Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1996
Abstract
Section 1985(3) is dead. The United States Supreme Court's refusal to apply § 1985(3) to the assault and intimidation of abortion seekers by abortion protesters in Bray v. Alexandria Women's Health Clinic confirmed the demise of the section, already significantly undercut by the Supreme Court's previous decisions in Great American Federal Savings & Loan Ass'n v. Novotny and United Brotherhood of Carpenters & Joiners v. Scott. If Bray is troubling for the conceptual moves Justice Scalia employed to deny recovery under the section, it is more disconcerting for the apparently inconsequential resemblance of its facts to those of the case reviving § 1985(3), Griffin v. Breckenridge. This Article focuses on the nature of the right created by Griffin's treatment of § 1985(3). Griffin, it will be shown, recognizes a right to substantial equality of citizenship in § 1985(3)'s prohibition of conspiracies depriving persons of equal protection of the laws and equal privileges and immunities under the laws. This view of § 1985(3) cannot be reconciled with the Court's narrow, formal treatment of this section since Griffin.
Publication Citation
69 Temp. L. Rev. 145 (1996).
Recommended Citation
White, John Valery, "Vindicating Rights in a Federal System: Rediscovering 42 U.S.C. § 1985(3)'s Equality Right" (1996). Scholarly Works. 302.
https://scholars.law.unlv.edu/facpub/302