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Full-Text Articles in Law
Threats To Medicaid And Health Equity Intersections, Mary Crossley
Threats To Medicaid And Health Equity Intersections, Mary Crossley
Articles
2017 was a tumultuous year politically in the United States on many fronts, but perhaps none more so than health care. For enrollees in the Medicaid program, it was a “year of living precariously.” Long-promised Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act also took aim at Medicaid, with proposals to fundamentally restructure the program and drastically cut its federal funding. These proposals provoked pushback from multiple fronts, including formal opposition from groups representing people with disabilities and people of color and individual protesters. Opposition by these groups should not have surprised the proponents of “reforming” Medicaid. Both people of …
The Dubious Empirical And Legal Foundations Of Wellness Programs, Adrianna Mcintyre, Nicholas Bagley, Austin Frakt, Aaron Carroll
The Dubious Empirical And Legal Foundations Of Wellness Programs, Adrianna Mcintyre, Nicholas Bagley, Austin Frakt, Aaron Carroll
Articles
The article offers information on the dubious empirical and legal foundations of workplace wellness programs in the U.S. Topics discussed include enactment of Affordable Care Act for expanding the scope of incentives availas; analysis of financial incentives offered to the employees for encouraging their participation in wellness programs; and targeting incentives specifically toward individuals diagnosed with chronic diseases.
Disability Rights And Labor: Is This Conflict Really Necessary?, Samuel R. Bagenstos
Disability Rights And Labor: Is This Conflict Really Necessary?, Samuel R. Bagenstos
Articles
In this Essay, I hope to do two things: First, I try to put the current labor-disability controversy into that broader context. Second, and perhaps more important, I take a position on how disability rights advocates should approach both the current controversy and labor-disability tensions more broadly. As to the narrow dispute over wage-and-hour protections for personal-assistance workers, I argue both that those workers have a compelling normative claim to full FLSA protection—a claim that disability rights advocates should recognize—and that supporting the claim of those workers is pragmatically in the best interests of the disability rights movement. As to …
Retaliation In The Eeo Office, Deborah L. Brake
Retaliation In The Eeo Office, Deborah L. Brake
Articles
This Article examines a new and as-yet unexplored development in retaliation law under Title VII and other anti-discrimination statutes: the denial of protection from retaliation to the class of employees charged with enforcing their employers’ internal anti-discrimination policies and complaint procedures. Through distinctive applications of traditional retaliation doctrine and newer rules formulated specifically for this class of employees, these workers are increasingly vulnerable to unchecked retaliation by their employers. This troubling trend has important implications for workplace retaliation law and for employment discrimination law more broadly. This Article makes two contributions to legal scholarship. First, it traces the legal doctrines …
Formalism And Employer Liability Under Title Vii, Samuel R. Bagenstos
Formalism And Employer Liability Under Title Vii, Samuel R. Bagenstos
Articles
Most lawyers, law professors, and judges are familiar with two standard critiques of formalism in legal reasoning. One is the unacknowledged-policymaking critique. This critique argues that formalist reasoning purports to be above judicial policymaking but instead simply hides the policy decisions offstage. The other is the false-determinacy critique. This critique observes that formalist reasoning purports to reduce decision costs in the run of cases by sorting cases into defined categories, but argues that instead of going away the difficult questions of application migrate to the choice of the category in which to place a particular case.
