office of U.S. senator. One year later, in Wesberry v. Sanders, the Court declared that congressional electoral districts must be drawn in such a way that, "as nearly as is practicable, one man's vote in a congressional election is to be worth as much as another's." And in the same year, the Court affirmed, in Reynolds v. Sims, that "the Equal Protection Clause requires that the seats in both houses of a bicameral state legislature must be apportioned on a population basis."

Regarding cases of gerrymandering based on race, the Supreme Court has held (in Thornburg v. Gingles, 1986) that such practices are incompatible with Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (as amended in 1982), which generally prohibits voting standards or practices whose practical effect is that members of racial minority groups "have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to...elect representatives of their choice." In Shaw v. Reno (1993), the Court ruled that electoral districts whose boundaries cannot be explained except on the basis of race can be challenged as potential violations of the equal protection clause, and in Miller v. Johnson (1995) it held that the equal protection clause also prohibits the use of race as the "predominant factor" in drawing electoral-district boundaries.

Until the 1980s, disputes regarding political gerrymandering were generally considered nonjusticiable (not decidable by federal courts) on the presumption that they presented "political questions" that are properly decided by the legislative or the executive branch. In Davis v. Bandemer (1986), however, a plurality of the Supreme Court held that political gerrymanders could be found unconstitutional (under the equal protection clause) if the resulting electoral system "is arranged in a manner that will consistently degrade a voter's or a group of voters' influence in the political process as a whole." A majority of the Court also agreed that the instance of gerrymandering before it did not display any of the "identifying characteristics of a nonjusticiable political question" that had been laid out in Baker v. Carr, including, as the Baker Court had put it, "a lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving it." Although the majority in Bandemer could not agree on what standards should be used to adjudicate challenges to political gerrymanders, it refused to accept that none existed, declaring on that basis that "we decline to hold that such claims are never justiciable."

In 2004, in Vieth v. Jubelirer, a plurality of the Court pointedly embraced what the Bandemer Court had declined to hold, on the grounds that "no judicially discernible and manageable standards for adjudicating political gerrymandering claims have emerged" since the Bandemer decision. Although siding with the plurality in rejecting the challenge to the political gerrymander in question, Justice Anthony Kennedy asserted that it had not been long enough since the Bandemer decision to conclude that no suitable standards could ever emerge ("by the timeline of the law 18 years is rather a short period"). Pointing to the rapid development and routine use of computer-assisted districting, he argued that such technologies "may produce new methods of analysis that...would facilitate court efforts to identify and remedy the burdens" imposed by political gerrymanders, "with judicial intervention limited by the derived standards."

Just such a standard was proposed in Gill v. Whitford (2018), a challenge to a Wisconsin redistricting law enacted by the Republican-controlled state legislature following the 2010 decennial census. In that case, the plaintiffs argued that the discriminatory effects of the redistricting plan could be measured objectively by comparing the "efficiency" of votes cast for Republican or Democratic candidates in state legislative elections since 2012. Political gerrymandering characteristically results in a greater number of "wasted" votes for the disfavoured party (i.e., votes for a losing candidate or votes for a winning candidate in excess of the number needed to win), a discrepancy that can be represented as an "efficiency gap" between the parties when the difference between wasted votes is divided by the total number of votes cast. The plaintiffs argued that efficiency gaps of 7 percent or greater were legally significant because they were more likely than smaller gaps to persist through the 10-year life of a redistricting plan. The Court's ruling, however, did not consider whether the efficiency gap amounted to the "judicially discernible and manageable" standard it had been waiting for. Instead, the justices held unanimously (9-0) that the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue, and the case was remanded (7-2) to the district court for further argument.

Following Kennedy's retirement in 2018, the Supreme Court once again took up the issue of the justiciability of political gerrymandering claims in Rucho v. Common Cause (2019). There the Court's conservative majority, over the bitter objections of its more liberal members, declared (5-4) that "partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts."

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Gerrymandering | Definition, Litigation, & Facts

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Gerrymandering, in U.S. politics, the practice of drawing the boundaries of electoral districts in a way that gives one political party an unfair advantage over its rivals (political or partisan gerrymandering) or that dilutes the voting power of members of ethnic or linguistic minority groups (racial gerrymandering).

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View the entire Explainers collection

After the Census Bureau released detailed population and demographic data from the 2020 census, states and local governments began the once-a-decade process of drawing new voting district boundaries known as redistricting. And gerrymandering - when those boundaries are drawn with the intention of influencing who gets elected - followed.

The latest redistricting cycle was the first since the Supreme Court's 2019 ruling that gerrymandering for party advantage cannot be challenged in federal court. Here are six things to know about partisan gerrymandering and how it impacts our democracy.

Gerrymandering is deeply undemocratic.

Every 10 years, states redraw their legislative and congressional district lines following the census. Because communities change, redistricting is critical to our democracy: maps must be redrawn to ensure that districts are equally populated, comply with laws such as the Voting Rights Act, and are otherwise representative of a state's population. Done right, redistricting is a chance to create maps that, in the words of John Adams, are an "exact portrait, a miniature" of the people as a whole.

But sometimes the process is used to draw maps that put a thumb on the scale to manufacture election outcomes that are detached from the preferences of voters. Rather than voters choosing their representatives, gerrymandering empowers politicians to choose their voters. This tends to occur especially when line drawing is left to legislatures and one political party controls the process, as has become increasingly common. When that happens, partisan concerns almost invariably take precedence over all else. That produces maps where electoral results are virtually guaranteed even in years where the party drawing maps has a bad year.

There are multiple ways to gerrymander.

While legislative and congressional district shapes may look wildly different from state to state, most attempts to gerrymander can best be understood through the lens of two basic techniques: cracking and packing.

Cracking splits groups of people with similar characteristics, such as voters of the same party affiliation, across multiple districts. With their voting strength divided, these groups struggle to elect their preferred candidates in any of the districts.

Packing is the opposite of cracking: map drawers cram certain groups of voters into as few districts as possible. In these few districts, the "packed" groups are likely to elect their preferred candidates, but the groups' voting strength is weakened everywhere else.

Some or all of these techniques may be deployed by map drawers in order to build a partisan advantage into the boundaries of districts. A key note, however: while sometimes gerrymandering results in oddly shaped districts, that isn't always the case. Cracking and packing can often result in regularly shaped districts that look appealing to the eye but nonetheless skew heavily in favor of one party.

Gerrymandering has a real impact on the balance of power in Congress and many state legislatures.

In 2010, Republicans - in an effort to control the drawing of congressional maps - forged a campaign to win majorities in as many state legislatures as possible. It was wildly successful, giving them control over the drawing of 213 congressional districts. The redrawing of maps that followed produced some of the most extreme gerrymanders in history. In battleground Pennsylvania, for example, the congressional map gave Republicans a virtual lock on 13 of the state's 18 congressional districts, even in elections where Democrats won the majority of the statewide congressional vote.

Nationally, extreme partisan bias in congressional maps gave Republicans a net 16 to 17 seat advantage for most of last decade. Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania alone - the three states with the worst gerrymanders in the last redistricting cycle - accounted for 7 to 10 extra Republican seats in the House.

On the state level, gerrymandering has also led to significant partisan bias in maps. For example, in 2018, Democrats in Wisconsin won every statewide office and a majority of the statewide vote, but thanks to gerrymandering, won only 36 of the 99 seats in the state assembly.

Though Republicans were the primary beneficiaries of gerrymandering last decade, Democrats have also used redistricting for partisan ends: in Maryland, for instance, Democrats used control over map-drawing to eliminate one of the state's Republican congressional districts.

Regardless of which party is responsible for gerrymandering, it is ultimately the public who loses out. Rigged maps make elections less competitive, in turn making even more Americans feel like their votes don't matter.

Gerrymandering affects all Americans, but its most significant costs are borne by communities of color.

Residential segregation and racially polarized voting patterns, especially in southern states, mean that targeting communities of color can be an effective tool for creating advantages for the party that controls redistricting. This is true regardless of whether it is Democrats or Republicans drawing the maps.

The Supreme Court's 2019 decision in Rucho v. Common Cause greenlighting partisan gerrymandering has made things worse. The Voting Rights Act and the Constitution prohibit racial discrimination in redistricting. But because there often is correlation between party preference and race, Rucho opens the door for Republican-controlled states to defend racially discriminatory maps on grounds that they were permissibly discriminating against Democrats rather than impermissibly discriminating against Black, Latino, or Asian voters.

Targeting the political power of communities of color is also often a key element of partisan gerrymandering. This is especially the case in the South, where white Democrats are a comparatively small part of the electorate and often live, problematically from the standpoint of a gerrymanderer, very close to white Republicans. Even with slicing and dicing, discriminating against white Democrats only moves the political dial so much. Because of residential segregation, it is much easier for map drawers to pack or crack communities of color to achieve maximum political advantage.

Gerrymandering is getting worse.

Gerrymandering is a political tactic nearly as old as the United States. In designing Virginia's very first congressional map, Patrick Henry attempted to draw district boundaries that would block his rival, James Madison, from winning a seat. But gerrymandering has also changed dramatically since the founding: today, intricate computer algorithms and sophisticated data about voters allow map drawers to game redistricting on a massive scale with surgical precision. Where gerrymanderers once had to pick from a few maps drawn by hand, they now can create and pick from thousands of computer-generated maps.

Gerrymandering also looks likely to get worse because the legal framework governing redistricting has not kept up with demographic changes. Before, most people of color in the country's metro areas lived in highly segregated cities. Today, however, a majority of Black, Latino, and Asian Americans live in diverse suburbs. This change has given rise to powerful new multiracial voting coalitions outside cities such as Atlanta, Dallas, and Houston that have won or come close to winning power. Yet the Supreme Court has not granted these multiracial coalition districts the same legal protections as majority-minority districts, making them a key target for dismantling by partisan map drawers.

Federal reform can help counter gerrymandering - so Congress needs to act.

The Freedom to Vote Act, a landmark piece of federal democracy reform legislation that has already passed the House, represents a major step toward curbing political gamesmanship in map drawing. The bill would enhance transparency, strengthen protections for communities of color, and ban partisan gerrymandering in congressional redistricting. It would also improve voters' ability to challenge gerrymandered maps in court.

With redistricting now beginning in many states, the need for Congress to pass reform legislation is more urgent than ever. Fair representation depends on it.

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The practice has been a thorn in the side of democracy for centuries, and with the new round of redistricting it's a bigger threat than ever.

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Most U.S. adults support the death penalty for people convicted of murder, according to an April 2021 Pew Research Center survey. At the same time, majorities believe the death penalty is not applied in a racially neutral way, does not deter people from committing serious crimes and does not have enough safeguards to prevent an innocent person from being executed.

Use of the death penalty has gradually declined in the United States in recent decades. A growing number of states have abolished it, and death sentences and executions have become less common. But the story is not one of continuous decline across all levels of government. While state-level executions have decreased, the federal government put more prisoners to death under President Donald Trump than at any point since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.

As debates over the death penalty continue in the U.S., here's a closer look at public opinion on the issue, as well as key facts about the nation's use of capital punishment.

Six-in-ten U.S. adults strongly or somewhat favor the death penalty for convicted murderers, according to the April 2021 survey. A similar share (64%) say the death penalty is morally justified when someone commits a crime like murder.

Support for capital punishment is strongly associated with the view that it is morally justified in certain cases. Nine-in-ten of those who favor the death penalty say it is morally justified when someone commits a crime like murder; only a quarter of those who oppose capital punishment see it as morally justified.

A majority of Americans have concerns about the fairness of the death penalty and whether it serves as a deterrent against serious crime. More than half of U.S. adults (56%) say Black people are more likely than White people to be sentenced to death for committing similar crimes. About six-in-ten (63%) say the death penalty does not deter people from committing serious crimes, and nearly eight-in-ten (78%) say there is some risk that an innocent person will be executed.

Opinions about the death penalty vary by party, education and race and ethnicity. Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are much more likely than Democrats and Democratic leaners to favor the death penalty for convicted murderers (77% vs. 46%). Those with less formal education are also more likely to support it: Around two-thirds of those with a high school diploma or less (68%) favor the death penalty, compared with 63% of those with some college education, 49% of those with a bachelor's degree and 44% of those with a postgraduate degree. Majorities of White (63%), Asian (63%) and Hispanic adults (56%) support the death penalty, but Black adults are evenly divided, with 49% in favor and 49% opposed.

Views of the death penalty differ by religious affiliation. Around two-thirds of Protestants in the U.S. (66%) favor capital punishment, though support is much higher among White evangelical Protestants (75%) and White non-evangelical Protestants (73%) than it is among Black Protestants (50%). Around six-in-ten Catholics (58%) also support capital punishment, a figure that includes 61% of Hispanic Catholics and 56% of White Catholics.

Opposition to the death penalty also varies among the religiously unaffiliated. Around two-thirds of atheists (65%) oppose it, as do more than half of agnostics (57%). Among those who say their religion is "nothing in particular," 63% support capital punishment.

Support for the death penalty is consistently higher in online polls than in phone polls. Survey respondents sometimes give different answers depending on how a poll is conducted. In a series of contemporaneous Pew Research Center surveys fielded online and on the phone between September 2019 and August 2020, Americans consistently expressed more support for the death penalty in a self-administered online format than in a survey administered on the phone by a live interviewer. This pattern was more pronounced among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents than among Republicans and GOP leaners, according to an analysis of the survey results.

Phone polls have shown a long-term decline in public support for the death penalty. In phone surveys conducted by Pew Research Center between 1996 and 2020, the share of U.S. adults who favor the death penalty fell from 78% to 52%, while the share of Americans expressing opposition rose from 18% to 44%. Phone surveys conducted by Gallup found a similar decrease in support for capital punishment during this time span.

A majority of states have the death penalty, but far fewer use it regularly. As of July 2021, the death penalty is authorized by 27 states and the federal government - including the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. military - and prohibited in 23 states and the District of Columbia, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. But even in many of the jurisdictions that authorize the death penalty, executions are rare: 13 of these states, along with the U.S. military, haven't carried out an execution in a decade or more. That includes three states - California, Oregon and Pennsylvania - where governors have imposed formal moratoriums on executions.

A growing number of states have done away with the death penalty in recent years, either through legislation or a court ruling. Virginia, which has carried out more executions than any state except Texas since 1976, abolished capital punishment in 2021. It followed Colorado (2020), New Hampshire (2019), Washington (2018), Delaware (2016), Maryland (2013), Connecticut (2012), Illinois (2011), New Mexico (2009), New Jersey (2007) and New York (2004).

