Word: upheld
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Pornography. As in last year's controversial flag-burning decision, the Justices upheld the First Amendment guarantees for individuals espousing an unpopular cause -- this time, the right to peddle pornography. Reviewing an appeal from Dallas, the high bench refused to strip sexually oriented businesses of important constitutional protections. By a 6-to-3 vote, the court struck down the licensing portion of a 1986 city ordinance that strictly regulated adult bookstores and movie houses through zoning, licensing and inspection requirements. While endorsing the law's attempt to root out the urban blight and crime associated with such enterprises, the court...
...Supreme Court has already upheld the principle of equal access at public colleges, and most court watchers believe the high bench will extend it to public high schools. Critics fear that equal access could make it easy for majority prayer groups to dominate the public school environment and create an uncomfortable atmosphere for religious minority students. "The theory is that secondary school students are more impressionable," explains American University law professor Herman Schwartz. Douglas Veith, one of Mergens' attorneys, disagrees. "You can't solve a free-speech issue by suppressing prayer," he says. "Students of all faiths and beliefs should...
White supremacists may have been angered at rulings by Vance in highly publicized federal court cases. He had joined in decisions that upheld the murder conviction of a member of the Aryan Brotherhood and allowed the prosecution to present evidence that led to the convictions of Ku Klux Klansmen involved in a bloody 1979 confrontation with blacks in Decatur, Ala. In September Vance wrote a bluntly worded reversal of a lower-court ruling that had lifted an 18-year-old desegregation order from the Duval County, Fla., schools. The plaintiff in that case was the Jacksonville branch of the N.A.A.C.P...