 Executive Order 11246 - Equal Employment Opportunity (1965) |
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This executive order by President Lyndon B. Johnson created equal opportunity for federal employment and contracts, ending discrimination on race, creed, color, or national origin.
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| Executive Order 11246 - Equal Employment Opportunity (1965) |
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This executive order enacted by President Lyndon B. Johnson was repealed by a January 2025 executive order from Donald Trump. The original order was written to ensure equal opportunity in government employment and limit discrimination based on race. It required employers to furnish documentation of nondiscriminatory practices upon request.
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| Executive Order 11478 - Equal Employment Opportunity in the Federal Government (1969) |
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This executive order from President Richard Nixon ensured the continuation of affirmative action and increased directives to limit discrimination in the workplace. Nixon added that this order intends to prevent discrimination based on sex as well as race.
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| Executive Order 12138 - Creating a National Women's Business Enterprise Policy and Prescribing Arrangements for Developing, Coordinating and Implementing a National Program for Women's Business Enterprise (1979) |
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This executive order from President Jimmy Carter established regulations to ensure women-owned businesses received support from the federal government and that women face less discrimination in the workplace.
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| Executive Order 12432 - Minority Business Enterprise Development (1983) |
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This executive order from President Ronald Reagan sought to protect minority business owners and provide regulations to prevent discrimination. This was one of a series of executive orders to ensure affirmative action issued by every president across the second half of the twentieth century.
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| Executive Order 14053 - Improving Public Safety and Criminal Justice for Native Americans and Addressing the Crisis of Missing or Murdered Indigenous People (2021) |
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This executive order by President Joe Biden sought to improve the federal government's response to the public safety and criminal justice crisis of murdered and missing Native Americans.
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| Executive Order 14151 - Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing (2025) |
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This executive order by President Donald Trump directs the Office of Management and Budget to terminate all mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities relating to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. It also requires federal agencies to report a list of all employees in DEI positions within 60 days. As a result, these employees were terminated.
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| Executive Order 14160 - Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship (2025) |
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This executive order by President Donald Trump aims to end birthright citizenship if a mother is in the United States illegally or the mother is in the U.S. temporarily and the father is not a citizen.
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| Executive Order 14168 - Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government (2025) |
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This executive order by President Donald Trump narrowly defines sex and gender in a way inconsistent with biology, prohibits gender self-identification on federal documents, ends funding for gender-affirming care, and restricts transgender people from being imprisoned in facilities consistent with their gender identity.
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| Executive Order 14173 - Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity (2025) |
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This executive order by President Donald Trump takes aim at diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility initiatives in private institutions, especially institutions of higher education receiving federal funding. It also revokes several longstanding executive orders related to equal employment opportunity and affirmative action.
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| Executive Order 14190 - Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling (2025) |
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This executive order by President Donald Trump directs the U.S. Department of Education and other federal agencies to end funding and support for "illegal and discriminatory treatment and indoctrination" in K-12 schools, including based on "gender ideology" and "discriminatory equity ideology." It also calls for the reestablishment of the President’s Advisory 1776 Commission "to promote patriotic education."
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| Executive Order 9066 - Authorizing the Secretary of War to Prescribe Military Areas (1942) |
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This executive order by President Franklin D. Roosevelt was a federal law that forcefully removed persons deemed a national security threat to relocation centers in the western United States. While the act did not include racialized language, it was created with the intent to target Japanese Americans.
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| Expatriation Act (1907) |
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The Expatriation Act was a federal law that rescinded United States citizenship for American women that married foreigners.
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| Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report (2022) |
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This report initiated data collection and information gathering on abuses in the Native American boarding school system.
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| Fisher v. University of Texas (2016) |
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This Supreme Court case upheld the admissions policies of the University of Texas using the strict scrutiny criteria established by the 2013 Fisher v. University of Texas decision. It was later overturned by the decision in Harvard and UNC v. Students for Fair Admission.
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| Foraker Act (1900) |
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The Foraker Act established the civil government of Puerto Rico, transitioning it away from martial rule. The Foraker Act established Puerto Rico as an unincorporated territory, making it ineligible for statehood. This act did not allow residents of Puerto Rico to be United States Citizens.
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| Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 |
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The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 gave power to Article IV Section 2 Clause 3 of the Constitution that stated slave owners were allowed to recover escaped slaves. The Fugitive Slave Act required anyone who found a fugitive to return them, across state lines to the slave owner. It put fugitive slaves at risk of recapture for the rest of their lives. This fugitive slave policy was later superseded by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.
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| Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 |
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The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was a part of the Compromise of 1850. The act addressed weaknesses in previous fugitive slave acts by penalizing officials who did not aid in returning escaped slaves. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 rendered Habeas Corpus irrelevant.
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| Garcetti v. Ceballos (2006) |
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This Supreme Court case considered the amount of free speech a public employee can make in the course of their duties. The Court ruled that the First Amendment does not apply to public employees when they speak as part of their job; the First Amendment only applies when they speak as a private citizen.
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| George Quander versus the Law (1897-1908) |
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George Quander was the nephew of Felix Quander. Like his uncle, George had run-ins with Fairfax County officials, culminating in 1908, when he was shot and killed by a deputy sheriff serving a warrant. The Alexandria Gazette is unsympathetic in its coverage of George Quander's encounters with the court, its officers, and the racist white citizens of Fairfax County.
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| Gonzales v. Carhart (2007) |
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In this case, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. Seven years earlier the Court had ruled a similar state law unconstitutional in Stenberg v. Carhart.
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| Gonzales v. Williams (1903) |
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Gonzales v. Williams is one of a series of cases decided by the Supreme Court addressing the status of U.S. territories known as the Insular Cases. This case determined that while people from Puerto Rico were not citizens of the United States, they were also not "aliens." This case labelled those in unincorporated territories as U.S, nationals instead of citizens.
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| Gratz v. Bollinger (2003) |
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In the case of Gratz v. Bollinger, the Supreme Court considered the University of Michigan's undergraduate admissions policy and found that race was too significant a factor in admissions decisions.
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| Green v. County School Board (1968) |
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In this follow-up case to Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Supreme Court addressed the "freedom-of-choice" plans created by school boards to resist compliance with the Court's mandate in Brown v. Board of Education (1955). In Green v. County School Board, the court held that the Virginia school board's plan to allow students to choose their own school failed to dismantle the discriminatory school system and burdened students and their parents with a responsibility the 1955 Brown decision placed on the school board.
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| Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) |
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In Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court found that medical privacy was constitutionally protected regarding reproductive decisions. The Griswold decision helped set precedent for the decision in Roe v. Wade.
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