Death sentences have steadily decreased in recent decades. There were 2,570 people on death row in the U.S. at the end of 2019, down 29% from a peak of 3,601 at the end of 2000, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). New death sentences have also declined sharply: 31 people were sentenced to death in 2019, far below the more than 320 who received death sentences each year between 1994 and 1996. In recent years, prosecutors in some U.S. cities - including Orlando and Philadelphia - have vowed not to seek the death penalty, citing concerns over its application.

Nearly all (98%) of the people who were on death row at the end of 2019 were men. Both the mean and median age of the nation's death row population was 51. Black prisoners accounted for 41% of death row inmates, far higher than their 13% share of the nation's adult population that year. White prisoners accounted for 56%, compared with their 77% share of the adult population. (For both Black and White Americans, these figures include those who identify as Hispanic. Overall, about 15% of death row prisoners in 2019 identified as Hispanic, according to BJS.)

Annual executions are far below their peak level. Nationally, 17 people were put to death in 2020, the fewest since 1991 and far below the modern peak of 98 in 1999, according to BJS and the Death Penalty Information Center. The COVID-19 outbreak disrupted legal proceedings in much of the country in 2020, causing some executions to be postponed.

Even as the overall number of executions in the U.S. fell to a 29-year low in 2020, the federal government ramped up its use of the death penalty. The Trump administration executed 10 prisoners in 2020 and another three in January 2021; prior to 2020, the federal government had carried out a total of three executions since 1976.

The Biden administration has taken a different approach from its predecessor. In July 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland ordered a halt in federal executions while the Justice Department reviews its policies and procedures.

The average time between sentencing and execution in the U.S. has increased sharply since the 1980s. In 1984, the average time between sentencing and execution was 74 months, or a little over six years, according to BJS. By 2019, that figure had more than tripled to 264 months, or 22 years. The average prisoner awaiting execution at the end of 2019, meanwhile, had spent nearly 19 years on death row.

A variety of factors explain the increase in time spent on death row, including lengthy legal appeals by those sentenced to death and challenges to the way states and the federal government carry out executions, including the drugs used in lethal injections. In California, more death row inmates have died from natural causes or suicide than from executions since 1978, according to the state's Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Note: This is an update to a post originally published May 28, 2015.

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10 facts about the death penalty in the U.S.

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Here's a closer look at public opinion on the death penalty, as well as key facts about the nation's use of capital punishment.

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Since 1977, one year after the US Supreme Court reaffirmed the constitutionality of the death penalty, more than 1,480 people have been executed, primarily by means of lethal injection. Most death penalty cases involve the execution of murderers although capital punishment can also be applied for treason, espionage, and other crimes.

Proponents of the death penalty say it is an important tool for preserving law and order, deters crime, and costs less than life imprisonment. They argue that retribution or "an eye for an eye" honors the victim, helps console grieving families, and ensures that the perpetrators of heinous crimes never have an opportunity to cause future tragedy.

Opponents of capital punishment say it has no deterrent effect on crime, wrongly gives governments the power to take human life, and perpetuates social injustices by disproportionately targeting people of color (racist) and people who cannot afford good attorneys (classist). They say lifetime jail sentences are a more severe and less expensive punishment than death.

PROS & CONS BY CATEGORY

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Death Penalty - Pros & Cons - ProCon.org

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The pros and cons of the death penalty debate include aguments for and against life imprisonment, crime deterrence, and methods like hanging.

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Six-in-ten U.S. adults say gun violence is a very big problem in the country today, up 9 percentage points from spring 2022.

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© Stephanie Frey/Fotolia

" Gun control" refers to any legal measure intended to prevent or restrict the possession or use of guns, particularly firearms. (In a broader historical sense, the term also refers to legal limits on the possession or use of other arms, including those that predate the invention of gunpowder.) In most developed countries, gun control is strict and uncontroversial. In others it is a fraught political issue, pitting those who regard it as necessary for public safety against those who view it as a dangerous infringement of personal liberty.

Nowhere in the world is gun control more controversial than in the United States, where gun possession is constitutionally protected but where murders (including mass murders) committed with guns are extremely common; the United States has by far the highest homicide-by-firearm rate among developed countries. Proponents of increased gun control in the United States argue that limiting access to guns will save lives and reduce crime; opponents insist that it would actually do the opposite by preventing law-abiding citizens from defending themselves against armed criminals.

The gun-control debate in the United States also necessarily concerns the proper interpretation of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which reads, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." In keeping with the first clause of the amendment (the preamble), most U.S. courts, until the early 21st century, had understood it to guarantee the right of states to maintain militias or the right of individuals to "keep and bear arms" in connection with their service in a state militia, an interpretation that was consistent with a wide variety of existing restrictions on individual gun ownership and use. In United States v. Miller (1939), for example, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment did not prohibit laws requiring the registration of sawed-off shotguns, because such weapons did not have a "reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia." In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), however, the Supreme Court for the first time explicitly recognized an individual right to use firearms independent of service in a state militia for traditionally lawful purposes, including self-defense within the home. Two years later, the court held (in ) that this interpretation of the amendment was applicable against state and local gun-control laws as well as against federal statutes.

In the United States, mass murders committed with guns are so frequent that the vast majority of them are not even mentioned in mainstream media outlets. Those that happen to be massive or heinous enough to gain national attention-including the murder of 49 people in an Orlando nightclub in 2016 and the massacre of 20 children and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012-typically spark a short-lived and fruitless debate about the need for stricter gun control. Politicians of both major parties, fearful of retaliation from the National Rifle Association (NRA), solemnly offer their "thoughts and prayers" while refusing to enact reasonable and constitutional measures now favored by a majority of Americans, such as expanded background checks for gun purchases and the reinstatement of a federal ban on assault weapons, which Congress allowed to lapse in 2004.

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Public safety versus individual liberty-what does it mean to control people's access to firearms?

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Introduction

The debate over gun control in the United States has waxed and waned over the years, stirred by frequent mass shootings in civilian settings. Gun violence is the leading cause of death for children and young adults in the United States. In particular, the ready availability of assault weapons and ammunition has provoked national discussion after multiple mass shootings of school children, most recently in Uvalde, Texas. However, Congress has repeatedly been unable to pass meaningful gun legislation in the wake of these tragedies despite broad public support for new restrictions.

Recent years have seen some of the worst gun violence in U.S. history. In 2021, guns killed more than forty-five thousand Americans, the highest toll in decades; and the upward trend is on track to continue.

Many gun control advocates say the United States should look to the experiences of wealthy democratic peers that have instituted tighter restrictions to curb gun violence.

United States

Gun ownership in the United States is rooted in the Second Amendment of the Constitution: "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

The United States, with less than 5 percent of the world's population, has 46 percent of the world's civilian-owned guns, according to the most recent report by the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey (2018). It ranks number one in firearms per capita. The United States also has the highest homicide-by-firearm rate of the world's most-developed nations. Many gun rights proponents say these statistics do not indicate a causal relationship.

However, the right to bear arms is not unlimited. The U.S. Congress and state legislatures have authority to enact controlling legislation, and the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld some firearms restrictions, such as bans on concealed weapons and on the possession of certain types of weapons, as well as prohibitions on the sale of guns to certain categories of people. The Gun Control Act of 1968 prohibits individuals under eighteen years of age, convicted criminals, the mentally disabled, dishonorably discharged military personnel, and others from purchasing firearms. In 1993, the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act mandated background checks for all unlicensed individuals purchasing a firearm from a federally authorized dealer.

But some gun laws have not survived judicial review. For instance, in 2008, the Supreme Court struck down a Washington, DC, law that banned handguns, the court's first ruling on the Second Amendment in nearly seventy years.

Federal law provides the basis for firearms regulation in the United States, but states and cities can impose further restrictions. Some studies have indicated that states with more restrictive gun laws, such as California or Hawaii, have lower incidences of gun deaths, although researchers say more analysis is needed.

In recent years, Congress has debated changes to existing gun laws, typically in the immediate aftermath of a high-profile mass shooting, such as that in Las Vegas in 2017 (sixty people killed), or in Parkland, Florida, in 2018 (seventeen killed). But in almost every instance, legislation has failed to garner enough support. Ill-fated bills have proposed measures including an assault weapons ban, expanded background checks, and a prohibition on firearm sales to people on federal terrorism watch lists.

As of mid-2022, there were no federal laws banning semiautomatic assault weapons, military-style .50 caliber rifles, handguns, or large-capacity magazines. There was also no federal requirement for those purchasing a gun to have any firearm safety training. There was a federal prohibition on assault weapons and on large-capacity magazines between 1994 and 2004, but Congress allowed these restrictions to expire.

Meanwhile, gun violence has surged amid the COVID-19 pandemic. As of June 2022, guns have killed some nineteen thousand people in the United States this year. The majority of those were in acts of suicide. Mass shootings-those with at least four victims-were occurring at a rate of at least one per day.

Canada

Gun ownership is also relatively high in Canada, at about thirty-five firearms per hundred residents (ranking fifth globally), but the country does not struggle with a similar level of gun violence. As in the United States, Canada's national government sets gun restrictions that the provinces, territories, and municipalities can supplement. And like its southern neighbor, Canada's gun laws have often been prompted by gun violence. In 1989, a student armed with a semiautomatic rifle killed fourteen students and injured more than a dozen others at a Montreal engineering school. The incident is widely credited with driving major gun reforms that imposed a twenty-eight-day waiting period for purchases; mandatory safety training courses; more detailed background checks; bans on large-capacity magazines; and bans or greater restrictions on military-style firearms and ammunition.

Firearms in Canada are divided into three classes: nonrestricted weapons, such as ordinary rifles and shotguns; restricted, such as handguns and semiautomatic rifles or shotguns; and prohibited, such as automatic weapons. It is illegal to own a fully automatic weapon unless it was registered before 1978.

Changes to the law in 1995 required individuals to obtain a license to buy guns and ammunition, as well as register all firearms. However, in 2012, the requirement to register nonrestricted guns was dropped, and related public records were expunged. Following another mass shooting, at a Quebec City mosque in 2017, the government passed a bill to again require nonrestricted firearms to be registered and allow background checks to consider events from more than five years in the past. In 2020, after a gunman killed twenty-two people in Canada's deadliest mass shooting, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a ban on "assault-style" firearms.. The legislation also required those who owned now-prohibited firearms to either participate in a buyback program or comply with a strict storage regime.

Australia

The inflection point for modern gun control in Australia was the Port Arthur massacre of 1996, when a young man killed thirty-five people and wounded nearly two dozen others. The rampage, perpetrated with a semiautomatic rifle, was the worst mass shooting in the nation's history. Less than two weeks later, the conservative-led national government pushed through fundamental changes to the country's gun laws in cooperation with the various states and territories, which regulate firearms.

The National Agreement on Firearms [PDF] all but prohibited automatic and semiautomatic assault rifles, mandated licensing and registration, and instituted a temporary gun buyback program that took some 650,000 assault weapons (about one-sixth of the national stock) out of public circulation. Among other things, the law also required licensees to demonstrate a "genuine need" for a particular type of gun and take a firearm safety course. After another high-profile shooting, in Melbourne in 2002, Australia's handgun laws were tightened as well. Many analysts said these measures were highly effective, citing declines in gun-death rates and gun-related mass killings.

Following an uptick in gun sales in 2017, however, Australian gun control advocates warned against the easing of gun laws in some states and territories. The gun safety discussion was also influenced by the suspected murder-suicide of a family of seven in Western Australia, the country's worst mass shooting in two decades. Today, Australia has more guns in circulation than before the Port Arthur massacre, although the number of people who own them has fallen over the same period.

Israel

Military service is compulsory in Israel, and guns are a part of many Israelis' daily lives. Much of the population has indirect access to an assault weapon by either being a soldier or a reservist or a relative of one. By law, most eighteen-year-olds are drafted into the military, psychologically screened, and provided at least some weapons training after high school. After serving typically two or three years in the armed forces, however, most Israelis are discharged and subject to civilian gun laws.

The country has relatively strict gun regulations, including an assault-weapons ban, a requirement to register ownership with the government, and a limit of one gun per owner. To obtain a gun license, an applicant must be an Israeli citizen or permanent resident; speak at least some Hebrew, Israel's official language; and pass a health screening. The minimum-age requirements vary: twenty-seven years old for citizens with no military or national-service experience, twenty-one for those who have served, and forty-five for permanent residents who are not citizens. Applicants must also show genuine cause to carry a firearm, such as self-defense or hunting.

United Kingdom

Modern gun control efforts in the United Kingdom (UK) have also been precipitated by extraordinary acts of violence that sparked public outrage. In 1987, a lone gunman armed with two semiautomatic rifles and a handgun went on a six-hour shooting spree roughly seventy miles west of London, killing more than a dozen people and then himself. In the wake of the incident, known as the Hungerford massacre, Britain introduced the Firearms (Amendment) Act, which expanded the list of banned weapons, including certain semiautomatic rifles, and increased registration requirements for other weapons.

A gun-related tragedy in the Scottish town of Dunblane in 1996 prompted Britain's strictest gun laws yet. A man armed with four handguns shot and killed sixteen schoolchildren and one adult before committing suicide in the country's worst mass shooting to date. The incident sparked a public campaign known as the Snowdrop Petition, which helped drive legislation banning handguns, with few exceptions. The government also instituted a temporary gun buyback program, which many credit with taking tens of thousands of illegal or unwanted guns out of supply.

A large majority of police officers in the UK do not carry firearms, setting them apart from counterparts in the United States and other countries. Guns are limited to specially trained police units that respond to particular emergencies or deploy for certain types of operations. Supporters of the policy say the unarmed officer symbolizes policing of the public by consent as opposed to by force.

Norway

Gun control had rarely been much of a political issue in Norway-where gun laws are viewed as tough, but ownership rates are high-until a right-wing extremist killed seventy-seven people in attacks in Oslo and at an island summer camp in 2011. Though Norway ranks fourteenth worldwide in gun ownership, according to Small Arms Survey, it placed near the bottom in gun homicide rates. (The U.S. rate is roughly forty-four times higher.) Most Norwegian police, like the British, do not carry firearms.

In the wake of the tragedy, some analysts in the United States cited the rampage as proof that strict gun laws-which in Norway include requiring applicants to be at least eighteen years of age, specify a "valid reason" for gun ownership, and obtain a government license-are ineffective. Other gun control critics have argued that had other Norwegians, including the police, been armed, the gunman might have been stopped earlier and killed fewer victims.

After the massacre, an independent commission recommended tightening Norway's gun restrictions in various ways, including by prohibiting pistols and semiautomatic weapons, but changes were not made. In 2018, the Norwegian parliament approved a ban on semiautomatic firearms, which took effect in 2021.

