During the decade, the Internal Revenue Service
(IRS) stopped providing tax-exempt status to private
schools that discriminated against African Ameri-
cans, and two religious institutions that had race-
based admission policies sued the government to re-
gain their tax-exempt status. InBob Jones University v.
United States(1983), the Supreme Court upheld
the IRS’s authority to deny tax-exempt status for pri-
vate religious schools that practiced racial discrimi-
nation. The Court ruled that the government’s in-
terest in the eradication of racial discrimination
outweighed a school’s need for tax-exempt status
when that school discriminated based on race.
InFullilove v. Klutznick(1980), nonminority con-
tractors challenged Congress’s decision to set aside
10 percent of federal public works funding for mi-
nority contractors. A deeply divided Court held that
the minority set-aside program was a legitimate exer-
cise of congressional power to remedy past discrimi-
nation. This decision reaffirmed Congress’s right to
set racial quotas to combat discrimination.
The Court handed down various decisions during
the decade that centered on racial discrimination in
the criminal justice system. InBatson v. Kentucky
(1986), the Court ruled that an African American
man had not received a fair trial because the prose-
cuting attorney had deliberately disqualified all the
potential African American jurors during the selec-
tion process, resulting in him being convicted by an
all-white jury. The Court ruled that attorneys who re-
jected qualified prospective jurors solely on the basis
of their race violated the Sixth Amendment. In its
Vasquez v. Hiller y(1986) decision, the Court ruled
that the conviction of any defendant indicted by a
grand jury from which members of his or her race
had been illegally excluded must be reversed. In
Turner v. Murray(1986), the Court held that an Afri-
can American defendant facing a possible death
penalty for the murder of a white victim was entitled
to have prospective jurors questioned about racial
bias.
Women’s and Gay Rights Title IX of the Education
Amendments of 1972 banned sex discrimination at
colleges and universities that received federal fund-
ing. The federal government would cut off govern-
ment grants and student loans to schools that dis-
criminated against women. InGrove City College v. Bell
(1984), the Supreme Court upheld the federal re-
quirement and ruled that in order for colleges and
universities to continue to receive federal funding,
they must comply with Title IX.
InRostker v. Goldberg(1981), the Court refined the
limits of sexual equality by ruling that women may be
excluded from the military draft. Unlike other areas
in which the judicial body had struck down male-
female distinctions, the Court ruled that Congress
may discriminate between men and women when it
came to the draft because it was based on the need
for combat troops and not equity. While the Court
refused to allow women to become part of the mili-
tary draft, it did give women access to private men’s
clubs. InRoberts v. United States Jaycees(1984) andRo-
tar y International v. Rotar y Club of Duarte(1987), the
Court ruled that private, men-only clubs could not
exclude women from their membership.
The Court handed down two decisions during
the 1980’s that dealt with gay rights issues. In a case
involving a homosexual man arrested in his own
bedroom, the Court decided for the first time
whether states could be allowed to regulate private
sexual activities between consenting adults. InBow-
ers v. Hardwick(1986), the Court upheld a Georgia
antisodomy law that made it a crime to engage in ho-
mosexual acts even in the privacy of one’s home. In
Webster v. Doe(1988), the Court allowed a former
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee to sue
the government agency for firing him because the
agency considered him to be a threat to national se-
curity because he was a homosexual.Education The Supreme Court was asked to de-
cide if states could allow taxpayers to deduct from
their state income taxes tuition and other expenses
for their children’s religious elementary or second-
ary school education. Minnesota law permitted such
deductions, and some taxpayers sued the state, argu-
ing that the law violated the establishment clause
separating church and state. In itsMueller v. Allen
(1983) decision, the Court ruled that a state tax de-
duction for education expenses was constitutional
because the law had the secular purpose of ensuring
that children were well educated and did not “exces-
sively entangle” the state in religion.
The clash over the teaching of creationism and
evolution in the public schools reached the Su-
preme Court in 1987. InEdwards v. Aguillard, the
Court ruled that Louisiana public schools that taught
evolution could not be required to teach creation-
ism as “creation science” if such a requirement932 Supreme Court decisions The Eighties in America