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Year Enacted: 1964 Its Social/Political Impact: Outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, ending segregation in public places and banning employment discrimination.

Year Enacted: 1965 Its Social/Political Impact: Eliminated various devices, such as literacy tests, that were historically used to prevent African Americans from voting.

Year Enacted: 1862 Its Social/Political Impact: Provided 160 acres of public land to anyone who paid a small fee and agreed to work on the land and improve it, including building a dwelling, for five years.

Year Enacted: 1935 Its Social/Political Impact: Established a system of old-age benefits for workers, benefits for victims of industrial accidents, unemployment insurance, aid for dependent mothers and children, the blind, and the physically handicapped.

Year Enacted: 2001 Its Social/Political Impact: Expanded the government's surveillance and investigative powers, raised concerns about privacy and civil liberties, and was controversial for its impact on freedom and privacy.

Year Enacted: 2010 Its Social/Political Impact: Overhauled the US healthcare system, aimed to decrease the number of uninsured Americans and reduce the overall costs of health care.

Year Enacted: 1970 Its Social/Political Impact: Authorized the development of comprehensive federal and state regulations to limit emissions from both stationary and mobile sources of air pollution.

Year Enacted: 1973 Its Social/Political Impact: Provided for the conservation of species that are endangered or threatened and the ecosystems on which they depend.

Year Enacted: 1935 Its Social/Political Impact: Established the legal right for workers to join labor unions and to engage in collective bargaining. Also led to the creation of the National Labor Relations Board.

Year Enacted: 1965 Its Social/Political Impact: Abolished the National Origins Formula that was American immigration policy since the 1920s, and opened the door for large-scale immigration from Asia and Latin America.

Year Enacted: 1965 Its Social/Political Impact: Created comprehensive health coverage programs for the elderly and the poor, significantly impacting healthcare in the United States.

Year Enacted: 1944 Its Social/Political Impact: Provided benefits like education and housing to returning WWII veterans, significantly influenced the post-war economy and impacted the demographics of higher education.

Year Enacted: 1916 Its Social/Political Impact: Prohibited the interstate sale of goods produced by factories that employed children under specified ages. The Supreme Court later invalidated it, leading to further reform efforts.

Year Enacted: 1938 Its Social/Political Impact: Established minimum wage, overtime pay eligibility, recordkeeping, and child labor standards affecting full-time and part-time workers in the private sector and in federal, state, and local governments.

Year Enacted: 1990 Its Social/Political Impact: Prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all areas of public life, including jobs, schools, transportation, and all public and private places that are open to the general public.

Year Enacted: 1993 Its Social/Political Impact: Imposed a five-day waiting period for the purchase of a handgun and required local law enforcement agencies to conduct background checks on purchasers of handguns.

Year Enacted: 1919 Its Social/Political Impact: Enacted to carry out the intent of the 18th Amendment, which established prohibition in the United States, leading to a rise in bootlegging, speakeasies, and a shift in organized crime activity.

Year Enacted: 1890 Its Social/Political Impact: Outlawed monopolistic business practices and was the first Federal act that outlawed monopolistic business practices.

Year Enacted: 1913 Its Social/Political Impact: Established the Federal Reserve System as the central bank of the United States to provide the nation with a safer, more flexible, and more stable monetary and financial system.

Year Enacted: 1972 Its Social/Political Impact: Prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or any other education program that receives funding from the federal government, vastly improving access to educational and athletic opportunities for females.

Year Enacted: 1862 and 1890 Its Social/Political Impact: Provided for the creation of land-grant colleges, funded through the sale of public lands, which made higher education accessible to many Americans and helped foster agricultural research and technical education.

Year Enacted: 1887 Its Social/Political Impact: Authorized the President of the United States to survey Native American tribal land and divide it into allotments for individual Native Americans, which led to the loss of tribal cultural identity and land.

Year Enacted: 1996 Its Social/Political Impact: Dramatically reformed the national welfare system by instituting work requirements and creating the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program.

Year Enacted: 2002 Its Social/Political Impact: Created the Department of Homeland Security and overhauled domestic security to better coordinate response to future threats and emergencies, notably after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Year Enacted: 1906 Its Social/Political Impact: Prohibited the sale of misbranded or adulterated food and drugs in interstate commerce and laid the foundation for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Year Enacted: 1993 Its Social/Political Impact: Required covered employers to provide employees with job-protected and unpaid leave for qualified medical and family reasons, such as personal or family illness, family military leave, pregnancy, adoption, or foster care placement.

Year Enacted: 2002 Its Social/Political Impact: Passed in response to a number of major corporate and accounting scandals, it set new or expanded requirements for all U.S. public company boards, management and public accounting firms, increasing corporate accountability.

Year Enacted: 1933 Its Social/Political Impact: Series of provisions that separated commercial and investment banking and established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to protect depositors, in response to the Great Depression.

Year Enacted: 2015 Its Social/Political Impact: Ended the bulk collection of communication records by the National Security Agency (NSA) under the Patriot Act and imposed limits on the collection of telecommunication metadata on U.S. citizens.