Japan

Gun control advocates regularly cite Japan's highly restrictive firearm regulations in tandem with its extraordinarily low gun death rate. Most years, fewer than one hundred Japanese die from gun violence in a country of 125 million people. Most guns are illegal in the country and ownership rates, which are quite low, reflect this.

Under Japan's firearm and sword law [PDF], the only guns permitted are shotguns, air guns, guns with specific research or industrial purposes, or those used for competitions. However, before access to these specialty weapons is granted, one must obtain formal instruction and pass a battery of written, mental, and drug tests and a rigorous background check. Furthermore, owners must inform the authorities of how their weapons and ammunition are stored and provide their firearms for annual inspection.

Some analysts link Japan's aversion to firearms with its demilitarization in the aftermath of World War II. Others say that because the overall crime rate in the country is so low, most Japanese see no need for firearms.

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The United States is witnessing another year of record gun violence, raising domestic and international scrutiny of its comparatively loose gun laws and placing pressure on lawmakers to enact meaning...

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What is equal pay? | Equality and Human Rights Commission

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This page explains equal pay and how men and women in the same employment performing equal work must receive equal pay.

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The gender gap in pay has remained relatively stable in the United States over the past 20 years or so. In 2022, women earned an average of 82% of what men earned, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of median hourly earnings of both full- and part-time workers. These results are similar to where the pay gap stood in 2002, when women earned 80% as much as men.

As has long been the case, the wage gap is smaller for workers ages 25 to 34 than for all workers 16 and older. In 2022, women ages 25 to 34 earned an average of 92 cents for every dollar earned by a man in the same age group - an 8-cent gap. By comparison, the gender pay gap among workers of all ages that year was 18 cents.

While the gender pay gap has not changed much in the last two decades, it has narrowed considerably when looking at the longer term, both among all workers ages 16 and older and among those ages 25 to 34. The estimated 18-cent gender pay gap among all workers in 2022 was down from 35 cents in 1982. And the 8-cent gap among workers ages 25 to 34 in 2022 was down from a 26-cent gap four decades earlier.

The gender pay gap measures the difference in median hourly earnings between men and women who work full or part time in the United States. Pew Research Center's estimate of the pay gap is based on an analysis of Current Population Survey (CPS) monthly outgoing rotation group files ( IPUMS) from January 1982 to December 2022, combined to create annual files. To understand how we calculate the gender pay gap, read our 2013 post, "How Pew Research Center measured the gender pay gap."

The COVID-19 outbreak affected data collection efforts by the U.S. government in its surveys, especially in 2020 and 2021, limiting in-person data collection and affecting response rates. It is possible that some measures of economic outcomes and how they vary across demographic groups are affected by these changes in data collection.

In addition to findings about the gender wage gap, this analysis includes information from a Pew Research Center survey about the perceived reasons for the pay gap, as well as the pressures and career goals of U.S. men and women. The survey was conducted among 5,098 adults and includes a subset of questions asked only for 2,048 adults who are employed part time or full time, from Oct. 10-16, 2022. Everyone who took part is a member of the Center's American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP's methodology.

Here are the questions used in this analysis, along with responses, and its methodology.

The U.S. Census Bureau has also analyzed the gender pay gap, though its analysis looks only at full-time workers (as opposed to full- and part-time workers). In 2021, full-time, year-round working women earned 84% of what their male counterparts earned, on average, according to the Census Bureau's most recent analysis.

Much of the gender pay gap has been explained by measurable factors such as educational attainment, occupational segregation and work experience. The narrowing of the gap over the long term is attributable in large part to gains women have made in each of these dimensions.
Related: The Enduring Grip of the Gender Pay Gap
Even though women have increased their presence in higher-paying jobs traditionally dominated by men, such as professional and managerial positions, women as a whole continue to be overrepresented in lower-paying occupations relative to their share of the workforce. This may contribute to gender differences in pay.

Other factors that are difficult to measure, including gender discrimination, may also contribute to the ongoing wage discrepancy.

Perceived reasons for the gender wage gap

When asked about the factors that may play a role in the gender wage gap, half of U.S. adults point to women being treated differently by employers as a major reason, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in October 2022. Smaller shares point to women making different choices about how to balance work and family (42%) and working in jobs that pay less (34%).

There are some notable differences between men and women in views of what's behind the gender wage gap. Women are much more likely than men (61% vs. 37%) to say a major reason for the gap is that employers treat women differently. And while 45% of women say a major factor is that women make different choices about how to balance work and family, men are slightly less likely to hold that view (40% say this).

Parents with children younger than 18 in the household are more likely than those who don't have young kids at home (48% vs. 40%) to say a major reason for the pay gap is the choices that women make about how to balance family and work. On this question, differences by parental status are evident among both men and women.

Views about reasons for the gender wage gap also differ by party. About two-thirds of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (68%) say a major factor behind wage differences is that employers treat women differently, but far fewer Republicans and Republican leaners (30%) say the same. Conversely, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say women's choices about how to balance family and work (50% vs. 36%) and their tendency to work in jobs that pay less (39% vs. 30%) are major reasons why women earn less than men.

Democratic and Republican women are more likely than their male counterparts in the same party to say a major reason for the gender wage gap is that employers treat women differently. About three-quarters of Democratic women (76%) say this, compared with 59% of Democratic men. And while 43% of Republican women say unequal treatment by employers is a major reason for the gender wage gap, just 18% of GOP men share that view.

Pressures facing working women and men

Family caregiving responsibilities bring different pressures for working women and men, and research has shown that being a mother can reduce women's earnings, while fatherhood can increase men's earnings.

Employed women and men are about equally likely to say they feel a great deal of pressure to support their family financially and to be successful in their jobs and careers, according to the Center's October survey. But women, and particularly working mothers, are more likely than men to say they feel a great deal of pressure to focus on responsibilities at home.

About half of employed women (48%) report feeling a great deal of pressure to focus on their responsibilities at home, compared with 35% of employed men. Among working mothers with children younger than 18 in the household, two-thirds (67%) say the same, compared with 45% of working dads.

When it comes to supporting their family financially, similar shares of working moms and dads (57% vs. 62%) report they feel a great deal of pressure, but this is driven mainly by the large share of unmarried working mothers who say they feel a great deal of pressure in this regard (77%). Among those who are married, working dads are far more likely than working moms (60% vs. 43%) to say they feel a great deal of pressure to support their family financially. (There were not enough unmarried working fathers in the sample to analyze separately.)

About four-in-ten working parents say they feel a great deal of pressure to be successful at their job or career. These findings don't differ by gender.

Gender differences in job roles, aspirations

Overall, a quarter of employed U.S. adults say they are currently the boss or one of the top managers where they work, according to the Center's survey. Another 33% say they are not currently the boss but would like to be in the future, while 41% are not and do not aspire to be the boss or one of the top managers.

Men are more likely than women to be a boss or a top manager where they work (28% vs. 21%). This is especially the case among employed fathers, 35% of whom say they are the boss or one of the top managers where they work. (The varying attitudes between fathers and men without children at least partly reflect differences in marital status and educational attainment between the two groups.)

In addition to being less likely than men to say they are currently the boss or a top manager at work, women are also more likely to say they wouldn't want to be in this type of position in the future. More than four-in-ten employed women (46%) say this, compared with 37% of men. Similar shares of men (35%) and women (31%) say they are not currently the boss but would like to be one day. These patterns are similar among parents.
This is an update of a post originally published on March 22, 2019. Anna Brown and former Pew Research Center writer/editor Amanda Barroso contributed to an earlier version of this analysis. Here are the questions used in this analysis, along with responses, and its methodology.

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Gender pay gap in U.S. hasn't changed much in two decades

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In 2022, women earned an average of 82% of what men earned, according to a new analysis of median hourly earnings of full- and part-time workers.

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The gender pay gap varies substantially from state to state, due to factors such as:

The primary industries in the state and the opportunities they create

Demographics such as race/ethnicity, age, and education level

Regional differences in attitudes and beliefs about work and gender

Differences in the scope and strength of state pay discrimination laws and policies

Explore Your State STATE WAGE GAP DATA
The gender pay gap occurs across almost all occupations and industries:

Male-dominated industries tend to have higher wages than industries and occupations made up mostly of female workers;

In a comparison of occupations with at least 50,000 men and 50,000 women in 2017, 107 out of 114 had statistically significant gaps in pay that favored men; six occupations had no significant gap; and just one had a gap favoring women.

In some occupations, women collectively are receiving billions less than they would with equal pay; for instance, women working as physicians and surgeons are paid $19 billion less annually than if they were paid the same as men in that occupation.

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The Simple Truth About the Gender Pay Gap: AAUW Report

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Over half a century after pay discrimination became illegal in the United States, a persistent pay gap between men and women continues to hurt our nation's workers and our national economy.

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Healthcare in the United States: The top five things you need to know

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American Healthcare 101: Health insurance? Primary care providers? What you need to know to get started.

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Proponents say it would stop medical bankruptcies and improve public health. Opponents say it is socialism and should be an individual’s responsibility.

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© Tom Wang/stock.adobe.com
To access extended pro and con arguments, sources, and discussion questions about whether Americans should have the right to health care, go to ProCon.org.
27.5 million people in the United States (8.5% of the US population) do not have health insurance. Among the 91.5% who do have health insurance, 67.3% have private insurance while 34.4% have government-provided coverage through programs such as Medicaid or Medicare.

Employer-based health insurance is the most common type of coverage, applying to 55.1% of the US population. The United States is the only nation among the 37 OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) nations that does not have universal health care either in practice or by constitutional right.

US health care spending totaled $3.6 trillion dollars and accounted for 17.7% of the US Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2018. Health care expenditures are estimated to reach $6.2 trillion annually by 2028. The average annual cost of health care for the typical US family of four was over $20,000 in 2012, and health care costs that year rose at double the rate of inflation. According to a study from Consumer Reports, paying for health care is the top financial problem for US households. About 62% of all individual bankruptcies are related to medical expenses according to the most recent study available from 2009. According to a 2011 report, of the 34 member states of the OECD, the United States ranks #1 in per capita health care expenditures at $8,508 per person, which is 2.5 times more than the OECD average of $3,339 per person.

The United States is one of the world's only developed nations that does not guarantee universal health coverage for its citizens. In 2005 the United States and the other member states of the World Health Organization signed the World Health Assembly resolution 58.33, which stated that nations should "transition to universal coverage of their citizens... with a view to sharing risk among the population and avoiding catastrophic health-care expenditure and impoverishment of individuals as a result of seeking care."

The founding documents of the United States provide support for a right to health care.

Instituting a right to health care could lower the cost of health care in the United States.

A right to health care could save lives.

The right to health care is an internationally recognized human right.

A right to health care could make medical services affordable for everyone.

Providing all citizens the right to health care is good for economic productivity.

A right to health care could improve public health.

Because the United States is a very wealthy country, it should provide health care for all its citizens.

Providing a right to health care could benefit private businesses.

A right to health care could encourage entrepreneurship.

A right to health care could stop medical bankruptcies.

A right to health care is a necessary foundation of a just society.

The founding documents of the United States do not provide support for a right to health care.

A right to health care could increase the US debt and deficit.

A right to health care could increase the wait time for medical services.

Implementing a right to health care could lead the United States towards socialism.

Providing a right to health care could raise taxes.

Providing a right to health care could worsen a doctor shortage.

A right to health care could lead to government rationing of medical services.

A right to health care could lower the quality and availability of disease screening and treatment.

A right to health care could lower doctors' earnings.

A right to health care could cause people to overuse health care resources.

People should pay for their own health care, not have it given to them by the government.

This article was published on February 14, 2019, at Britannica's ProCon.org, a nonpartisan issue-information source.

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Some say that no one in one of the richest nations on earth should go without health care and argue that a right to health care would stop medical bankruptcies, improve public health, reduce overall health care spending, help small businesses, and that health care should be an essential government

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Requirements to wear facemasks in the fight against Covid-19 are back in the news after some political leaders have issued mandates requiring or banning masks in certain situations. So what are the core constitutional issues in these mask controversies?

In late July, President Joseph Biden ordered federal employees and contractors to attest to their own vaccinations, or wear masks on the job and get Covid-19 tests. The military also mandated mask wearing.

At the same time, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis banned all Florida schools from requiring Covid-19 mask wearing, or face the loss of state funds. Issuing an executive order on July 30, DeSantis said that school district-imposed mask mandates violated the constitutional freedoms of Florida residents and parents' rights under Florida's constitution to make health-care decisions for their children. Several other states, including Texas, have also banned school-district imposed mask mandates. Two lawsuits have been filed against DeSantis. A state judge considered an injunction against the executive on Friday, while a separate group of parents filed suit in federal court.

Aside from the political debate about mask wearing, there are several federal and state constitutional issues in play. These issues involve the separation of powers within the federal government; the balance of power between the federal government and the states; and power sharing within a state, under its own constitution, between state legislatures, the chief executive, and local government agencies such as school boards.
The Federal Government and Mask Mandates
The Congressional Research Service's guidance concludes that the ability of the President or Congress to mandate mask wearing is similar the federal government's limited power to mandate Covid-19 vaccines.

In general terms, a federal mask mandate can be ordered for people and property directly under the federal government's jurisdiction. While no specific federal law exists about mask mandates, public health laws empower the executive branch to make rules "to prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries into the States or possessions, or from one State or possession into any other State or possession." Congress also has powers under the Spending Clause and Commerce Clause to influence state mask mandates by providing financial incentives or regulating some interstate business activities.

However, the President or Congress can exercise considerable powers at ports of entry to the United States. Currently, the Transportation Security Administration requires masks on airplanes and other forms of public transportation, with limited exceptions. That mandate is set to expire on September 13, 2021.
The States and Mask Mandates
In August 2020, the Congressional Research Service also wrote that federal constitutional precedents made it unlikely that the federal government could issue a national mask wearing mandate that applies to the states. The 10th Amendment's anti-commandeering provision bars "the federal government from commandeering or requiring state officers to carry out federal directives. This principle thus prevents Congress from requiring states or localities to mandate masks," the CRS concluded. Another reality is that the federal government may be unable to enforce a national mask mandate due to the sheer scope of such an action on a state and local level.

However, some mask mandate opponents have made arguments that even state-issued mask mandates violate the federal constitution's First Amendment. One argument that has been upheld by the federal courts, including the Supreme Court, is that religious activity within buildings is protected under the Constitution's Free Exercise clause. In April 2021, a divided Supreme Court said in Tandon v. Newsom that the state of California could not apply Covid-19 restrictions to an at-home Bible study group that had more than three households meeting in the same room, in violation of a state regulation. The court noted California permitted larger gatherings in retail stores and other venues.

