But that right has been eroded by state legislatures imposing restrictions on access, and by Catholic hospitals, which have a huge footprint in the American healthcare system.
"We have a history of supporting people throughout our community, and we wish the N.C.A.A. would have made their decision based on the merits of the communities that these tournaments are in and not by something the legislature imposed on us".
Last May, Californians turned down a tax package that would have extended a 0.25% income tax hike the legislature imposed for 2009 and 2010 into 2011 and 2012.
In this one statute, the North Carolina legislature imposed a number of voting restrictions.
In May, immediately after Republicans in the legislature imposed the new rules, 1,500 Moral Monday activists met and broke bread in the Bicentennial Mall in front of the North Carolina Legislative Building.
However, the New York legislature imposed the most restrictive of the states' public access requirements, permitting release of raw data only for human health research and only if approved by a stakeholder health science board (New York State Environmental Conservation Law 1997).
"Anytime the legislature imposes a reporting mandate on the executive," he said, "and it does not align with what the agency or the mayor are trying to do, it's ignored".
The one critical "exception" to the principle of judicial restraint, Kurland explained, is when "the legislature imposes on... minorities in so fundamental a fashion as to necessitate invoking the safeguards of the Constitution".
The Reconstruction era ended a decade ago, and white-dominated southern legislatures have imposed racial segregation and Jim Crow rules.
