Constitutional Law: Equal Protection (Pt.1) — Analytical Framework

in this lesson we're beginning our discussion of the 14th amendment equal protection clause so really the goal of this lesson is just to overview the big picture analytical framework we don't want to really worry about in this introductory lesson trying to perfect our understanding of the equal protection analysis as we work through our series of videos and equal protection we're going to break all of these steps and all of these concepts down in far greater detail so really the only goal here is just to try to get that big picture understanding of the analytical framework okay but to begin our discussion of the equal protection clause the best place to start is with the us constitution itself we go to the 14th amendment and we look at the equal protection clause it tells us that no state shall make or enforce any law which shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws this is the 14th amendment equal protection clause probably the first note to make is if we look at the equal protection clause it tells us no state shall make or enforce any law the deal here is when we read this word state we understand pursuant to balling v sharp the 14th amendment equal protection clause applies to the federal government through the fifth amendment due process clause so even though the 14th amendment says no state shall make or enforce any law we shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction equal protection of the laws we understand that this really applies to states and federal government as well it also applies to local government too so no local government state government or federal government shall make or enforce any law which shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protections of laws the equal protection cost of the 14th amendment applies to local government state government and federal government okay and we covered this in our video on the state action requirement but just as a quick refresher but the main concept we want to focus on here right what does this mean the equal protection of the laws when the 14th amendment guarantees a person equal protection of the laws what does that really mean well obviously that's a complex question and we're going to spend an entire series of videos trying to explain and understand what this concept of equal protection of the laws actually means how we apply this in a constitutional law analysis but probably the best place to start when we're trying to understand what equal protection of the laws actually means it's with understanding what it does not mean if we think about equal protection of the laws we understand that this could not possibly be construed in a civilized society to mean that all people in all situations are going to be treated 100 percent equally in the same in all contexts right that would be virtually impossible and nonsensical right especially when people are not similarly situated and that's kind of the theme we're going to see think about for a very basic example think about any minimum age requirement law in the united states take alcohol consumption right in the united states you have to be 21 years of age to consume alcohol this is a law that's passed by the government you have to be 21 years of age to consume alcohol well if we think about that law that law is not providing equal protection it's not treating every single person the exact same right six-year-olds are not allowed to drink alcohol 21 year olds are allowed to drink alcohol so that law is not treating six-year-olds equally to 21-year-olds but of course we know minimum drinking age laws are constitutional every state has a minimum drinking age law it's well established that that is constitutional so what's going on there well the deal is a six-year-old is not similarly situated to a 21 year old right we can understand why it's probably a bad idea to let six year olds drink alcohol and why you know it's not as bad at least to let 21 year olds drink alcohol just based on the physiological differences between the body of a six year old and a 21 year old you know the behavior differences of a six year old and a 21 year old the fact that six-year-olds are generally not operating you know motor vehicles all of this stuff right there's a ton of reasons we could say it makes sense right basically to treat a six-year-old differently than a 21 year old think about the right to vote the right to you know not the right to gamble but think about gambling consuming alcohol consuming tobacco voting right the government requires enlisting in the military the government requires for all of these things that a person be a certain age and in all of those cases the government is treating the child very differently than the adult and that's because the child is not in the same circumstance as the adult so it seems it seems to be more justifiable right the government has far more justification to say look a six-year-old cannot drink alcohol and a 21 year old can drink alcohol think about something else not just age requirement laws think about you know government benefits the government treats billionaires and millionaires very differently than people who live below the poverty line right and again this is something that's going to be seen by almost everyone hopefully as justifiable okay for the government to do we can understand why it makes sense for a person living below the poverty line to be entitled to government benefits whereas a person who's a millionaire a billionaire is not entitled to the same benefits because again the person living below the poverty line is not similarly situated to the millionaire or to the billionaire okay so that's kind of the theme we need to remember with the equal protection clause okay when we say a person is guaranteed equal protection of the law what is really meant here is people who are similarly situated who are in the same circumstances are guaranteed equal protection of the laws okay and that's kind of the theme you'll see the supreme court grappling with as we go through this analysis because obviously if we