Arguments that have had less success are that the imposition of mask wearing violates the First Amendment's Free Speech and Assembly clauses, or that the masks themselves represent forced political expression.

In July 2020, a court in Palm Beach, Florida, refused to block a mask mandate ordered by county commissioners; the litigants claimed that the mandate violated their personal freedoms and privacy rights. State Circuit Court Judge John S. Kastrenakes concluded that "the right to be free from governmental intrusion does not automatically or completely shield an individual's conduct from regulation." Kastrenakes also cited the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905), arguing that it permitted a local government to impose a vaccine mandate during a public emergency.

Parents in six South Florida counties have now filed a lawsuit against Florida Governor DeSantis and other state officials. They challenge DeSantis's claim that school-district mask decisions belong to parents. This ongoing lawsuit argues that local school districts have the jurisdiction, under the Florida constitution's home rule powers, to issue a mask mandate, and that the mandate ban in the governor's executive order violates public safety guarantees under the state constitution. In a separate federal lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, the challengers seek an injunction against the Florida executive order, arguing that it violates the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.

In Texas, challengers have filed similar lawsuits against Governor Greg Abbott related to his school mask mandate ban. Dallas and San Antonio were granted temporary restraining orders after county leaders claimed Abbott's order interfered with their public safety duties. In Arkansas, a temporary injunction was ordered by a state judge on August 6 against a state law banning mask mandates at schools. The judge concluded that the law violated the Arkansas state constitution.

And in Michigan, a lawsuit from a Catholic private school is now at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. The Resurrection School in Lansing, Michigan, and two parents argue that Michigan's mask-wearing mandate in 2020 for all schools violated their religious freedoms. The lawsuit reasoned that the ability of students to see the faces of other people was essential to the Catholic faith "because God created us in His image."

In December 2020, a lower court judge rejected an injunction sought by the school, deciding that the mask mandate was neutral and did not target the school for its religious beliefs. Although Michigan has lifted its mask mandate, arguments were heard in the case in late July. The school's attorneys told a three-judge panel on July 21 that the Supreme Court's recent decision in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia expanded legal exceptions for religious institutions.
Scott Bomboy is the editor in chilef of the National Constitution Center.

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The constitutional issues related to Covid-19 mask mandates

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Requirements to wear facemasks in the fight against Covid-19 are back in the news after some political leaders have issued mandates requiring or banning masks in certain situations. So what are the core constitutional issues in these mask controversies?

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THE PUBLIC PURPOSE: Federal Mandates: Constitutional Principles

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My subject today is Federal Mandates: Restoring Constitutional Principles --- First Principles. This is going to be a
controversial presentation. Most of you have not heard most of what I am going to say, and
many of you will disagree with what I say.

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The Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People

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The Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People

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The struggle of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) people for equal rights has moved to center stage. LGBT people are battling for their civil rights in Congress, in courtrooms and in the streets. Well-known figures are discussing their sexual orientation in public. Gay and lesbian people are featured in movies and on television - not as novelty characters, but as full participants in society.

Despite these advances into the American mainstream, however, LGBT people continue to face real discrimination in all areas of life. No federal law prevents a person from being fired or refused a job on the basis of sexual orientation. The nation's largest employer - the U.S. military - openly discriminates against gays and lesbians. Mothers and fathers lose child custody simply because they are gay or lesbian, and gay people are denied the right to marry.

One state even tried to fence lesbians and gay men out of the process used to pass laws. In 1992 Colorado enacted Amendment 2, which repealed existing state laws and barred future laws protecting lesbians, gay men and bisexuals from discrimination. The U. S. Supreme Court struck it down in the landmark 1996 Romer v. Evans decision.

We must conclude that Amendment 2 classifies homosexuals not to further a proper legislative end but to make them unequal to everyone else. This Colorado cannot do. A State cannot so deem a class of persons a stranger to its laws.
-- Justice Anthony Kennedy
Majority Opinion in Romer v. Evans I

The modern gay rights movement began dramatically in June 1969 in New York City's Greenwich Village. During a typical "raid," police tried to arrest people for their mere presence at a gay bar, but the patrons of the Stonewall Inn fought back - and the gay rights movement was launched. Using many of the grass-roots and litigation strategies employed by other 20th century activists, gay rights advocates have achieved significant progress:

Ten states, the District of Columbia, many municipalities and hundreds of businesses and universities now ban employment discrimination.

"Domestic Partnership" programs exist in dozens of municipalities and hundreds of private institutions, including many of the country's largest corporations and universities.

Sodomy laws, typically used to justify discrimination against gay people, once existed nationwide; they are now on the books in only 18 states and Puerto Rico.

But the increased empowerment of LGBT people has brought about even more open and virulent anti-gay hostility:

Although unrelated to an individual's ability, sexual orientation can still be the basis for employment decisions in both the public and private sectors in most states and municipalities.

Violent hate crimes, such as the 1998 murder of Wyoming student Matthew Shepherd, depict a grisly backlash against LGBTs or people perceived to be gay.

LGBT students and teachers face daily harassment and discrimination in the schools, and LGBT student groups in high schools and colleges still face roadblocks.

In 1986, after more than two decades of support for lesbian and gay struggles, the American Civil Liberties Union established a national Lesbian and Gay Rights Project. Working in close collaboration with the ACLU's affiliates nationwide, the Project coordinates the most extensive gay rights legal program in the nation. Increasing opposition from a well-organized, well-funded coalition of radical extremists and fundamentalists promises many battles and challenges ahead.
WHAT IS THE CONSTITUTIONAL BASIS FOR LGBT EQUALITY?
The struggle for legal equality for LGBT people rests on several fundamental constitutional principles.
Equal protection of the law is guaranteed by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments and reinforced by hundreds of local, state and federal civil rights laws. Although the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified at the end of the Civil War, was designed to ensure legal equality for African Americans, Congress wrote it as a general guarantee of equality, and the courts have interpreted the Equal Protection Clause to prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender, religion and disability. The ACLU believes the Equal Protection Cluase prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation as well. The right to privacy, or "the right to be left alone," is guaranteed by the Fourth, Fifth, Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments. In 1965, Griswold v. Connecticut struck down a state law that prohibited married couples from obtaining contraceptives, citing "zones of privacy." In 1967, Loving v. Virginia decriminalized interracial marriage. The 1972 Eisenstadt v. Baird decision recognized unmarried persons' right to contraceptives. And in 1973, Roe v. Wade recognized women's right to reproductive choice. All of these Supreme Court decisions underscore the principle that decisions about intimate relationships are personal and should be left up to the individual. Freedom of speech and association are protected under the First Amendment. This Amendment protects the right to organize and urge government to end discrimination, to recognize lesbian and gay relationships, and to adopt laws prohibiting discrimination in the private sector. It also includes the rights to form social and political organizations, to socialize in bars and restaurants, to march or protest peacefully, to produce art with gay themes and to speak out publicly about LGBT issues.

In the Schools

Nothing is more important than making schools safe and welcoming places for gay and lesbian youth, who often face tremendous hostility from their family and community during their formative years. This means protecting students from violence, guaranteeing their right to organize events and clubs like other students, and making sure that gay teachers who might serve as healthy role models are not themselves victimized by discrimination. The ACLU has fought harassment of students in California, Nevada, Ohio and Washington, defended gay teachers in California, Idaho and Utah, and advocated for gay student groups in Alabama, Indiana, Minnesota, Utah and Wisconsin.
Harassment on the job
Mary Jo Davis had high hopes when she accepted a job offer with the Radiology Department of Pullman Memorial Hospital in Whitman County, Washington. All that changed after her supervising doctor discovered she was a lesbian. The doctor started calling her a "dyke" and "faggot," and wouldn't work with her or even speak to her. When Mary Jo protested this harassment, she was fired. Represented by the ACLU's Lesbian and Gay Rights Project, Mary Jo hopes to establish that public employees have a constitutional right to be free from discrimination and harassment in the workplace.
Sodomy and Homophobia
David Weigand could take it no longer. His son was living in the home of his former wife, along with the boy's stepfather - a convicted felon with a drinking and drug problem who was beating his wife in the presence of the child. Things got so bad that the boy had to call 911 to save his mother's life, and as a result of all the violence, the family was ultimately evicted from their home.

David asked a Mississippi family court to give him custody of his son. The court refused to do so, in essence saying that living in a home wracked with violence was preferable to living with a father who is gay and "commits sodomy." In addition to representing David before the Mississippi Supreme Court, the ACLU will continue fighting on behalf of lesbian and gay parents, and to eliminate state sodomy laws.
In the Child's Best Interest
States are supposed to make rules on adoption and foster care to protect the best interest of children in need of loving homes and families. But somehow it does not work out that way in states like Florida and Arkansas, which ban gays and lesbians from adopting and being foster parents, respectively. By challenging the discriminatory policies of these states, the ACLU is working hard to prevent similar policies from being adopted in other parts of the country.

As a reminder of what is supposed to be the essence of child-welfare policy, the ACLU's Lesbian and Gay Rights Project in 1998 published a report entitled In the Child's Best Interest: Defending Fair and Sensible Adoption Policies. To order this, the 1998 videotape Created Equal about employment discrimination against LGBTs, or any other ACLU publication, please contact ACLU Publications at 1-800-775-ACLU.

AREN'T LGBT PEOPLE DEMANDING SPECIAL RIGHTS AND PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT?
As the Supreme Court explained in Romer v. Evans, there is nothing "special" about laws which prevent people from losing jobs and homes because of who they are. Most of us take the right to participate in daily life on an equal footing for granted, the Court said, either because we already have the right under the law, or because we are not subjected to that kind of discrimination. Laws which prohibit discrimination simply give LGBT people that basic right to be equal participants in the communities in which they live.

Most Americans do not realize that many LGBT people who face discrimination - in areas from housing and employment to parenting - have no legal recourse since federal law does not prohibit discrimination against LGBT people. Extending such protection from discrimination to LGBT people is one of the many important battles ahead for the ACLU and other advocacy organizations.

ARE LGBT PEOPLE PROTECTED AGAINST DISCRIMINATION ANYWHERE IN THE COUNTRY?

Yes, twelve states (California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Nevada, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin), the District of Columbia, many municipalities, and hundreds of businesses and universities have enacted laws that protect gay, lesbian and bisexual people from employment discrimination. A smaller number of jurisdictions protect transgender people.

But in most locales in the remaining 38 states discrimination against LGBT people remains perfectly legal. Businesses openly fire LGBT employees, and every year, lesbian and gay Americans are denied jobs and access to housing, hotels and other public accommodations. Many more are forced to hide their lives, deny their families and lie about their loved ones just to get by.

The ACLU believes the best way to redress discrimination is to amend all existing federal, state and local civil rights laws and all existing business and university policies to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation.
WHAT ABOUT DOMESTIC PARTNERSHIPS?
Many cities, including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta, the District of Columbia and Minneapolis, have created "domestic partnership" registries. They give official status to same-sex couples who register with the city. Scores of government and private companies recognize the domestic partnerships of their employees. The state of Hawaii recognizes domestic partners.

While these laws do not confer most of the rights and responsibilities of marriage, they generally grant partners some of the recognition accorded to married couples - typically, the right to visit a sick or dying partner in a hospital, sometimes sick and bereavement leave and in a few cases, health insurance and other important benefits.

Perhaps as important, these policies give some small acknowledgement to the intimate, committed relationships central to the lives of so many lesbians and gay men, which society otherwise ignores.
WHY SUPPORT SAME SEX MARRIAGE?
Denying lesbian and gay couples the right to wed not only deprives them of the social and spiritual significance of marriage; it has serious, often tragic, practical consequences. Since they can not marry, the partners of lesbians and gay men are not next of kin in times of crisis; they are not consulted on crucial medical decisions; they are not given leave to care for each other; they are not each other's legal heirs, if, like most Americans, they do not have wills. Marital status is often the basis on which employers extend health insurance, pension and other benefits. The ACLU believes that since we have attached such enormous social consequences to marriage, it violates equal protection of the law to deny lesbian and gay couples the right to wed.

WHAT ARE "SODOMY LAWS" AND WHY BOTHER WORKING TO REPEAL THEM?

Sodomy statutes generally prohibit oral and anal sex, even between consenting adults. Penalties for violating sodomy laws range from a $200 fine to 20 years imprisonment. While most sodomy laws apply to both heterosexuals and lesbians and gay men, they are primarily used against gay people. For example, some courts say sodomy laws justify separating gay parents from their children. Some cities use sodomy laws to arrest gay people for talking with each other about sex, in conversations which parallel those heterosexuals have every day.

In recent years, the legislatures of Pennsylvania, Nevada and Rhode Island joined the 23 other state legislatures which repealed sodomy laws in the 60s and 70s. Courts in Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Montana and Tennessee have struck down the statutes. The remaining sodomy laws will be challenged in the legislatures and the courts until they are all eliminated.

"We must conclude that Amendment 2 classifies homosexuals not to further a proper legislative end but to make them unequal to everyone else. This Colorado cannot do. A State cannot so deem a class of persons a stranger to its laws."

- Justice Anthony Kennedy
Majority Opinion in Romer v. Evans

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The Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender People

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The struggle of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) people for equal rights has moved to center stage. LGBT people are battling for their civil rights in Congress, in courtrooms and in the streets. Well-known figures are discussing their sexual orientation in public.

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You don't have to be out to be protected under the Constitution from anti-LGBTQ discrimination. You don't even have to be LGBTQ. Discrimination based on perceived sexual orientation or gender identity violates your constitutional rights, as may discrimination based on your friendship, family relationship or other association with LGBTQ people.

Title IX
A federal law called Title IX, which bans discrimination based on sex, protects students at schools that receive federal funds. Courts have agreed that the sex discrimination prohibited by Title IX not only includes discrimination for being a girl or boy, but also includes sexual harassment and discrimination for failing to conform to gender stereotypes. LGBTQ targets of sex discrimination and harassment have successfully relied on Title IX's protections in several court cases involving schools.

State Antidiscrimination Laws and Antibullying Laws
A growing number of states are taking additional steps to protect LGBTQ youth by explicitly including sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression in laws that protect against discrimination and harassment in schools. States can vary widely in how they structure, apply and enforce these laws, and you should consult Lambda Legal ( www.lambdalegal.org/help) or a local attorney if you are facing discrimination and need more specific information about laws in your area.

Detailed safeguards exist in California, Iowa, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Vermont and a growing number of other states. Laws in all of these states require local school boards to enact antiharassment policies that specifically include sexual orientation and gender identity/expression. The policies must allow for complaints and investigations, impose consequences for violations and protect students who report harassment from retaliation. Schools must also make sure students learn about these policies.

