Congress and the Supreme Court's Conflict over Antidiscrimination Law

In 1968, in the days following King's assassination, Congress passed the Fair Housing Act, prohibiting most housing discrimination based on race, color, religion, or national origin. [...] later that same year, the Supreme Court found that the long-dormant 1866 and 1867 Civil Rights Acts, prohibiting private racial discrimination, which had been ignored since the end of Reconstruction, remained valid. Since 1968, Congress has passed several laws intended to broaden federal civil rights, either to include more groups or, with increasing frequency, simply to reverse Supreme Court decisions.\n (California's statute applies to employers of five or more employees and prohibits harassment by all employers, regardless of size.) And although the public enforcement agencies that assist discrimination claimants are nonpartisan and required to be nonpolitical, many civil rights advocates believe that in times when the federal executive branch is controlled by conservatives, claimants may receive greater assistance from some of the state antidiscrimination agencies.