What Does the Civil Rights Act Have to do with Commerce?

Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits racial discrimination in public accommodations. That part of the Act was challenged in Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States (1964) when the owner of the motel said that Congress did not have the authority to pass Title II of the Civil Rights Act in the first place. In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court upheld the act as an exercise of Congress' power to regulate interstate commerce.

Om Podcasten

The 1787 Project is the podcast version of the lectures for Professor Justin Dyer's socially-distanced class on the U.S. Constitution at the University of Missouri. Running from August 2020 - May 2021, the course is about how the U.S. Constitution of 1787 frames the way we organize our life together as a political community. Published twice a week, the episodes explore who gets to decide big questions of public policy and why, analyze the design of our national political institutions and the contested boundaries between them, and look at the structure of constitutional rights.