change those facts a little bit we can see imagine that we have a clone of me right imagine standing right next to me we have a clone who is identical to me in every single way he's got the same job the same age the same socioeconomic status me and this clone sitting next to me are the exact same person in every way except let's say that my clone is from another country let's say my clone is from europe okay my clone came from doesn't matter italy okay so my clone came from italy and became a citizen in the united states and me i was born and raised in the united states all of my ancestors that i am aware of are from the united states so i am just american i would just say that i'm american as my nationality i would say i'm from the united states i'm american but my clone might say hey look i'm italian-american i immigrated from italy and i became a citizen here so i'm italian-american but in every other way my clone and i are the exact same person would the government be justified in treating me and my clone from italy differently right or should we get equal protection of the law would it make sense for the government to say okay well the guy from america that version of you can drink alcohol the one who's 20 or the one who's from italy cannot drink alcohol can the government justify that well that becomes way way more difficult right that's less that doesn't make as much sense when you think about the difference between you know the 21 year old and the six year old we can see how the government is justified and saying look the six year old can't drink alcohol the 21 year old can't they're not similarly situated but if we look at me and an italian version of me an italian-american version of me we can see those two are similarly situated they're in the same circumstance you know you're not going to be able to justify if you're the government treating that italian american differently or unequally than the american because they're so similarly situated okay and that's where you'd probably get into violations of the equal protection clause okay so really this whole analysis comes down to you know and what the supreme court grapples with what this theme is that we see is you know what does it mean to be similarly situated and that's how we kind of end up with these classes and categorizations of classes and kind of this step-by-step analysis but that's the big picture idea the main thing to recognize as we begin to get into this analysis is the equal protection clause does not guarantee that every single person is going to be treated the exact same in all situations right it could be because two people are in radically different circumstances the government is justified in treating them differently such as a six-year-old versus a 21 year old but in other situations two people are so similarly just so similarly situated the government is not justified in treating them unequally okay that's our big picture idea with that we can just get into our steps of the analysis what do we do if we encounter what we think might be an equal protection issue on a constitutional law fact pattern well step one is issue spotting right step one we need to determine whether the equal protection clause is at issue how do we do this the equal protection clause is generally at issue when the government treats a person differently based on that person's membership in some classification of people basically when we have governmental discrimination on the basis of class membership this is our issue spotter very important to recognize this does not mean if we see the government is treating one class of people differently than another class of people that does not mean the equal protection clause has been violated it just means hey the equal protection clause might be at issue here we can at least go to step number two okay so that's what we're looking for here with step number one the government is treating two groups of people differently based on membership in some class that's what lets us know okay equal protection is at issue and what i'll do here is we can quickly go through each of these steps step one two three four and five and then i'll just go through some examples because the best way to illustrate this is with examples okay so that's kind of step one that's issue spotting step two we determine whether the state action requirement is satisfied we covered the state action requirement and a ton of detail in a prior video so i'm not going to rehash it here but remember we need to make sure that the challenged action is attributable to the government can be local government state government or federal government but we have to make sure that the action being challenged under the equal protection clause is attributable to the government that is step two the equal protection clause does not apply to private parties step number three after we go past step one step two we get to step three we need to categorize the government's classification as suspect quasi suspect or other this is relatively straightforward right we have three major suspect classifications that's going to be race national origin and alienage we have two major quasi-suspect classifications that's sex and legitimacy it's possible we could have additional suspect classes quasi-suspect classes but for our purposes these are the big five we want to focus on race national origin and alienage are suspect classes so if we see the government discriminating on the basis of race national origin or alienage we're going to categorize that classification as suspect if we see the government discriminating on the base of sex or legitimacy we're going to categorize that classification as quasi-suspect and when i use the word discrimination in our equal protection context i really just mean we're treating two groups differently okay it's possible that the government might be favoring you know one race over another race and that race they're favoring is a race that's been historically discriminated against this might be you know kind of like affirmative action we're still going to call that discriminatory even though it might be like