While laws in other states may not take the same form or go into the same detail, they may still protect against abuse and discrimination at school. For example, in addition to the states listed above, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, Oregon, Rhode Island and Washington State have laws barring discrimination against students based on sexual orientation and gender identity/expression.

A growing number of courts are interpreting laws addressing sex discrimination to prohibit discrimination based on gender identity/expression.

Many other states have enacted antibullying laws without specifically mentioning sexual orientation or gender identity/expression. But this doesn't mean that schools can ignore anti-LGBTQ bullying. Remember, Title IX covers all schools that receive federal funds (nearly all schools in the country). The federal Constitution requires states to apply antibullying protections equally to all public school students.

Local Laws and School District Policies
Even if your state legislature hasn't specifically banned anti-LGBTQ discrimination and harassment in school, city ordinances and local school districts within your state may have done so. More and more communities-from small rural towns to large urban areas like Dallas, Miami-Dade, Nashville and Philadelphia - have enacted rules protecting students from discrimination and harassment based on sexual orientation and/or gender identity. Consult with a friendly school official, a local attorney or Lambda Legal ( www.lambdalegal.org/help) to learn more.

Student Expression
In addition, LGBTQ students have the right:

to voice your support for LGBTQ equality at school

to wear T-shirts or distribute leaflets expressing LGBTQ-positive statements without censorship based on your opinion or viewpoint

to hang posters, make announcements and hold meetings for LGBTQ-related groups on the same terms as other student organizations

to write a column or article in a personal or student-led publication addressing LGBTQ issues without discrimination based on your LGBTQ-supportive ideas

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You don't have to be out to be protected under the Constitution from anti-LGBTQ discrimination. You don't even have to be LGBTQ. Discrimination based on perceived sexual orientation or gender identity violates your constitutional rights, as may discrimination based on your friendship, family relationship or other association with LGBTQ people.

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On October 10, 1990, the inaugural Gay Pride Festival was held in Johannesburg. Since its inception the festival, highlighting the rights of gays and lesbians, grows in size and magnitude.

South Africa adopted the first constitution in the world to guarantee gay and lesbian rights. In the youth publication A Different Fight for Freedom, Marion Drew writes about what it has meant to have protections for gays and lesbians written into the constitution and some of the legislative efforts that followed to build on those rights.

How many battles do people have to fight to be free? Gay and lesbian people must have asked themselves this question many times over the last 100 and more years. . . . [G]ay and lesbian people have worked to change the laws and unfair treatment in our country. These battles were often long and lonely, because many gay people were outcasts from their communities, and did not have the support of the state or the laws made by the state. One of the things that they have done is to challenge some of the unfair laws which have made their lives more difficult.

Since 1994, when the new government came to power, gay and lesbian people have gone to the courts to make some important changes to the law about gay and lesbian people. They have worked hard. In fact, since 1994 Parliament has passed more than 30 laws that make sure that gay and lesbian people are treated fairly and are protected by the law.

Here are some of them.

A very important one was the equality clause in the Bill of Rights in our Constitution, which happened in 1996. This said that all South African people are equal in every way. . . . Then, in 1998, the court said that it was no longer a crime for men to have sex with each other. Now it is also legal for gay and lesbian people to adopt children. Another law was changed to make it legal for the partner of a gay or lesbian person from another country to come and live with their partner in South Africa. Gay or lesbian people can now get married to each other, in the same way as everybody else, and because of that they have many more rights than they did before.

These are all new changes to the laws, which have taken place since the people of South Africa finally won the battle against apartheid and all the other laws that kept people unequal. Gay and lesbian people are no longer second-class citizens!

Connection Questions

1. What rights had to be fought for after the constitution was signed into law? Why do you think that these rights weren't automatically given, when gay rights were already part of the constitution?

2. Reflect upon your own country's constitution and/or bill of rights. Can you identify similar gaps between rights and protections extended in the document and the enforcement of those rights? (Consider, for example, the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution.)

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The Equality Clause: Gay Rights and the Constitution

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On October 10, 1990, the inaugural Gay Pride Festival was held in Johannesburg. Since its inception the festival, highlighting the rights of gays and lesbians, grows in size and magnitude. South Africa adopted the first constitution in the world to guarantee gay and lesbian rights.

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Find out if you need to register for the Selective Service and how to do it.

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Conscription is the mandatory enlistment in a country's armed forces, and is sometimes referred to as "the draft." The origins of military conscription date back thousands of years to ancient Mesopotamia, but the first modern draft occurred during the French Revolution in the 1790s. The United States instituted conscription during the Civil War, which led to a series of bloody draft riots. Resistance to the draft, as managed by the Selective Service in the United States, reached a historic peak during the Vietnam War.

Before the existence of a warrior class or military elite, Babylonian kingdoms employed a system of conscription called ilkum, in which laborers owed military service to royal officials for the right to own land. Provisions for ilkum were created under the ancient Code of Hammurabi, one of the earliest and most complete legal codes, instituted under Babylonian King Hammurabi.

Similar systems of military conscription were popular in feudal Europe throughout the Middle Ages. Land-owning peasants often were required to provide one man per family for military duty.

The first universal draft, or mass conscription of young men regardless of social class, took place in France during the French Revolution.

After the French monarchy was overthrown in 1789, neighboring European powers invaded France in hopes of restoring monarchical rule. The French needed a bigger army, so in 1793, the French government decreed a leveé en masse, which conscripted into military service all unmarried, able-bodied men between the ages of 18 and 25.

Draft Riots

The United States first instituted military conscription during the American Civil War. As the war entered its third season, Congress, in need of more manpower for the Union Army, passed the Civil War Military Draft Act of 1863.

The act called for registration of all males between the ages of 20 and 45, yet the obligation fell mostly on the poor. Wealthier men could afford to hire a substitute to take their place in the draft or pay $300 for a draft exemption-an enormous sum of money at the time. This controversial provision sparked civil unrest and draft riots.

The most destructive were the New York Draft Riots. At least 119 people died in the riots, which spanned three days in July 1863. Many of the rioters were poor Irish immigrants.

New York's African Americans became scapegoats for long-standing grievances, including wartime inflation, competition for jobs and racial prejudice among working-class people, particularly the Irish. Rioters burned down an orphanage for black children-all 223 children narrowly escaped.

Selective Service

President Woodrow Wilson signed the Selective Services Act on May 18, 1917, in preparation for U.S. involvement in World War I. The United States had a standing army of just over 100,000 at the time.

The initial act required all men between the ages of 21 and 30 to register with the newly created Selective Service System. By the end of World War I in November 1918, roughly 24 million men had registered and 2.8 million were drafted into the armed forces. The draft was dissolved after World War I.

In September 1940, Congress passed the Burke-Wadsworth Act, which imposed the first peacetime draft in the history of the United States.

The registration of men between the ages of 21 and 36 began one month later, as Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson-a key player in moving the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt away from a foreign policy of neutrality-began drawing draft numbers out of a big glass bowl. The draft numbers were handed to the president, who read them aloud for public announcement.

Conscientious Objectors

After the United States entered World War II, it expanded the draft ages to include men 18 to 37. Blacks, initially excluded from the draft, were conscripted into the armed forces starting in 1943.

"Conscientious objector" status was granted to those who could demonstrate "sincerity of belief in religious teachings combined with a profound moral aversion to war."

Between 1948 and 1973, men were drafted into the armed forces in both peacetime and conflict periods. Today, the Selective Service System remains in "standby" mode should Congress see it necessary to resume military conscriptions.

Men must register with the Selective Service System within one month of their 18th birthday-women are excluded from the draft (though they may volunteer for military service).

Draft Dodgers

Draft resistance in the United States reached its peak during the Vietnam War. By late 1967, U.S. casualties in Vietnam had reached 15,058 killed and 109,527 wounded.

The Vietnam War was costing the United States approximately $25 billion per year, and disillusionment was beginning to spread beyond college campuses to greater sections of the taxpaying public. Each month, as many as 40,000 young men were drafted into service.

Some men evaded the draft by failing to register with the Selective Service System or by fleeing the country. According to Canadian immigration statistics, as many as 30,000 draft dodgers may have left the United States for Canada during the Vietnam War.

Draft evasion carried steep fines and the possibility of jail time. Nearly 210,000 men were charged with draft evasion, including boxer Muhammad Ali, whose conviction was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 1977, President Jimmy Carter pardoned all Vietnam War draft dodgers.

Conscription in Other Countries

Some countries require compulsory military service of its citizens. The required period of military service is very short in some countries. In Denmark, for instance, all abled-bodied men are required to serve a minimum of four months between the ages of 18 and 27.

Other countries, including Iran and Israel, may require two or more years of mandatory military service of its male citizens. Cuba, North Korea, Tunisia, Eritrea and Norway have mandatory military service for women citizens.

HISTORY Vault

Sources

Background of Selective Service, Selective Service System.
150 years ago today: Civil War draft riots grip New York, Smithsonian Institute.
Conditional amnesty for Vietnam draft dodgers and military deserters, The New York Times.

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Conscription is the mandatory enlistment in a country's armed forces, and is sometimes referred to as "the draft." The origins of military conscription date back thousands of years to ancient Mesopotamia, but the first modern draft occurred during the French Revolution in the 1790s.

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Mandatory National Service - Pros & Cons - ProCon.org

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Proponents say national service would foster unity. Opponents say mandatory service infringes upon freedom.

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Recent court cases have established that elected representatives violate the First Amendment when they block individuals or delete their comments for expressing critical opinions on sites like Twitter and Facebook.

If you have been blocked from posting or commenting on an official social media page operated by an elected representative or government organization, your critical comments have been deleted, or you've otherwise been restricted from fully accessing official social media pages, this toolkit, " So You've Been Censored by a Government Official," can help you challenge that censorship. Our toolkit below includes a:
** Please note that the toolkit is for education purposes only and using the checklist or flow chart does not imply that the ACLU of Southern California is pursuing or would pursue legal action on your behalf or in any case. ** Download the toolkit in pdf
Why does social media censorship violate the First Amendment?

The ACLU of Southern California believes that official social media pages for elected representatives and government organizations, when they allow the public to make comments on the page, are public forums. Censoring individuals from these pages through blocking accounts or deleting comments can be an unconstitutional restriction on their right to free speech under the First Amendment.

This applies to official social media pages operated by the individual, or offices of elected representatives, or government boards, organizations, agencies, commissions, associations, or any other officially constituted group of a public entity where matters of public policy or governing are discussed. This standard does not apply to personal or campaign social media pages, nor to fake or parody pages not managed by the representative or organization.

Why does the First Amendment apply to social media pages?

After all, Ben Franklin and the other authors of the U.S. Constitution didn't use Twitter (if only they did!)

We believe - and the courts agree - that the Constitution's limits on government control of speech apply online as much as they do in newspapers, at marches, and in townhall meetings. In fact, the discussion at an old-fashioned townhall is similar to the discourse found on a social media page. Because it is unconstitutional for an elected representative to block critics from entering a public townhall simply because of their views, it's also not allowable for that representative to create a social media page and then restrict people with critical viewpoints from posting or viewing content.

These restrictions only apply to official social media pages where the elected representative or organization is considered a "government actor." A mayor's personal Facebook page, where she posts photos of her kids and reviews of her favorite books or movies, does not qualify as an official government page. Neither does a campaign page primarily focused on her reelection where she discusses her political accomplishments. A mayor can limit access to her personal pages to anyone she wants. But if the mayor's Facebook page includes references to her official position, links to government phone numbers, email addresses or websites, or allows individuals to either seek government services or access and discuss government information, then the page becomes a space for public speech and First Amendment protections apply.

Because the format of every social media page is different, each instance of social media censorship must be evaluated based on its specific facts.

In the several prominent court cases addressing social media blocking, judges have reviewed when and why the social media page was created, the content posted on the page, and the reasons given for why an individual was blocked. This is why taking photos or screenshots of the social media page and any blocked posts or comments is important to proving a civil liberties violation.

Lastly, if elected representatives and government agencies develop standards for communication on their social media pages and platforms, these standards must be posted publicly on the page and accessible to all viewers (e.g., posted in the "Notes" or "About" section of a Facebook page). These standards must also be applied consistently and must not block speech that is critical, unpopular, or negative to the elected official or is considered protected speech under the First Amendment.

CENSORSHIP CHECKLIST

1. Take photos or screenshots of the social media page that blocked you or deleted your comments, including your comments if they are still visible or archived. If you can, also take some photos or screenshots of posts by others that stay up on the page (especially comments on the post you commented on.)

2. Use the Censorship Flowchart to determine if your constitutional rights were violated.

3. If the flowchart shows your rights were violated, contact the elected official via phone or email and ask to be unblocked (or for the official to stop deleting your comments). This low-key approach resolves many complaints.

4. If you receive no response to the above request (or if you remain blocked and/or your comments continue to be deleted), download and personalize the ACLU SoCal's do-it-yourself Sample Demand Letter and send it to the elected official.

5. If you receive no response after 30 days, or if the government official refuses to unblock you or stop deleting your comments, contact the ACLU SoCal.

CENSORSHIP FLOWCHART

So you've been censored on social media by a government official. Use this flowchart to determine if your rights were violated.

SAMPLE DEMAND LETTER

1. Fill out this form letter (.doc) based on your individual situation. Delete any unnecessary sentences, including sentences that do not reflect what happened to you.

2. After filling it out, read it through carefully, making sure that everything in the letter is true to your situation.

3. Paste any screenshots you have that prove what happened into the blank pages after the letter.

4. If mailing the letter, print it out, sign it, and send it to your government official.

5. If emailing the letter, digitally sign it (if you can), save it as a PDF file (if you can), and email it to your government official.

6. Wait for a response. If you don't hear back within 30 days or if the government official refuses to unblock you or stop deleting your comments, contact the ACLU SoCal.
Note: Our sample demand letter isn't designed for situations where your post includes certain kinds of speech -- threats, inciting language, factual statements you know to be false, or an attempt to sell something -- and the post is only deleted without your account being blocked. This is because, in these situations, we believe officials are allowed to delete such comments. However, if you're blocked after posting these kinds of speech, you are entitled to take action but should adjust our sample demand letter to address only blocking (so you should remove any references to deleting comments).

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Social media censorship by a government official

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Recent court cases have established that elected representatives violate the First Amendment when they block individuals or delete their comments for expressing critical opinions on sites like Twitter and Facebook.