Undocumented Workers And Concepts Of Fault: Are Courts Engaged In Legitimate Decisionmaking, Christine N. Cimini
Undocumented Workers And Concepts Of Fault: Are Courts Engaged In Legitimate Decisionmaking, Christine N. Cimini
Articles
This Article examines judicial decisionmaking in labor and employment cases involving undocumented workers. Labor and employment laws, designed to protect all workers regardless of immigration status, often conflict with immigration laws designed to deter the employment of undocumented workers. In the absence of clarity as to how these differing policy priorities should interact, courts are left to resolve the conflict. While existing case law appears to lack coherence, this Article identifies a uniform judicial reliance upon “fault-based” factors. This Article offers a structure to understand this developing body of law and evaluates the legitimacy of the fault-based decisionmaking modalities utilized …
The Future Of American Labor And Employment Law: Hopes, Dreams, And Realities, Theodore J. St. Antoine
The Future Of American Labor And Employment Law: Hopes, Dreams, And Realities, Theodore J. St. Antoine
Articles
In many respects the US is a deeply conservative country. Unique among the major industrial democracies of the world, it imposes the death penalty, provides no national health insurance, fixes a high legal drinking age, and subscribes to the doctrine of employment at will. Perhaps not surprisingly, its labor movement is also one of the most conservative on earth, eschewing class warfare and aiming largely at the bread-and-butter goal of improved wages, benefits, and working conditions. Yet American employers have generally never been as accepting of unionization as their counterparts in other countries (Bok 1971; Freeman and Medoff 1984). Over …
The Failure Of Title Vii As A Rights-Claiming System, Deborah Brake, Joanna L. Grossman
The Failure Of Title Vii As A Rights-Claiming System, Deborah Brake, Joanna L. Grossman
Articles
This Article takes a comprehensive look at the failure of Title VII as a system for claiming nondiscrimination rights. The Supreme Court's recent decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, 127 S. Ct. 2162 (2007), requiring an employee to assert a Title VII pay discrimination claim within 180 days of when the discriminatory pay decision was first made, marks the tip of the iceberg in this flawed system. In the past decade, Title VII doctrines at both ends of the rights-claiming process have become increasing hostile to employees. At the front end, Title VII imposes strict requirements on …
What Counts As 'Discrimination' In Ledbetter And The Implications For Sex Equality Law, Deborah L. Brake
What Counts As 'Discrimination' In Ledbetter And The Implications For Sex Equality Law, Deborah L. Brake
Articles
This article, presented at a Symposium, The Roberts Court and Equal Protection: Gender, Race and Class held at the University of South Carolina School of Law in the Spring of 2008, explores the implications of the Supreme Court's decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. for sex equality law more broadly, including equal protection. There is more interrelation between statutory and constitutional equality law as a source of discrimination protections than is generally acknowledged. Although the Ledbetter decision purports to be a narrow procedural ruling regarding the statute of limitations for Title VII pay discrimination claims, at its …
Ask, Don’T Tell: Ethical Issues Surrounding Undocumented Workers’ Status In Employment Litigation, Christine N. Cimini
Ask, Don’T Tell: Ethical Issues Surrounding Undocumented Workers’ Status In Employment Litigation, Christine N. Cimini
Articles
The presence of an estimated 11.5 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, of which an estimated 7.2 million are working, has become a flashpoint in the emerging national debate about immigration. Given these statistics, it is not surprising that many undocumented workers suffer injuries in the workplace that are typically legally cognizable. Even though undocumented workers are entitled to a number of legal remedies related to their employment, seeking legal relief often raises heightened concerns about the disclosure of their status. This article explores lawyers' increasingly complex ethical obligations with regard to a client's immigration status in the context …
Retaliation, Deborah Brake
Retaliation, Deborah Brake
Articles
This Article takes a comprehensive look at retaliation and its place in discrimination law. The Article begins by examining current social science literature to understand how retaliation operates as a social practice to silence challenges to discrimination and preserve inequality. Then, using the recent controversy over whether to imply a private right of action for retaliation from a general ban on discrimination as a launching point, the Article theorizes the connections between retaliation and discrimination as legal constructs, and contends that retaliation should be viewed as a species of intentional discrimination. The Article argues that situating retaliation as a practice …
Reasonable Accommodation As Part And Parcel Of The Antidiscrimination Project, Mary Crossley
Reasonable Accommodation As Part And Parcel Of The Antidiscrimination Project, Mary Crossley
Articles
Numerous commentators have characterized the ADA's reasonable accommodation mandate - which sometimes requires employers to take affirmative steps that treat an individual with a disability differently from other workers - as a departure from the fundamental precepts of antidiscrimination law. These characterizations, however, fail to appreciate either the insights offered by disability theorists regarding the sources of inequality experienced by people with disabilities or the intrinsic conceptual kinship between the ADA's accommodation requirement and disparate impact liability and hostile environment liability under Title VII. Disability theory scholarship affirms that society's historic disregard for and devaluation of people with disabilities has …
Victimized Twice -- The Intersection Of Domestic Violence And The Workplace: Legal Reform Through Curriculum Development, Lea B. Vaughn
Victimized Twice -- The Intersection Of Domestic Violence And The Workplace: Legal Reform Through Curriculum Development, Lea B. Vaughn
Articles
Domestic violence is at least a two-fold problem for American society. On the one hand, it is one of the leading causes of violence at the workplace against women. On the other, it prevents many women from attaining the economic security that would enable them to escape violence. After describing the background of this problem, this paper will canvass current legal remedies that are available to help battered women achieve economic security. This survey leads to the conclusion that the current pastiche of remedies is often ineffective because of their piecemeal approach to the problem, or because current doctrine does …
Compulsory Arbitration Of Discrimination Claims And The Civil Rights Act Of 1991: Encouraged Or Proscribed?, Mark Adams
Compulsory Arbitration Of Discrimination Claims And The Civil Rights Act Of 1991: Encouraged Or Proscribed?, Mark Adams
Articles
No abstract provided.
