No, it's not my idea of equal rights. It's equal rights in our language. The phrase "all people are created equal", is a pretty basic concept that all Americans should understand. And the specific Constitutional provision that protects that concept is very simple too:
It doesn't matter what personal characteristics someone has, states can not discriminate against them. They have to be treated under the laws of the states on an equal basis, which means being treated the same as everyone else. This is what equal protection under the law means in our language. It doesn't mean states can pick what type of personal characteristics people have that they're going to apply laws, immunities and privileges to or for, it's all citizens and persons within their jurisdiction and subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.Quote:
Amendment XIV
Section 1.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
What you're thinking of is the US Civil Rights Act, not the Constitution. The US Civil Rights Act currently protects employees from employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, age, disability, national origin and creed. Federal employees have additional characteristics protected like family status as a parent, marital status, gender identity, sexual orientation, and so forth.
So courts are never actually expanding equal and civil rights, they're simply restoring rights that shouldn't have been denied to begin with.