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by Privacy Net Reputation

The pros and cons of internet censorship have been at the root of much debate over the past few years. The purpose of internet censorship is to control, remove, or suppress information online that has been published. Formally known as the "information superhighway" the internet is a place where all ages visit.
There are many benefits and disadvantages of censorship on the internet. Even more so, there is a fine line between freedom of the press and publishing violent, obscene or dangerous content. Anyone has the ability to go online, no matter if it is a 5-year-old or a 65-year-old.

How do you find a balance between right and wrong? We are here to discuss internet censorship's pros and cons so you can take a stance on this highly debated subject.

What is Internet Censorship?

There are many pros of internet censorship as it works to prevent sites from publishing graphic and explicit content. We all remember these terrorist videos that were leaked on Facebook; this is not something you would expect on a family-friendly social media website.

Should the internet be censored?

First of all, internet censorship protects your children from accessing harmful and inappropriate information (i.e. murders or even decapitation videos). This is one reason why many people argue why censorship is good for the community at large.

From the other perspective, censorship limits the freedom you have online. Skeptics of the practice argue that internet censorship leads to the loss of freedom and the free access to information, regardless of its attributes. Using their arguments: Censorship restricts your ability to view the content you want to see when you want to see it. How can censorship be good when access to information is limited?

INTERNET CENSORSHIP PROS - Why Internet Censorship is Good

Prudence

By its very definition, prudence is having a cautious mindset of knowing what is the right thing to do. Most users have the decency and common sense not to post something online that society would consider unhealthy or inappropriate content. The key here is "most users". Internet users come in all varieties.

If you visit Google (without filters enabled) there are some gory videos depicting murders and other high-level crimes, including information related to:

Illicit drugs

Sexual assault

Sex trafficking

Identity theft

Threats to law enforcement agencies and personnel

Internet censorship offers a means of limiting the number of harmful videos or other forms of offensive content your children have access to. In simple terms, internet censorship provides a tool to limit access or even block access to content that can cause irreparable harm to young people. Proponents of internet censorship argue that censorship works to protect people with a common sense approach to the information that appears on the web.

In the past, users have expressed discomfort knowing that their children have easy access to pornography. Internet censorship methods are implemented to make accessing these sites more difficult. These measures included a question prompt when entering websites "Are you 18 years or older?"

This is a great start but that child can click yes and gain access anyway. Internet censorship has its pros and cons but as long as violent acts are kept offline the internet is already home to endless privacy options.

Helps Protect National Security

Government agencies know that information sharing on the web can threaten national security. Sensitive content, including numerous videos of military movements and tactics, posts about proprietary economic information, or other compromising details can put our country at risk. Although the United States is often thought to be the home of absolute freedom, internet censorship takes on a very real purpose when it used to protect the national economy or other factors that can influence our position on the global market.

Limits Child Pornography and Other Harmful Information

We have all heard of the " dark web ", but does this place really exist? Unfortunately, the answer is yes and these activities occur in places you would never expect. The internet today is nothing like it was years ago, when most users exhibited some form of self censorship. Now, everything goes, and local communities are feeling the pressure to protect free speech while creating internet limits that halt dangerous or harmful content.

Sites like Craigslist and Facebook give individuals access to buy and sell drugs, partake in human trafficking, and even engage in the distribution of child pornography. The dark web has grown dramatically over the past decade to include file-sharing sites like Pirate Bay, TOR, and ISOHunt.

Harmful information goes beyond access to child porn or similar online content. It may also include:

Hate speech about gender identity or targeting a specific group for threats

False news

Details about illegal activities

Defamatory online content

Information on how to commit identity theft

Law enforcement agencies worldwide have spearheaded efforts to restrict access to harmful or false information. By restricting access to this content through direct censorship, local authorities and government organizations place common sense limits on the type of content available. Even though many laws seem to overstep personal free speech and other personal freedoms, the driving goal is that internet censorship protects children. Supreme Court decisions on limits to internet speech as they regard freedom of expression are forthcoming.

Proponents of censorship also argue that with the use of internet censorship, it restricts the chances for predators to find targets easily. While internet censorship regulations have lofty goals, online communities have found ways to defeat even the most well-meaning laws.

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Minimizes Risk of Identity Theft and Other Cyber Threats

Cybercrimes are a rising concern in this digital era. People store a lot of their personal and private information on their computers. Without the proper knowledge of passwords and privacy policies, users can leave themselves very vulnerable online. Limiting the amount of information put online can certainly assist in minimizing the threat of these cyber attacks. If internet censorship is designed to prevent access to the tools and strategies used to commit cyber crimes, communities must weigh the advantages and disadvantages of such regulation.

Identity theft cases have skyrocketed in recent years. Criminals know that with access to certain information, such as a person's driver's license, mailing address, and Social Security number, he or she can falsify information. With these tidbits, financial crimes have been committed - to such a huge degree that the World Economic Forum has pressured other countries to implement more control over internet traffic. Even more alarming is that criminals know an arrest warrant is unlikely, and if a criminal is caught, the average sentence means that committing internet-based crimes is often worth the risk.

Read our recent blog on National Security Solutions For Corporations to learn more about this. In regard to internet censorship's pros and cons, for the most part, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

Eliminates Misleading/Fake News

With news media sites springing up all over the web, it can be hard to know what is real and what is fake news. Established news outlets like CNN, Fox, and CNBC are not the only players on the web anymore. With the end-goal of profiting only, there are many sites in existence that cash in on providing false, misleading articles online.

By enacting a strong program of internet censorship, this censorship could most likely reduce the amount of fake news. Over the past few election cycles, the sharing of fake news on social media has presented significant challenges. The pros and cons of free speech regulated on social media balance the ability to access information while limiting the spread of potentially harmful - or false - news.

One of the best examples of fake news would be a well-known review platform known as Ripoff Report. This is a website where disgruntled customers can voice their negative opinions online anonymously. If you are in need of a Ripoff Report removal contact us today to learn more!

Protects Privacy

Censorship programs online provide many benefits, especially if you are struggling with access to violent material, negative information, or harmful content. Online censorship typically cleans that up for you automatically. This also goes for illegal activities and anything that goes against freedom of speech in general. There are several advantages to using automated internet censorship tools, particularly those that target specific websites known for trafficking in false information. More importantly, there are times when personal information is leaked to the web. Strangers can use this information against you, potentially damaging your reputation. Censorship of this content can help protect your privacy and defend your reputation against harm.

INTERNET CENSORSHIP CONS - Why Internet Censorship is Bad

Internet censorship has both advantages and disadvantages. In the above sections, we explored some of the advantages. Here, we will discuss many of the disadvantages of internet censorship and how they can possibly affect human rights of freedom. Private organizations that champion freedom of speech argue that internet censorship creates an unfair playing field - one that can have serious and long-term ramifications regarding freedom. Disadvantages of internet censorship include:

Decrease in the Flow of Information

The amount of factual and real news that is published online will be severely limited when internet censorship is implemented. There are individuals arrested each and every day for sharing inappropriate and illegal content online. Even liking a post on Facebook or commenting on a blog post can land you in a heap of legal trouble.

38 different countries in 2016 made arrests based on something that was posted on social media. Social media dominates in online activity, with billions of daily users across platforms. It is all but inevitable that false content, damaging posts, or defamatory statements will make their way onto these platforms, potentially damaging your reputation. Still, freedom of expression is paramount on these platforms, which position themselves as champions of open speech. Any attempt to stifle open conversations can result in the decrease of information flow.

Expensive

Regarding the disadvantages of internet censorship, one of the most notable cons of censorship is the cost. It costs money for monitoring the internet. Google has over 2.1 trillion results; with this huge volume of results, it would require a costly process to filter all of the information published online. Many people are all in favor of internet censorship until they realize it will raise their taxes. Financial considerations are always at the forefront of any attempt to clamp down on open internet speech - many an oversight entity has reconsidered its position after seeing the price tag associated with censoring material on the web.

Negative Impact on the Economy

Nowadays there are more and more entrepreneurs born into our economy. With the highest number of startup companies in history, it is important that these businesses can freely promote themselves. The internet has become a primary economic driver, and that is the result of the free exchange of information. Increasing internet censorship could have devastating consequences for local businesses, potentially locking them out of economic opportunities. By losing the freedom to sell your products online, the result may have dire effects on the nation's economy.

Minimizes Entrepreneurial Efforts

Wrapping up the disadvantages of internet censorship, the whole idea of being an entrepreneur is having the freedom to create and sell anything. Once there is a governing body acting as a mediator, it limits what you can actually do and how successful you will be. The internet may no longer be a viable tool for creating wealth, especially if censorship derails the free exchange of information.

The best example of this would be Nike if you wanted to start your own athletic apparel company it could be nearly impossible. Nike has the wealth and branding power to completely wipe you off of the grid. As a result, internet censorship here would greatly limit the increased flow of innovation. Then end result of this move may result in many monopolies across every industry, with each monopoly positioned due to the loss of free information access.

Should We End Internet Censorship?

While there are plenty of reason one may want to end censorship online, it is not a simple decision to make. Firstly, there are hundreds of millions of stakeholders who rely on information online - be it good or bad. For example, news organizations who provide updates about crimes that may be unsightly to most readers. Does that mean the information should not be accessible online? One alternative to internet censorship could include more robust access requirements, such as age restrictions.

Why Internet Censorship is Important

In conclusion, by now you should have a decent understanding of how the use of internet censorship can positively and negatively affect the economy as well as yourself. Many countries have struggled with the factors that lead to censorship, and most countries continue to balance the advantages and disadvantages. Comment below on your thoughts about internet censorship's pros and cons. Proponents of stifling the open exchange of ideas on the web often put security over freedom, while those fighting against web censorship argue that internet users should be able to make their own decisions about what can or cannot be posted online. While free speech is important, this freedom must be protected from abuse. We would love to hear what you think.

Call NetReputation Today to Learn About Information Removal on the Web

If you are struggling with content information and are seeking possible removal options give us a call today. We know sometimes information ends up online that you do not want everyone to see and we can help. Whether your information is on Wikipedia, Google, or a review website, call us today at 844-461-3632 to speak with one of our content removal specialists or to learn more about our wide range of online reputation management services. We look forward to hearing from you.

by Net Reputation

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Internet Censorship Pros & Cons: Why Internet Censorship is Important

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What are the benefits and downsides of Internet Censorship? Learn more about online censors in our Internet Censorship Pros and Cons list.

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Censorship is defined as the suppression of ideas, images, or words that some people find to be offensive to them in some way. It happens whenever there are personal, moral, or political values from one group that get placed onto another in some way. Although it is often viewed through the lens of government policies, this processed can be carried out by anyone, including private groups, religious organizations, and even schools.

It must be mentioned that a private group or individual can organize boycotts, demonstrate in protest, and take other actions that are defined as free speech. When taken to the extreme, even rights protected by the First Amendment can become dangerous. The ACLU notes that the Hollywood Blacklists during the McCarthy period were from private pressure groups and not the government.

What is unique about American society is the amount of ambivalence there is toward censorship. Even the 1996 Communications Decency Act in the United States is a form of it, even if the "intentions are good" from the point of view of the majority.

That's why we must be proactive about the perceived pros and cons that there are with censorship. When it becomes permissible to restrict the actions, words, and thoughts of one group of people, it can create opportunities to target other groups in society too.

List of the Pros of Censorship

1. Censorship can reduce the impact of hate speech in society.
The idea that all speech is equal is arguably false. There are words that people use as an effort to shut down the right to speak of others. It took over a century for minorities and women to gain a semblance of equal rights because of the presence of hate speech. Even if it is clothed in the ideas of religious freedom, state's rights, or patriotism, that doesn't change what it is to others.

Censorship gives us the opportunity to stop this hate before it can get started. We already live within the confines of education, family, entertainment, commerce, and more. This limiting process creates more opportunities for equality.

2. Censorship can protect children from unhealthy content.
Parents have plenty of work to do in today's society to protect their children from unhealthy influences. There is content everywhere, including items that slip through parental filters and kid-friendly apps, that could lead to harmful encounters in the future. Children have fewer qualms about talking with strangers online than adults do primarily because of the way kids see the world. They have more innocence, curiosity, and might even be shy and lonely.

Censorship allows us to cut through the ignoring of potential threats so that a child's inexperience and lack of foresight doesn't get them into trouble. By stopping people before they can act (or the child can respond) to a situation, we can keep everyone safer because of certain restrictions.

3. Censorship can reduce the amount of conflict that is in society.
If you look on the Internet long enough, there will be something that can offend anyone. The goal of censorship isn't to eliminate access to anything that anyone might find to be problematic. We wouldn't get to go online if that were the case. What we can do with this process is to limit access to information that could have an adverse impact on the overall culture of our homes, communities, or countries.

Netflix and Saudi Arabia work together to create targeted areas of censorship based on this principle. Whether you agree or disagree with the practice, this work removes access to content that might be disruptive to society.

4. Censorship can provide another level of security to a country's profile.
We also use censorship as a way to limit the amount of information that the general public receives every day from their government, businesses, and large institutions. Without this concept, top secret files could be made public with a simple request. Proprietary ingredients wouldn't be available because of the need for disclosure. By limiting certain types of data from the primary flow of society, there is less of a potential for harm.

5. Censorship protects the rights of artists, innovators, and inventors.
Did you know that copyright laws are a form of censorship? The same is said for patents and any other legal construct that gives someone exclusive access to a specific form of content or work without allowing others to do the same. We have these protections in place to protect the "creation rights" of the first person who pursued this idea.

Preventing plagiarism and IP theft gives us the foundation of an economy. If your work doesn't receive some level of protection, then it can be stolen by someone who can put it together cheaper than you. Small businesses get to stay competitive because of the acceptable elements of censorship that we maintain in society.

6. Censorship provides us with a vehicle to stop false content.
There are censorship laws in place that prevent businesses from lying to you about their products or services. Advertisements must be a direct reflection of what you can expect if you make a purchase. Failing to remain honest can result in fines and penalties. Without this advantage, businesses could say or do anything in an attempt to get you to buy their stuff. You can avoid the risks of false pretense thanks to the protections that remain in place because of this advantage.

7. Censorship can work to improve a person's knowledge.
People tend to believe what they see when consuming media and the various forms of content that are available. By removing items that could create a panic from public view, government and law enforcement officials can provide better protection, reduce the spread of rumors, and encourage individuals to review the information they see before coming to a conclusion. People can use this technique to promote the flow of negative data to create a specific result, but this process is also useful for the times when you want to create a positive outcome as well.

8. Censorship can limit the impact of identity theft.
There are over 15 million reports of identity theft each year. In a recent data breach reported by Experian, the information of over 120 million people was exposed. When there is so much information floating around on the Internet and in other public places that is readily accessible, then it is possible for people to become victims of a crime without realizing it until they need to apply for credit or receive a notice in the mail.

