| posed in a followup to thte blog :
[quote]Anonymous said...
"Shortly after passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the U.S. Supreme Court began to issue (and reaffirm) a series of Civil Rights decisions which soon added limitations (to counterbalance the incentives) to the process of seeking suspect class status. In essence, the High Court put a "fence" around suspect status, in the interest of ensuring that the status remain open only to disadvantaged, politically powerless classes that truly needed government protection. The High Court did so by establishing three criteria[16] by which prospective suspect classes might be evaluated, and by which some failing to meet the qualifications might be fenced out if necessary:
Criterion #1: Prospective suspect classes should have experienced a history of severe societal oppression, evidenced by an entire "class-averaged" lack of ability to obtain economic mean income, adequate education, or cultural opportunity.
Criterion #2: Prospective suspect classes should, "averaged" as entire classes, clearly demonstrate political powerlessness.
Criterion #3: Prospective suspect classes should exhibit obvious, immutable, or distinguishing characteristics, like race, color, gender or national origin, that define them as discrete groups."
SNIP |