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Secrecy In Context: The Shadowy Life Of Civil Rights Litigation, Minna J. Kotkin

Chicago-Kent Law Review

This article explores how secrecy has come to pervade employment discrimination litigation as a consequence of procedural and substantive changes in the law over the last twenty-five years. In contrast to products liability and toxic tort claims, where secrecy can endanger the public health and safety, secrecy in the discrimination context has a less dramatic impact and thus, has attracted little attention. But when very few discrimination claims end in a public finding of liability, there is a significant cumulative effect, creating the appearance that workplace bias is largely a thing of the past. The trend towards secrecy can be …