Children can become victims of identity theft as well. Their clean profiles make for a tempting target, especially if there is no verification of age or data during the application process. Censorship of this information can provide a layer of protection because it stops access to it while holding those who keep it responsible for their conduct.

9. Censorship helped to create our ratings system.
There are times when censorship can get out of hand, but it is also a process that can be used for good. An excellent example of this benefit comes from the ratings systems that we use for entertainment products, including movies, video games, and music. Until 1984, films went from PG to R, which eventually led to a PG-13 rating being developed after parents called for action after taking their children to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

Ratings on music allow us to see if lyrics are explicit so that we can decide if we want to listen to the song. TV ratings give us a guide to see if a show is appropriate for our needs or what our families want to watch. Movie ratings do the same.

List of the Cons of Censorship

1. It represses one group of people in favor for what the majority wants.
A museum director was once arrested because sexually explicit photographs from Robert Mapplethorpe were included in an art exhibited that was being managed. Although the artist's work displays images, often black and white, that feature nudity and a certain amount of suggestiveness, it was far from violent or suggestive content that would encourage lawlessness.

Under the laws of the United States, it would be fair to say that the country is the most speech-protective nation in the world. When it comes to sexual speech, things are different because there are still remnants of the country's Puritan heritage remaining in the law. Even the Supreme Court has affirmed that censorship on moral grounds is permissible.

2. It allows people to create a specific narrative in society to call it truth.
You will often hear calls for censorship on violence when they see it in video games, read it in books, or see examples of it in film or on TV. The reality of fictional violence is that it does not cause otherwise stable people to suddenly want to hurt someone. If we start suppressing material based on the actions of unstable people, then nothing would be safe from the censorship process.

The work most often cited by people as a way to justify their harmful actions against others is the Bible. As the ACLU points out, Ted Bundy collected cheerleading magazines. If there were a clear cause-and-effect argument that could be proven, then a limit on expression here could be warranted. Until there is such an example, it is not.

3. It stops people from pursuing career opportunities.
If we live in a world where everything receives censorship, then it would be a place where nothing could get done without specific permission from someone in charge. That means every business, each idea, and even the foods that you would eat each night would come with an official stamp of approval. It creates an Orwellian landscape where direct supervision by an authoritative figure or state becomes "necessary" for the greater good of all.

Because of this disadvantage, there is always at least one person who sits above the societal constructs. They receive permission to do whatever they want because it is their responsibility to approve everything else. If you have enough wealth or influence, then you could get approvals for things that others would not have.

4. It reduces the overall intelligence of the general public.
Censorship requires that the general population be under tight controls so that specific outcomes are achievable every time. It is an attempt to prevent individuals from discovering what the truth of any situation happens to be. Even an attempt at suggesting that content is fake or untrustworthy, as the Trump Administration does so often with the news media, is a way to create censorship from an official capacity.

It's one thing to have a person say, "I don't like watching CNN because I feel like their news stories are fake." When the president of a country says that the news media is the enemy of the state, then it creates a position from authority, especially when he says that it has a "major role to play as far as tone and as far as everything."

5. It prevents an individual from expressing themselves freely.
In a no-rules environment that is completely free of censorship, anyone could post anything that they want without fear of reprisal. The United States walks a fine line along this path by preventing the use of "obscene" items. Other countries take this issue a little further, outlawing social media posts that are determined to be at odds with the official position of the nation's government.

Nicholas Demas from Mic completed a profile of eight social medial users who were arrested for what they said online in 2013. Matt Woods posted inappropriate comments about a 5-year-old at a time when he was drunk, earning him three months in jail. Some governments use their power to arrest those who are deemed to be in opposition.

6. It shifts where the responsibility of consumption is in society.
When the government is responsible for what people can access for information, then there is no longer any personal accountability for one's actions. This process cedes control of ethics, morality, and standards to whomever is in charge of implementing these policies. Once someone is willing to allow another individual, company, or elected official to tell them how to think, feel, and act, it becomes much easier to let more control over life's decisions disappear as well. Instead of being individuals, censorship turns people into commodities.

We already see the impact of this disadvantage in China. If someone adds comments that are anti-government, violent, or sexually graphic, then the content is subject to automatic deletion. Do it enough times and the account will be deleted.

7. It creates an adverse impact on the economy at all levels.
When censorship starts blocking any form of content because it doesn't meet someone's perspective on what is "decent" or offends someone, then there are fewer economic opportunities that become available at all levels of society. Businesses can no longer promote themselves because their advertising might be offending someone. Companies can't train workers because the processes could be considered offensive by someone. It creates a world where our actions are dictated by others, so those with the loudest voices will typically have the most control.

8. It allows a false narrative to become the truth.
If you ask the average person living in North Korea what they think of the world, they'll tell you that the United States is one of the worst countries in the world, that their standard of living is excellent, and that life is beautiful all of the time. Never mind that the average person in that country earns $3 per month or less, that 18 million people need food assistance to avoid malnutrition, and there is no access to basic medical care. There are also extreme human rights issues, such as a complete curtailing of freedom of expression, religious practices, or even independent civil society organization. It is a land of torture, arbitrary arrest, and public executions.

The Trump Administration wants to label anything in opposition to its viewpoint as being fake because that indicates their content is the truth. It is another form of a false narrative intended to get a specific reaction out of supporters as a way to keep power.

9. It is expensive to be engaged in the practice of censorship.
The cost to shut down the Internet to prevent specific content items from being viewed by the general public was over $2 billion in 2015. Cutting connectivity in just one country can be more than $100 million. Those expenses are only the tip of the iceberg to consider when looking at the practical enforcement of censorship on others.

China on its own pays more than $2 billion each year just to keep its firewall in place to limit information access online. There are hundreds of thousands of workers who monitor individual activities, with some sites allowing back-end access to facilitate this work. When you look at the direct and indirect expenses in every other category, the world likely spends over $100 billion to create altered information flows that people accept in fact.

10. It creates repression so that it encourages compliance.
One of the most-banned books in the world today is The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien. What is so remarkable about that fact is that the author was a devout Catholic and a good friend of C.S. Lewis. He once wrote a letter to Lewis to say that his trilogy and The Hobbit were unconsciously written from a Christian perspective at first, and then edited consciously to incorporate those themes.

Christian churches and schools are the most likely places where you will see these works banned because they are viewed as being anti-religious or anti-Christian. That's why a singular viewpoint being in charge of censorship is so dangerous to society. It can be an ill-informed opinion that is completely contrary to the work in question, yet the power it has to condemn can influence countless others.

Verdict on the Pros and Cons of Censorship

Some people look at the idea of censorship as a way to add common-sense restrictions to our daily routines so that we can stay safe and protect our children. The other side of that equation is that families can set their own limits, establish rules, and create circumstances that fit their needs without imposing their morality or beliefs on others.

That's not to say that all forms of content should be allowed in society. Murder videos, child pornography, and similar items that encourage violence against others or promote actual harm in the images is a safety factor that we cannot ignore.

That's why the crux of the pros and cons of censorship work to distinguish fictional content from factual items. We don't outlaw murder mystery novels because someone in the story dies. We would outlaw content that showed a murder because a real person was harmed in the process of its creation.

Author Biography
Keith Miller has over 25 years of experience as a CEO and serial entrepreneur. As an entrepreneur, he has founded several multi-million dollar companies. As a writer, Keith's work has been mentioned in CIO Magazine, Workable, BizTech, and The Charlotte Observer. If you have any questions about the content of this blog post, then please send our content editing team a message here.

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Censorship is defined as the suppression of ideas, images, or words that some people find to be offensive to them in some way. It happens whenever there are personal, moral, or political values from one group that get placed onto another in some way.

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Dress codes are typically set by schools and employers. Though dress codes face First Amendment challenges by students and others, courts generally support schools and employers.

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While the most frequent debate about dress codes may be centered around K-12 schools, dress codes impact just about everyone's daily life. From the "no shirt, no shoes, no service" signs (which exploded in popularity in the 1960s and 70s in reaction to the rise of hippies) to COVID-19 pandemic mask mandates, employer restrictions on tattoos and hairstyles, and clothing regulations on airlines, dress codes are more prevalent than we might think.

While it's difficult to pinpoint the first dress code-humans started wearing clothes around 170,000 years ago-nearly every culture and country throughout history, formally or informally, have had strictures on what to wear and not to wear. These dress codes are common "cultural signifiers," reflecting social beliefs and cultural values, most often of the social class dominating the culture. Such codes have been prevalent in Islamic countries since the founding of the religion in the seventh century, and they continue to cause controversy today-are they appropriate regulations for maintaining piety, community, and public decency, or are they demeaning and oppressive, especially for Islamic women?

In the West, people were arrested and imprisoned as early as ​​1565 in England for violating dress codes. The man in question, a servant named Richard Walweyn, was arrested for wearing "a very monsterous and outraygeous great payre of hose" (or trunk hose) and was imprisoned until he could show he owned other hose "of a decent & lawfull facyon." Other dress codes of the time reserved expensive garments made of silk, fur, and velvet for nobility only, reinforcing how dress codes have been implemented for purposes of social distinction. Informal dress codes-such as high-fashion clothes with logos and the unofficial " Midtown Uniform" worn by men working in finance-underscore how often dress codes have been used to mark and maintain visual distinctions between classes and occupations. Other dress codes have been enacted overtly to police morality, as with the bans on bobbed hair and flapper dresses of the 1920s. Still other dress codes are intended to spur an atmosphere of inclusiveness and professionalism or specifically to maintain safety in the workplace.

Should Dress Codes Be Implemented and Enforced?

Pro 1

Dress codes enforce decorum and a serious, professional atmosphere conducive to success.

High school athletes at St. Louis Park High School in Minnesota agreed that their teams' dress code days (which include dressing up on game days) positively contributed to team unity. Brendan Donahue, a hockey player, said participating in dress code days better prepared him for games. He stated, "The dress codes add a further feeling of connection, teamwork and bond by wearing the same thing. It acts as a uniform much like our jerseys. Our dress code of dressing up adds a feeling of professionalism to our team and sport."
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Pro 2

Uniformly mandated dress codes promote safety.

From school chemistry labs to manufacturing jobs, some dress code requirements are obviously about safety. Many places require protective glasses, steel-toed boots, fire-resistant jackets, hard hats, or reflective vests, for example.

Other items of clothing may be restricted for less obvious safety reasons. Leggings, for example, are frequently made from synthetic, flammable materials that could react with spilled chemicals and catch fire. Similarly, skin-baring clothing may also be banned around chemicals to prevent burns.

Religious headscarves have been banned in some settings, such as prisons, because wearers could be strangled by the garments in an altercation.

Still other dress codes, such as no full-face masks (like Halloween masks) allowed in movie theaters, are intended to help prevent shootings and other violence.

Other clothing restrictions at schools and public places may seem arbitrary but are used to protect against gang activity. Colors, brands, and logos may be gang-affiliated in certain locations. As Lincoln Public Schools in Nebraska explained, "Clothing and accessories associated with gangs and hate groups have the potential to disrupt the learning environment by bringing symbols that represent fear and intimidation of others into classrooms. The identification and prohibition of this clothing help decrease the impact of gangs and hate groups in school. These rules also protect students who are unaware they are wearing clothes with a gang or hate group affiliation."
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Pro 3

Dress codes promote inclusiveness and a comfortable, cooperative environment while eliminating individualistic attire that can distract from common goals.

As Bonneville Academy, a STEM school in Stansbury Park, Utah, explained, "The primary objective of a school dress code is to build constant equality among all the students. When all the students wear the same style of dress, then there will be the same kind of atmosphere across the school campus. This pattern encourages the student to concentrate more on their academic and co-curricular activities... then all the learning becomes more interesting and relevant... Students who are used to dress[ing] properly will be well equipped to evolve into the actual world, especially when they enter into the ever-competitive job market."

Susan M. Heathfield, a management and organization development consultant, stated, "Employees appreciate guidance about appropriate business attire for your workplace-especially when you specify a rationale for the dress code that your team has selected." Simply knowing whether suits are required or jeans are appropriate removes guesswork for employees, which leads to a more comfortable work environment. Similarly, dress codes can make a disparate group of people feel like a team-no one is left out or judged differently solely on the basis of the way they dress.

Dress codes can also make workplace hierarchies friendlier and more work-conducive. A manager who dresses in suits with ties may intimidate employees who wear branded polo shirts and khakis, preventing effective communication.

Further, dress codes mean employees and customers or clients won't be distracted by individualistic clothing. For example, a customer of Nebraska State Bank & Trust Co. complained to the bank's president about a branch employee's outfit of mismatched tunic and leggings, fringed boots, and large earrings. A customer complaint can not only alienate the customer but also distract employees from their tasks and potentially embarrass or shame the employee whose outfit sparked the complaint.
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Con 1

Dress codes reinforce racist standards of beauty and dress.

As the National Women's Law Center summarized, "Black girls face unique dress and hair code burdens. For example, some schools ban styles associated with Black girls and women, like hair wraps. Black girls also face adults' stereotyped perceptions that they are more sexually provocative because of their race, and thus more deserving of punishment for a low-cut shirt or short skirt."

Assistant Superintendent and Principal of Evanston Township High School, Marcus Campbell spoke about changing an outdated dress code: "if certain females were not a certain body type, if they had more curves or they had certain features that were developed, they were dress coded over another young lady who may not have the same features but were wearing the exact same items. Our young women of color were dress coded more than our white girls were. So we found it to be racist, we found it to be sexist, we found it to be antiquated. It was not body positive, and there was just trouble all around with our dress code, and we knew we needed to make a change."

Black male students are often "dress coded" at schools for hoodies, low-rise or baggy pants, and do-rags. Black boys were also more likely to be disciplined (suspended, for example) for a dress code violation than non-Black students.

As Dialectic, a company that counsels workplaces, concluded, "Traditional dress codes work to police certain kinds of bodies. They ensure that employees follow the practices of the dominant culture. Under the guise of professionalism, dress codes tend to punish marginalized groups of employees for refusing to conform."
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Con 2

Uniformly mandated dress codes are seldom uniformly mandated, often discriminating against women and marginalized groups.

Girls in school are frequently "dress-coded" for "too short" shorts and skirts, "too thin" tank top straps, leggings, and other clothing that might be a "distraction to boys."

Fourth-grade teacher ​​Marci Kutzer said these rules send a clear message to girls: "A boy's education can be compromised by your gender. Please do what you can to neutralize it."

