Bostock v. Clayton County, 590 U.S. 644 (decided June 15, 2020): Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII) prohibits firing an employee for being gay or transgender (county didn’t know one plaintiff was gay until he joined gay softball league; other plaintiff happened to mention to his co-employee at a skydiving school that he was gay; third plaintiff was hired as male and “transitioned”); Title VII also applies to transgender because fired “for traits or actions it would not have

West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (decided June 14, 1943): explicitly overrules Minersville v. Gobitis, 1940, and holds that refusal to salute flag and recite pledge as part of regular school day was protected by First and Fourteenth Amendments (Court holds that this was impermissible “compelled speech”; plaintiffs were Jehovah’s Witnesses; school had softened earlier versions of the pledge which other parents had said sounded “too much like Hit

Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (decided June 13, 1966): asking questions of detained witness without advising of right to remain silent violates Fifth Amendment guarantee against self incrimination (Congress tried to abrogate this holding by statute in 1968, but statute was chipped away at and finally struck down, Dickerson v. United States, 2000) (Miranda was re-tried in Arizona court without the invalid confession and convicted of rape/kidnapping, 104 Ariz. 174) Romano v.

Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (decided June 12, 1967): striking down on Equal Protection and (substantive) Due Process grounds Virginia’s prohibition on interracial marriage (a good decision for me personally) (in the trial court the one-year sentence imposed on the Lovings, who had gone to D.C. to get married and were indicted when they moved back to Virginia, had been suspended on the condition that they move out of state and not return for 25 years, not so coincidentally