Why Mandatory Arbitration May Benefit Workers, Theodore J. St. Antoine
Why Mandatory Arbitration May Benefit Workers, Theodore J. St. Antoine
Articles
Would employees-including union employees-be better off with mandatory arbitration, even of statutory employment claims? The answer to this important question should depend less on abstract notions about the importance of statutory claims and the sanctity of the right to a jury trial, and more on a pragmatic assessment of what is likely to be best for the great majority of workers. Employing this type of analysis, which would take into account an overworked, underfunded Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, backlogged court dockets and other practical problems, my view is that most employees might well be better off with mandatory arbitration, provided …
Divergent Strategies: Union Organizing And Alternative Dispute Resolution, Theodore J. St. Antoine
Divergent Strategies: Union Organizing And Alternative Dispute Resolution, Theodore J. St. Antoine
Articles
The Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations, the so-called "Dunlop Commission," is focusing on three principal subjects: (1) union organizing, (2) worker participation in management decision making, and (3) alternative dispute resolution (ADR). I am going to concentrate on the last, but first I would like to say a few words about union organizing. After all, unionization and collective bargaining - and for that matter, worker participation as well - can fairly be viewed as special forms of alternative dispute resolution.
Structures Of Subordination: Women Of Color At The Intersection Of Title Vii And The Nlra. Not!, Elizabeth M. Iglesias
Structures Of Subordination: Women Of Color At The Intersection Of Title Vii And The Nlra. Not!, Elizabeth M. Iglesias
Articles
No abstract provided.
The Government And Union Democracy, Theodore J. St. Antoine
The Government And Union Democracy, Theodore J. St. Antoine
Articles
The desirability of union democracy is generally regarded today as a self-evident proposition. In this Symposium Clyde Summers treats it as a "fundamental premise." But there have always been reputable scholars who would support the thesis, in greater or lesser degree, that "democracy is as inappropriate within the international headquarters of the UAW as it is in the front office of General Motors."
Prevention Of Antiunion Discrimination In The United States, Theodore J. St. Antoine
Prevention Of Antiunion Discrimination In The United States, Theodore J. St. Antoine
Articles
Nearly all rank-and-file employees in private businesses of any substantial size in the United States are protected by federal law against antiunion discrimination. The Railway Labor Act applies to the railroad and airline industries. The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) applies to all other businesses whose operations "affect [interstate] commerce" in almost any way. Supervisory and managerial personnel, domestic servants, and agricultural workers are excluded from this federal scheme. Separate federal law covers the employees of the federal government. About thirty of the fifty states have statutes ensuring the right to organize on the part of some or most of …
Discrimination Bans Demonstrate Approaching Maturity Of Employment Law, Theodore J. St. Antoine
Discrimination Bans Demonstrate Approaching Maturity Of Employment Law, Theodore J. St. Antoine
Articles
The pervasive message of this symposium sponsored by the Labor Relations Law Section, whether or not intended by the individual authors, is that American employment law is moving beyond adolescence and may be approaching maturity.
You're Fired!, Theodore J. St. Antoine
You're Fired!, Theodore J. St. Antoine
Articles
In 1967 Professor Lawrence Blades of Kansas criticized the iron grip of the contract doctrine of employment at will, and argued that all employees should be legally protected against abusive discharge. The next dozen years saw a remarkable reaction. With rare unanimity, a veritable Who's Who of labor academics and labor arbitrators, Aaron, Blumrosen, Howlett, Peck, Stieber, and Summers, to name only some, stepped forth to embrace Blades' notion, and to refine and elaborate it. But the persons who counted the most, the judges and the legislators, hung back. In the 1960s, vast strides were taken at both the federal …
Affirmative Action: Hypocritical Euphemism Or Noble Mandate?, Theodore J. St. Antoine
Affirmative Action: Hypocritical Euphemism Or Noble Mandate?, Theodore J. St. Antoine
Articles
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was adopted in an atmosphere of monumental naivete. Congress apparently believed that equal employment opportunity could be achieved simply by forbidding employers or unions to "discriminate" on the basis of "race, color, religion, sex, or national origin," and expressly disavowed any intention to require "preferential treatment." Perhaps animated by the Supreme Court's stirring desegregation decisions of the 1950's, the proponents of civil rights legislation made "color-blindness" the rallying cry of the hour. Today we know better. The dreary statistics, so familiar to anyone who works in this field, tell the story. …