The Poor as a Suspect Class Under the Equal Protection Clause: An Open Constitutional Question

Abstract

The author expresses appreciation to the following persons: Lindsay Dates and Fred LeBaron for research assistance; John Nowak and Michael Zimmer for commenting on drafts; and Andrew DeYoe and Christine Heaton for production assistance.

Poor Justice: How the Poor Fare in the Courts (Book Review)

“…But the US Supreme Court has certainly confronted issues with redistributive implications (Michelman, 2008, pp. 677-679), and addressed the treatment of the poor under the Fourteenth Amendment (Rose, 2010). The author missed an opportunity to broach directly the subject of "how the poor fare" in the highest court of the land qua poor people, if only to show whether and how the segregation and stop and frisk cases are illustrative, or at least, connected to, the Court's ideologies concerning poverty and state responsibility for citizens' wellbeing more generally.…”