Stand-Your-Ground is losing ground for racial minorities' health.

A paper in this issue analyzing the impact of Stand-Your-Ground laws revealed a disturbing pattern of racial bias. Individuals (i.e., defendants) in Florida were more likely to avoid charges if the victim was Black or Latino but not if the victim was white. Indeed, individuals are nearly two timesmore likely to be convicted in a case that involves White victims compared to those involving Black and Latino victims. Thosewhostudyconstitutional lawknowthat theprincipal reason the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment fails to protect Blacks and Latinos is that it is based on an intentionalmodel of discrimination. Those who study race/ethnicity in the social sciences knowthat if intentionalbias ishowwe look fordiscrimination,wewill rarely find it. X and Y's analysis is anothermoment for us tomark the limitation of thinking about racism and discrimination in intentional terms. This commentary addresses how racially biased laws and policies such as Stand-Your-Ground reflect broad-based contemporary racism with implications for racial health disparities. We conclude that there is a pressing need to develop a scientific research agenda that reflects the interdependent, dynamic and reciprocal nature of the individual and contextual factors that shape race and health across multiple pathways.