In 1868, the 14th Amendment granted African Americans citizenship rights. However, this did not always translate into the ability to vote. Polling restrictions led to systemic voting suppression and remained in effect until two years later when Congress passed the 15th Amendment, guaranteeing African American men their right to vote. Even with these provisions, Jim Crow laws remained in effect from the 1880s to the 1960s, when the Civil Rights Movement culminated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Jim Crow-era practices influenced the plan and design of San Diego. The 1956 Interstate Highway Act enabled federal and state governments to build a network of interstate highways across the country to improve congestion. The selected highway sites maintained segregation and displaced thousands of Black and minority Americans in every region across the nation (Archer, 2020). In San Diego, the SR-94 highway built in the 1950s separated the predominantly Black area of Southeastern San Diego from predominantly white neighborhoods north of the freeway. Police sometimes arrested Black San Diegans if seen outside of the Southeast neighborhoods (Ford and Griffin, 1979).

Following the Burlingame Treaty of 1868, the United States denied Chinese immigrants any possibility of citizenship. In 1882, President Arthur passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first-ever act preventing a group of people from entering the country. Chinese people living in San Diego risked being unable to return to the U.S. if they exited its borders (MacPhail, 1977).

In 1885, an anti-Chinese movement convinced the San Diego Water Company to discharge all Chinese employees and replace them with white men (MacPhail, 1977). The Geary Act of 1894 extended the Chinese exclusion laws and required the registration and identification of all Chinese residents. The United States Supreme Court decided children of Chinese immigrants had the right to citizenship in 1898 (United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898)).

Redlining was a common practice nationwide, in which the Federal Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) denied loans to people based on where they lived, income, race, and/or housing type (Federal Reserve History, n.d.). The HOLC created maps of many cities in the nation, including San Diego. Neighborhoods were labeled on a scale of desirable in blue and green zones to least desirable or red zones (hence the term “redlining”). The D-rated or least desirable communities consisted of mostly immigrants and communities of color (Beal, 2024). This convention resulted in a lack of home opportunities for people of color, a lack of investment in public infrastructure and the siting of polluting and harmful land uses in these areas (Estien, 2024; FRH, n.d.). Redlining practices remained into the late 1970s and 1980s in San Diego, and banks gave few loans to neighborhoods primarily consisting of racial minorities (SD Union, 1977).

Historically, people with disabilities were subjected to discriminatory state and local policies that limited their civic participation. In the 1860s, local laws in cities across California excluded some people with disabilities from entering public spaces based on how their disabilities affected their physical appearance (Schewik, 2009). This discrimination of the disabled community went further in the early 20th century with the passage of state laws that infringed on bodily autonomy, often forcing sterilizations under the guise of "race betterment" (Irons, 2003). As recently as 2015, California state law disallowed people the right to vote based on perceived cognitive abilities and conservatorship status (May, 2017). 

Today, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 aim to provide equal opportunities and generally disallow the exclusion of people with disabilities from federally funded programs, services, or other benefits.

After Pearl Harbor in 1941, many in California feared further attack. Federal and State governments required Japanese American citizens to reside in camps. The basis for the exclusion of Japanese people, both American Citizens and not, was considered a “military necessity” due to misperceptions that Japan had communicated with Japanese American citizens (Hasawega, 2008). However, J. Edgar Hoover later admitted that hysteria and racial prejudice drove internment rather than genuine security concerns (MacPhail, 1977).

In San Diego, the local press published many articles that increased the public's fear of Japanese American community members (Schlenker, 1972). In February 1942, the National City Defense Council published a resolution that the local Japanese population hampered the defense of San Diego County (Schlenker, 1972). In April 1942, the military forcefully removed 1,150 Japanese American citizens from San Diego and shipped them to Military Area No. 1 and Santa Anita Racetrack (Schlenker, 1972). Living conditions in these camps were characterized by overcrowding and inadequate facilities. (Schlenker, 1972). Japanese confinement ended on March 20, 1946 (Library of Congress, n.d.).