good faith discrimination for our purposes and equal protection and really that's kind of benign discrimination versus invidious discrimination that's what the court is going to call it or what you're going to see this referred to as benign discrimination is kind of like good faith discrimination where you see the government trying to favor a protected class generally as a means of redressing the effects of past discrimination and then you have stuff like invidious discrimination where the government is burdening a protected class in some way but in either case right really when we use the word discrimination my point here is we really just mean that the government is treating two groups differently okay we're not using discrimination necessarily in the same way that layman people use it when you hear a layman person talk about discrimination they usually mean it in the bad faith sense you know the the the bad faith context of discrimination when we use it in equal protection we just mean two people are being treated differently it's not necessarily good or bad we have to go through the analysis to kind of make the determination as to what's going on but that's what we mean by discrimination so step number three we categorize the government's classification as suspect quasi suspect or other remember discrimination or treating people differently based on race national origin or alienage we call suspect treating people differently or discriminating on the basis of sex or legitimacy we categorize that as quasi suspect anything else like age wealth you know socioeconomic status anything that's not race national origin alienage sex legitimacy we categorize as others so if the government is discriminating on the basis of age wealth socioeconomic status we categorize that in step three as other okay step number four if the government's classification from step number three is suspect or quasi-suspect we need to determine whether the plaintiff has established that the government acted with the intent to discriminate on the basis of the protected class this is really important as a gateway issue before we get to step five because we understand or we need to recognize with step four the court will not apply a heightened level of scrutiny unless the plaintiff first establishes that the government acted with the intent to discriminate on the basis of the protected class so we're going to have a whole video breakdown on the governmental intent to discriminate requirement but the main idea here is in order for the court to apply a heightened level of scrutiny the court is going to want to see that the discrimination is basically intentional or purposeful right the government had the intent to discriminate it's generally not enough that the government has passed a law that has some disproportionate impact on one group you know if the government passes a law without any intent to discriminate and it just so happens one class of people is disproportionately impacted in a negative way by that law that's generally not going to be enough for the court to apply a heightened level of scrutiny the court wants to see an actual intent to discriminate on the part of the government to apply these heightened levels of scrutiny again we're going to break that concept down in a ton of detail in a future lesson after we go through step one two three and four we're ready in step number five our final step to apply the applicable judicial standard of review so we'll go through these steps and these steps will tell us what standard of review we're applying we have rational basis as our default standard and we have heightened levels of scrutiny with intermediate and strict scrutiny and we only apply the heightened levels of scrutiny when the government's classification is suspect or quasi suspect and the requisite intent requirement from step number four is satisfied of course we know if we're applying rational basis in most cases the government will prevail and the law will be upheld as constitutional if we're applying strict scrutiny we know in most cases the government will not prevail and the law will be struck down in violation of the equal protection clause and we know if we're applying intermediate scrutiny it's kind of in the middle can go either way and remember we covered the application of these judicial standards of review in a ton of detail and a prior lesson so if you need a refresher on the judicial standards of review i would go back and watch that lesson also as we work through our series and equal protection we're going to kind of break down how these standards of review are applied in the equal protection context in more detail in future videos so don't worry about you know perfecting your understanding of the application of judicial standards of review here we're going to cover that in future lessons and we did a big overview video on it on a previous lesson okay but that's your big picture five steps so what we can do is go through some examples and apply these steps so we can kind of see big picture how this plays out so the way i would do this is by looking at three laws and we can apply these five steps to those three laws and see the different outcomes and this is going to illustrate our analytical framework thank you so much for watching this video preview of our legal education accelerator program or leap for short if you would like to see the conclusion of this video and gain full access to our entire 1l and 2l video library integrated outlines streamable audio versions additional practice exams with explanations and much more we invite you to head over to our 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Channel: Studicata

Views: 11,934

Keywords: constitutional law, fourteenth amendment, 14th amendment, equal protection, equal protection clause, suspect classification, quasi-suspect classification, constitutional law lecture, con law, con law bar review, constitutional law bar review, bar exam, bar prep, bar review, law school, law student, con law lecture

Id: 1bILWgmp20E

Length: 23min 51sec (1431 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 12 2022