civil rights
Noun
Meaning
The rights that can reasonably be expected by any citizen.
(US) Those rights which are guaranteed protection by the US Constitution and are considered to be unquestionable, deserved by all people under all circumstances, especially without regard to race, creed, religion, sexual orientation, gender, and disability.
Source: en.wiktionary.orgSynonyms
Antonyms
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Examples
I favor the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it must be enforced at gunpoint if necessary.
He didn't even have the satisfaction of being killed for civil rights... it had to be some silly little Communist.
I would have voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The really important victory of the civil rights movement was that it made racism unpopular, whereas a generation ago at the turn of the last century, you had to embrace racism to get elected to anything.
No government is ever really in favor of so-called civil rights. It always tries to whittle them down. They are preserved under all governments, insofar as they survive at all, by special classes of fanatics, often highly dubious.
It was civil disobedience that won them their civil rights.