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Chosen Family, Care, And The Workplace, Deborah Widiss

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Employees often request time off work to care for the medical needs of loved ones who are part of their extended or chosen family. Until recently, most workers would not have had any legal right to take such leave. A rapidly growing number of state laws, however, not only guarantee paid time off for family health needs, but also adopt innovative and expansive definitions of eligible family.

Several provide leave to care for intimate partners without requiring legal formalization of the relationship. Some go further to include any individual who has a relationship with the employee that is “like” or …

An Overture To Equality: Preventing Subconscious Sex And Gender Biases From Influencing Hiring Decisions, Christy Krawietz

Seattle University Law Review

In many industries, women are less likely than men to be hired, and research suggests that this is due to subconscious gender bias rather than meritorious difference. To combat this bias, some orchestras use gender-blind auditions to hire their musicians. Orchestral hopefuls sit behind a screen to play their pieces, and directors listen to determine whom they want to hire. Some orchestras require applicants to remove their shoes before walking onstage, as even the perceived sound of high heels can affect a director’s decision. Before instituting gender-blind auditions, the top five American orchestras had fewer than five percent women players. …

The Cult Of Hostile Gender Climate: A Male Voice Preaches Diversity To The Choir, Dan Subotnik

Dan Subotnik

No abstract provided.

Civil Rights Reform And The Body, Tobias Barrington Wolff

All Faculty Scholarship

Discrimination on the basis of gender identity or expression has emerged as a major focus of civil rights reform. Opponents of these reforms have structured their opposition around one dominant image: the bathroom. With striking consistency, opponents have invoked anxiety over the bathroom -- who uses bathrooms, what happens in bathrooms, and what traumas one might experience while occupying a bathroom -- as the reason to permit discrimination in the workplace, housing, and places of public accommodation. This rhetoric of the bathroom in the debate over gender-identity protections seeks to exploit an underlying anxiety that has played a role in …

Why Don't "Reasonable Women" Complain About Sexual Harassment?, L. Camille Hébert

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Protections For Transgender Employees, Jennifer L. Levi

Media Presence

Many transgender employees routinely face demotions, unfavorable conditions of employment, and even discriminatory terminations--due not to job-related problems but to employers' discomfort with and animus against transgender people. Lawyers may look to several sources of law in order to redress the rights of transgender clients who face adverse treatment in such situations, including transgender-specific nondiscrimination laws, state and federal sex discrimination laws, and state disability laws. Although courts historically have found transgender people excluded from coverage under certain laws, developing case law supports the arguments of transgender employees who face workplace discrimination.

The Cult Of Hostile Gender Climate: A Male Voice Preaches Diversity To The Choir, Dan Subotnik

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

The Present State Of Sexual Harassment Law: Perpetuating Post Traumatic Stress Disorder In Sexually Harassed Women, Jennifer L. Vinciguerra

Cleveland State Law Review

This Note will argue that current federal legislation was developed, and has subsequently been interpreted by the courts, with little or no consideration for a victimized woman. Instead of addressing the causes and effects of sexual harassment head on, the legislature has largely ignored the realities of sexual harassment as a traumatizing experience faced by thousands of working women each year. Part H of this Note will address the development and current state of sexual harassment law, as well as the Supreme Court's ruling in Meritor Savings Bank, FSB v. Vinson. Part III will discuss Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as …