Minority Timeline

A landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that held that private citizens could not purchase lands from Native Americans.

The United States Supreme Court vacated the conviction of Samuel Worcester and held that the Georgia criminal statute that prohibited non-Native Americans from being present on Native American lands without a license from the state was unconstitutional.

prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers.

First case where the Supreme Court ruled that a law that is race-neutral on its face, but is administered in a prejudicial manner, is an infringement of the Equal Protection Clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

A Supreme Court case, in which the court decided that the individual rights protections, which limit federal, and later, state governments, do not apply to tribal government.

A Supreme Court case brought against the US government by the Kiowa chief Lone Wolf, who charged that Native American tribes under the Medicine Lodge Treaty had been defrauded of land by Congressional actions in violation of the treaty.

A case in which the United States Supreme Court found Takao Ozawa, a Japanese-American who was born in Japan but had lived in the United States for 20 years, ineligible for naturalization.

A landmark case, "the first and only Mexican-American civil-rights case heard and decided by the United States Supreme Court during the post-World War II period. The court held that Mexican Americans and all other nationality groups in the United States had equal protection under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Supreme Court strengthened the tribal power of individual tribe members, and furthered self government by Indian tribes, by saying that tribal members could dictate terms for children who also had a non tribal parent.

A Supreme Court case regarding a Muslim-American woman, Samantha Elauf, who was refused a job at Abercrombie & Fitch in 2008 because she wore a head scarf, which conflicted with the company's dress code ruled that companies could not discriminate in hiring of wearing of headscarf