In 2003, the United States Supreme Court ruled that laws criminalizing acts of sodomy and oral sex between consenting adults of the same gender were unconstitutional because the laws violated the right to privacy. The stunning decision overturned a 1986 decision in which the Supreme Court--by a narrow margin--had upheld a state sodomy law. After the 2003 decision, most states struck down sodomy laws. About a dozen states, however, have kept their "homosexual conduct" laws on the books.
The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 was enacted to allow full participation in society by individuals with disabilities. The Rehabilitation Act is a federal law that protects qualified individuals with handicaps from discrimination, based solely on their disability, in any federally funded service, program, or activity, including healthcare and employment.
The Transportation Security Administration has said that it plans to use data on June 2004 airline passengers to test its new Secure Flight Program, which is designed to prescreen airline passengers against "watch lists" of suspected terrorists. It is expected that the Secure Flight Program will become fully operational in early 2005. It is also anticipated that current "watch lists" used by individual airlines will be replaced by lists maintained by the Terrorist Screening Center, which is administered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) prohibits discrimination in the workplace on the basis of an employee or a job applicant's disability. Specifically, the ADA protects a "qualified individual with a disability." In considering a disparate treatment claim by an employee with a disability, courts seek to determine whether the disabled employee was treated less favorably than other employees who were not disabled.
The United States Supreme Court has ruled that a Washington state sentencing scheme was unconstitutional because a sentencing judge could enhance a sentence based on facts that had never been presented to a jury. The Court held that facts often used by a sentencing court to enhance or increase a sentence first had to be proven to a jury in order to guarantee the Sixth Amendment's right to a jury trial. The holding sent shock waves through courts across the nation because the ruling raised many doubts as to the constitutionality of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines.
