CARDOZO JOURNAL OF
EQUAL RIGHTS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

Enacted in 1975, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (“IDEA”) set out to provide children with disabilities access to free, appropriate public education (“FAPE”).[1] Last month, IDEA began to face threats as the Trump administration announced its intentions to move special-education programs from the U.S. Department of Education (“DE”) to the Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”)—a shift that critics warn could undermine, or even dismantle, decades of s

In 2025, the New York Appellate Division quietly signaled a departure from a core, and outdated, tenet of American custody law.[1] In Matter of Fenton v. Smith, the Fourth Department reversed a family court order modifying custody, holding that the record was “insufficient” to determine the child’s “best interests,” “particularly where, as here, the court failed to appoint an Attorney for the Child at the contested hearing.”[2] In Matter of Fenton, the Appellate Division rev

In City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, the Supreme Court held that a city may enforce generally applicable anti-camping ordinances against unhoused individuals without violating the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.[1] Although the Eighth Amendment prohibits the criminalization of status, it does permit states to punish conduct.[2] The Court in Grants Pass viewed the anti-camping ordinance as one addressing the conduct of camping, as opposed to the s

New York City has been the powerhouse of construction and new development for decades.[1] To safely conduct these developments, construction companies place temporary sidewalk sheds or scaffolding as required by New York City safety laws.[2] Scaffolding is “a temporary framework used in construction to support workers and materials.”[3] In New York City, its use is often triggered by a five-year inspection cycle for buildings over six stories, and it must remain in place unt

Shirley Chung was a year old when she was adopted from South Korea by a Black-American family and brought to Texas in 1966.[1] Phillip Clay, also from South Korea, was eight when he was adopted in 1983 by a family in Philadelphia.[2] Like many intercountry adoptees raised in the United States, they grew up in “all-American families,” learned English, attended American schools, and identified as American citizens.[3] What they also had in common was the realization—much late

On December 29, 2022, President Biden signed the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (“PWFA”), the first federal law to provide meaningful protections for pregnant and postpartum employees. The PWFA requires employers to engage in a good-faith interactive process to negotiate reasonable accommodations once they have notice of an employee’s need for accommodations.[1] On the same day, he also signed the PUMP Act, an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) that expanded

In New York City, cooperative housing, commonly known as co-ops, accounts for a substantial portion of the housing market.[1] The application process, however, has long been criticized for its lack of transparency and potential for discrimination.[2] In response to these concerns, New York City enacted Introduction No. 1120-B on January 29, 2026, which introduces strict timelines, standardized procedures, and enforcement mechanisms for how co-op boards review applications.[

At what point do we admit that a one-size-fits-all punishment is not fairness, but abdication? Flat-dollar fines impose identical penalties on people with radically different capacities to pay. [1] For the wealthy, a ticket is a mild annoyance. For others, it is the difference between groceries and arrears. [2] Court debt is the hinge. It is how small tickets become life-altering penalties through late fees, collections, and collateral consequences. [3] Because fines

The Supreme Court’s stance on the death penalty has evolved over time. [1] In Furman v. Georgia, the Court held that the death penalty violated the Eighth Amendment, only to reinstate it in Gregg v. Georgia four years later. [2] As the Court continued to interpret “evolving standards of decency,” [3] it later categorically barred the execution of defendants with an intellectual disability in Atkins v. Virginia . [4] To determine if an individual is intellectually dis

Following the surge of the #MeToo movement in 2017, which exposed widespread unsafe and discriminatory conditions for women in Hollywood, the industry underwent a fundamental shift in how its institutions addressed sexual misconduct and equal opportunity. [1] Now, with the rattles of the movement stabilizing, Hollywood is reemerging as an unsafe environment for women in entertainment. [2] One of the most high-profile cases of the 2020s, Lively v. Wayfarer Studios LLC , il

Elective share statutes, the modern successors to the historical doctrines of dower and curtesy, serve as a vital legal safety net designed to prevent a decedent from intentionally disinheriting a surviving spouse. [1] By forcing the decedent’s estate to distribute a specific share to a spouse who has been omitted from a will, these statutes protect against the rise of non-probate transfers and inter vivos gifts that might otherwise leave a survivor destitute. [2] Since

On January 30, 2026, Mayor Mamdani and Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (“DCWP”) Commissioner Samuel Levine announced that food delivery app companies Uber Eats, Fantuan, and Hungry Panda owed more than $5 million in worker restitution, civil penalties, and damages to resolve violations of the Minimum Pay Rate for delivery workers. [1] Like New York City, other municipalities across the United States should enact statutory protections for delivery workers, inves

You grow up in a rural town abroad where English is barely taught. You teach yourself the language, travel hours to take standardized tests, and earn admission to a United States university. You stay for law school, believing that talent and persistence will bring stability. Near graduation, the question changes: what happens when the student visa expires, and life beyond campus begins? The United States should create a meaningful, predictable pathway from F-1 student statu

It is very unlikely you have ever consented to a police lineup. Yet if you have a driver’s license or a social media account, you may already be in one. A new kind of digital lineup has emerged, one that never ends and requires neither your knowledge nor consent. [1] Facial recognition technology (“FRT”) is a biometric identification method that creates a digital template of a person’s face using measurements such as the distance between the eyes, the width of the nose, t

On his first day in office, President Trump signed an executive order seeking to drastically limit birthright citizenship—a longstanding constitutional principle under which individuals born in the United States automatically acquire citizenship, regardless of their parents’ immigration status. [1] While many supporters of President Trump commended the order as a necessary protection against illegal immigration, constitutional law scholars on both sides of the political spe

This past week, Louisiana’s Attorney General filed a lawsuit, Markezich v. FDA, challenging the distribution of medication abortion to patients without an in-person doctor’s appointment. [1] When the Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the Food and Drug Administration’s (“FDA’s”) approval of mifepristone in 2024, it was considered a setback for the anti-abortion movement. [2] Markezich confronts the FDA’s approval of telehealth, and the Supreme Court could rule diffe

On August 10, 1846, President James K. Polk signed legislation establishing the Smithsonian Institution, created from the bequest of British scientist James Smithson, as “an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge.” [1] Structurally, the Smithsonian occupies a unique legal status as a trust instrumentality of the United States: it is governed by a Board of Regents and a Secretary, is separate and distinct from governmental branches of the national governm

Within the first week of his presidency, President Trump removed National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) [1] General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo and Board Member Gwynne Wilcox, leaving the NLRB without a quorum [2] and therefore unable to have any real impact on cases brought before it. [3] This action sent unions and organizers into a panic as employers celebrated the expanded ability to get away with unfair labor practices and policies that limit strikes and work stoppage

The Department of Education (“ED”) enforces civil rights in education through Title IX. [1] Title IX prohibits sex-based discrimination in federally funded educational programs, and promotes inclusion in higher education. [2] Significantly, Title IX enforcement depends on the executive branch controlling the ED, as this power rests with both the Department of Justice and the ED’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR). [3] Historically, judicial enforcement of statutes like Title

Some of the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Divisions are now recognizing “catalyst theory” as a part of the New York State Equal Access to Justice Act (“EAJA”). To preserve the intent of the EAJA, it is time for the Court of Appeals to decide in favor of catalyst theory for litigants. Recently, the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Third Department ruled in favor of Peter Markey, a disabled Navy veteran who sued New York State after they denied him rental assis