The LGBTQIA+ community has historically faced structural exclusion in the United States. Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, LGBTQIA+ people were subject to discrimination enacted through federal, state and local policy which limited their opportunities to participate in civic life, such as the criminalization of private consensual sexual acts between two people of the same sex (Lawrence v. Texas, 2003), and the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding LGBTQIA+ people in military service (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2020). In San Diego, the City enacted a local ordinance in 1917 that prohibited sexual activity unless the participants were husband and wife. In addition, in 1966, the City passed Ordinance 9439 (Section 5619) that prohibited people from wearing apparel that was not considered appropriate for their gender presentation, as it was assumed that those who cross-dressed were committing same-sex acts that were deemed illegal at the time. This ordinance was not repealed until 1998. (San Diego History Center, 2019)

Same-sex marriages were not recognized at the federal or state levels until the 2015 landmark case Obergefell v. Hodges that resulted in the Supreme Court's decision to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide.

Beginning in 1917, many Southern border towns, including San Diego, subjected Mexican immigrants to compulsory delousing. One of these methods was gasoline baths, a practice that subjected individuals to harsh and degrading treatment justified as necessary for border sanitation. Procedures like this reinforced racial stereotypes and targeted Mexican workers under the guise of disease prevention which lasted into the 1960s (Molina, 2014; Chakraborty, 2019).

When the Bracero Program began in 1942, it facilitated labor migration from Mexico. However, these workers had limited rights and protections. Despite their economic contributions, they were often treated as temporary laborers, not community members (Hernandez, 2006). Operation Wetback in 1954 targeted Mexican immigrants and even U.S. citizens of Hispanic ancestry, resulting in mass deportations and family separations (Ngai, 2004).

Because of its border city status, San Diego became a central hub for the Chicano movement, particularly in Logan Heights and Barrio Logan, where residents mobilized against systemic injustices. In 1970, community members organized to preserve Chicano Park when the California Highway Patrol attempted to build a station under the Coronado Bridge, which would have further displaced the community.

When San Diego became a city in 1850, new residents had already displaced many Native Americans who did not yet have citizenship. Their ability to shape the future of the newly formed City was minimal as the country reserved voting for white men who owned property.

The Cupeño Removal of 1903 was the last enforced relocation of Native Americans out of their homelands in the United States. This affected the Cupeño, Luiseño and Kumeyaay peoples in San Diego (Brigandi, 2018). While the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 granted citizenship status to Native Americans, there were practices in place to prevent Native Americans from voting. Polling hosts sometimes made locations inaccessible to tribes, shortened voting hours and required literacy tests and specific residency (Rollings, 2004). The Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibited racial discrimination in voting, protecting all citizens’ right to vote and preventing the continuation of these suppression tactics.

Pacific Islanders have varying decision-making rights in the United States depending on their nation of origin. People from U.S. Samoa are classified as U.S. nationals, yet they do not receive the full rights of U.S. citizenship, including the right to vote in federal elections. People from the Compact of Free Association Migrants (i.e., Federated States of Micronesia, Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau) hold a special status that allows them to work in the United States without a visa, however they are not considered citizens or nationals, and therefore also cannot vote in federal elections. These differing rights and restrictions contribute to structural barriers to civic participation (Morey, et al., 2020).

The Expatriation Act of 1907 stripped U.S.-born female citizens of their citizenship if they married a foreign man. The husband’s citizenship determined their wife’s citizenship until the federal government passed the Cable Act of 1922. However, the Cable Act did not extend to Asian American women who married those ineligible for citizenship until the Nationality Act of 1940 allowed all women who lost citizenship in marriage to repatriate.

In 1911, California gave women the right to vote before the rest of American women, who remained excluded from public decision-making until passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920 (Cooney Jr., n.d.).

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