The problems follow women into the workplace. A leaked training presentation from Ernst & Young coached women to "look healthy and fit" with a "good haircut, manicured nails, well-cut attire that complements your body type," but not to wear too-short skirts because "sexuality scrambles the mind."
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Con 3

Dress codes bolster religious and cultural intolerance.

Only in 2019 did US Congress change the 1837 rule that banned headwear of any sort, including religious headwear such as kippahs, hijabs, and turbans.

While the United States protects religious expression and cannot ban religious wear as France has banned burqas and hijabs, American dress codes frequently use acceptability standards to less explicitly ban religious garb.
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Discussion Questions
1. Consider the official dress codes in your daily life. How are dress codes implemented in your school, workplace, and/or religious institutions? Do you find these appropriate? Restrictive? Explain your answer(s).

2. Consider the unofficial dress codes in your life. What do your friends think is acceptable for various occasions? What do you wear when visiting a place of worship or to grandma's house for a special dinner? How do you dress differently when hanging around with friends than when going on a date? Do you find these formal and informal codes appropriate or restrictive? Explain your answer(s).

3. If you have to choose one, would you prefer a uniform policy for school and work, just a dress code, or neither? Explain your answer.
Take Action
1. Consider the pros of dress codes with Bonneville Academy.

2. Analyze students' rights about school dress codes with the ACLU.

3. Examine the history of rules and laws about clothing and the contemporary repercussions with law professor Richard Thompson Ford.

4. Consider how you felt about the issue before reading this article. After reading the pros and cons on this topic, has your thinking changed? If so, how? List two to three ways. If your thoughts have not changed, list two to three ways your better understanding of the "other side of the issue" now helps you better argue your position.

5. Push for the position and policies you support by writing US national senators and representatives.
Sources

23.

Lincoln Public Schools, "Increased Awareness of Dress Code Guidelines Related to Gangs, Hate Groups," lps.org (accessed Mar. 1, 2022)

More Social Debate Topics
1. Should Students Have to Wear School Uniforms? - Proponents say uniforms may increase student safety. Opponents say uniforms restrict expression.

2. Is Cancel Culture (or "Callout Culture") Good for Society? - Proponents say cancel culture allows people to seek accountability. Opponents say it amounts to online bullying.

3. Are Social Media Sites Good for Our Society?- Proponents say social media spreads information faster than any other media. Opponents say it enables the spread of unreliable information.

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Dress Codes - Top 3 Pros and Cons | ProCon.org

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Some argue that dress codes are important to promote success, safety, and inclusivity. While others argue that dress codes are racist, sexist, and culturally intolerant.

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An unfunded mandate is a statute or regulation that requires a state or local government to perform certain actions, with no money provided for fulfilling the requirements. Public individuals or organizations can also be required to fulfill public mandates.

In the United States, federal mandates are orders that induce "responsibility, action, procedure or anything else that is imposed by constitutional, administrative, executive, or judicial action" for state and local governments and/or the private sector.

As of 1992, 172 federal mandates obligated state or local governments to fund programs to some extent. Beginning with the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as well as the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the United States federal government has designed laws that require state and local government spending to promote national goals. During the 1970s, the national government promoted education, mental health, and environmental programs by implementing grant projects at a state and local level; the grants were so common that the federal assistance for these programs made up over a quarter of state and local budgets. The rise in federal mandates led to more mandate regulation. During the Reagan Administration, Executive Order 12291 and the State and Local Cost Estimate Act of 1981 were passed, which implemented a careful examination of the true costs of federal unfunded mandates. More reform for federal mandates came in 1995 with the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA), which promoted a Congressional focus on the costs imposed onto intergovernmental entities and the private sector because of federal mandates. Familiar examples of Federal Unfunded Mandates in the United States include the Americans with Disabilities Act and Medicaid.

An "intergovernmental mandate" generally refers to the responsibilities or activities that one level of government imposes on another by legislative, executive or judicial action. According to the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995 (UMRA), an intergovernmental mandate can take various forms:

An enforceable duty - this refers to any type of legislation, statute or regulation that either requires or proscribes an action of state or local governments, excluding actions imposed as conditions of receiving federal aid.

Certain changes in large entitlement programs - this refers to instances when new conditions or reductions in large entitlement programs, providing $5 billion or more annually to state or local governments, are imposed by the federal government.

A reduction in federal funding for an existing mandate - this refers to a reduction or elimination of federal funding authorized to cover the costs of an existing mandate.

A 1993 study conducted by Price Waterhouse, sponsored by the National Association of Counties, determined that in fiscal year 1993 counties in the US spent $4.8 billion for twelve unfunded federal mandates. Medicaid was one of these twelve unfunded mandates, and comprised the second largest item in state budgets, accounting for almost 13 percent of state general revenues in 1993.

Mandates can be applied either vertically or horizontally. Vertically applied mandates are directed by a level of government at a single department or program. Conversely, horizontally applied, or "crosscutting", mandates refer to mandates that affect various departments or programs. For example, a mandate requiring county health departments to provide outpatient mental health programs would be considered a vertically applied mandate, whereas a requirement that all offices in a given jurisdiction to become handicap-accessible would be considered a horizontally applied mandate.

Federal unfunded mandates can be traced back to the post- World War II years, when the federal government initiated national programs in education, mental health services, and environmental protection. The method for implementing these projects at the state and local level was to involve state and local governments. In the 1970s, the federal government utilized grants as a way to increase state and local participation, which resulted in federal assistance constituting over 25 percent of state and local budgets.

The first wave of major mandates occurred in the 1960s and 1970s, concerning civil rights, education, and the environment. The arrival of the Reagan administration ostensibly undermined various federal mandate efforts, as the executive branch promised to decrease federal regulatory efforts. For example, the passage of Executive Order 12291 required a cost-benefit analysis and an Office of Management and Budget clearance on proposed agency regulations, and the State and Local Cost Estimate Act of 1981 required the Congressional Budget Office to determine the state and local cost effects of proposed federal legislation moving through the Legislative Branch. However, the U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (ACIR) reported that, during the 1980s, more major intergovernmental regulatory programs were enacted than during the 1970s.

According to a 1995 Brookings Institution report, in 1980 there were 36 laws that qualified as unfunded mandates. Despite opposition from the Reagan administration and George H. W. Bush administration, an additional 27 laws that could be categorized as unfunded mandates went into effect between 1982 and 1991.

The U.S. Supreme Court has been involved in deciding the federal government's role in the U.S. governmental system based on constitutionality. During the period between the New Deal era and the mid-1980s the Court generally utilized an expansive interpretation of the interstate commerce clause and the 14th Amendment to validate the growth of the federal government's involvement in domestic policymaking. For example, the 1985 Supreme Court case Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority affirmed the ability for the federal government to directly regulate state and local governmental affairs.

The increase of mandates in the 1980s and 1990s incited state and local protest. In October 1993, state and local interest groups sponsored a National Unfunded Mandates Day, which involved press conferences and appeals to congressional delegations about mandate relief. In early 1995, Congress passed unfunded mandate reform legislation.

In 1992 the Court determined in various cases that the Constitution provides state and locality protections concerning unfunded mandate enactments. For example, in the 1992 case New York v. United States, the Court struck down a federal law that regulated the disposal of low-level radioactive waste, which utilized the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution to require states to dispose of the radioactive material.

Unfunded mandates are most commonly utilized in regulation of civil rights, anti-poverty programs and environmental protection programs.

The Clean Air Act was passed in 1963 to support the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), established on December 2, 1970, in developing research programs looking into air pollution problems and solutions. The EPA received authority to research air quality. The 1970 Amendments to the Clean Air Act established the National Ambient Air Quality Standards, authorized requirements for control of motor vehicle emissions, increased the federal enforcement authority but required states to implement plans to adhere to these standards. The 1990 Amendments to the Clean Air Act of 1970 expanded and modified the National Ambient Air Quality Standards and expanded and modified enforcement authority. The amendments increased the mandates on states to comply with the federal standards for air quality. States have had to write up State Implementation Plans, have them approved by the EPA and must also fund the implementation.

The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 prohibits discrimination based on disability, requires existing public facilities to be made accessible, requires new facilities to comply with accessibility expectations, and requires that employers provide anything a disabled employee might need, such as a sign language interpreter. Tax incentives encourage employers to hire people with disabilities. State institutions and local employers are expected to pay for changes made to existing facilities and are responsible for making sure that new facilities are in compliance with the federal requirements under the ADA.

Medicaid is a health program for low-income families and people with certain medical needs in the United States. It is funded jointly by the federal and state governments, but implemented by states. Federal funding covers a variable portion of at least half of Medicaid costs, and states are expected to cover the remainder. This means that any federally mandated increase in Medicaid spending forces states to spend more. However, as state participation in Medicaid is voluntary, it is not technically an unfunded mandate.

The 2001 No Child Left Behind Act was passed in response to widespread concern about the quality of public education in America. The act was meant to decrease the gap between students who were performing very well and students who were performing poorly. The act required schools receiving federal funding to administer statewide standardized tests to students at the end of each year. If students did not show improvement from year to year on these tests, their schools were asked to work to improve the quality of the education by hiring highly qualified teachers and by tutoring struggling students. To continue receiving Federal grants, states had to develop plans that demonstrated their steps to improve the quality of education in their schools. The No Child Left Behind Act mandated that states fund the improvements in their schools and provide the appropriate training for less qualified teachers. Federally mandated K-12 education is also a (mostly) unfunded mandate.

Critics argue that unfunded mandates are inefficient and are an unfair imposition of the national government on the smaller governments. While many scholars do not object to the goals of the mandates, the way they are enforced and written are criticized for their ineffectiveness. State and local governments do not always disagree with the spirit of the mandate, but they sometimes object to the high costs they must bear to carry out the objectives.

The debate on unfunded federal mandates is visible in cases such as New York v. United States, mentioned above. In School District of Pontiac, Michigan v. Duncan, the plaintiffs alleged that the school district need not comply with the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 because the federal government did not provide them sufficient funding; the court concluded that insufficient federal funds were not a valid reason to not comply with a federal mandate.

The Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA) was approved by the 104th Congress on March 22, 1995, and became effective October 5, 1995, during the Clinton administration. It is public law 104-4. The official legislation summarizes the bill as being: "An Act: To curb the practice of imposing unfunded Federal mandates on States and local governments; [...] and to ensure that the Federal Government pays the costs incurred by those governments in complying with certain requirements under Federal statutes and regulations, and for other purposes."

UMRA was enacted to avoid imposing mandates, when said mandates did not include federal funding to help the SLTG (State, Local, and Tribal Governments)[clarification needed ] carry out the goals of the mandate. It also allowed the Congressional Budget Office to estimate the cost of mandates to SLTGs and to the private sector, and allows federal agencies issuing mandates to estimate the costs of mandates to the entities that said mandates regulate.

Most of the act's provisions apply to proposed and final rules for which a notice of the proposed rule was published, and that include a Federal mandate that could result in the expenditure of funds by SLTGs or the private sector of or in excess of $100 million in any given year. If a mandate meets these conditions, a written statement must be provided that includes the legal authority for the rule, a cost-benefit assessment, a description of the macroeconomic effects that the mandate will likely have, and a summary of concerns from the SLTG and how they were addressed. An agency enforcing the mandate must also choose the least-costly option that still achieves the goals of the mandate, as well as consult with elected officials of the SLTG to allow for their input on the implementation of the mandate and its goals. Section 203 of UMRA is a bit more extensive in that it applies to all regulatory requirements that significantly affect small governments, and requires federal agencies to provide notice of the requirements to the government(s), enable the officials of the government(s) to provide their input on the mandate, and inform and educate the government(s) on the requirements for implementation of the mandate.

UMRA allows the United States Congress to decline unfunded federal mandates within legislation if such mandates are estimated to cost more than the threshold amounts estimated by the Congressional Budget Office. UMRA does not apply to "conditions of federal assistance; duties stemming from participation in voluntary federal programs; rules issued by independent regulatory agencies; rules issued without a general notice of proposed rulemaking; and rules and legislative provisions that cover individual constitutional rights, discrimination, emergency assistance, grant accounting and auditing procedures, national security, treaty obligations, and certain elements of Social Security".

Ever since UMRA was proposed, it has remained unclear, how effective the legislation actually is at limiting the burdens imposed by unfunded mandates on SLTGs, and whether or not unfunded mandates need to be limited so strictly. Proponents of the Act argue that UMRA is needed to limit legislation that imposes obligations on SLTGs and that creates higher costs and less efficiency, while opponents argue that sometimes federal unfunded mandates are necessary to achieve a national goal that state and local governments don't fund voluntarily. Opponents also question the effectiveness of the bill due to the aforementioned restrictions.

The Act was written to amend UMRA by having the CBO compare the authorized level of funding in legislation to the costs of carrying out any changes. It was done by also amending the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. The bill was introduced by Republican North Carolina Representative Virginia Foxx and passed by the House on February 4, 2015.

Foxx had authored a previous version of this bill, which also passed the house, as H.R. 899 (113th Congress) in February 2014. The bill would allow private companies and trade associations to look at proposed rules before they are announced to the public. The concern is that private companies could weaken upgrades to public protections.[citation needed ]

1. Dilger, Robert J., and Richard S. Beth. Unfunded Mandates Reform Act: History, Impact, and Issues. Publication no. 7-5700. Congressional Research Service, 2012. Print.<https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R40957.pdf>

2. Gullo, Theresa A. and Janet M. Kelly, "Federal Unfunded Mandate Reform: A First-Year Retrospective", Public Administration Review, Vol. 58, (Sept. 1998). 380.

3. New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144 (1992).

4. "History| Clean Air Act | US EPA." EPA. Environmental Protection Agency. Web. 17 Apr. 2012. <"History | Clean Air Act | US EPA". Archived from the original on 2012-05-02.>.

5. ^ Sack, Kevin; Pear, Robert (2009-07-19). "Governors Fear Medicaid Costs in Health Plan". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331.

6. Cockriel, Thomas. "House Subcommittee Holds Hearing on the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995" ^ Penn Law. 25 Feb. 2011. Web. 08 Apr. 2012. http://www.law.upenn.edu/blogs/regblog/2011/02/house-subcommittee-holds-hearing-on-the-unfunded-mandates-reform-act-of-1995.html.

7. ^ Dilger, Robert J., and Richard S. Beth. "Unfunded Mandate Reform Act: History, Impact, and Issues." CRS Report for Congress (2011). Web.

8. ^ "H.R. 50: Unfunded Mandates Information and Transparency Act of 2015". GovTrack. GovTrack.

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An unfunded mandate is a statute or regulation that requires a state or local government to perform certain actions, with no money provided for fulfilling the requirements. Public individuals or organizations can also be required to fulfill public mandates.