Law Commons^™

Do You Want To Be An Attorney Or A Mother? Arguing For A Feminist Solution To The Problem Of Double Binds In Employment And Family Responsibilities Discrimination, Heather Bennett Stanford

Heather P Bennett

This article is a research paper analyzing and proffering solutions to family responsibilities discrimination in the workplace. The article centers around a case filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. This case was filed by a female partner at the law firm Dickie, McCamey & Chilcote claiming discrimination based on family responsibilities. I chose this topic because I feel that it is an increasingly important and emerging area of employment discrimination law. This article introduces the background of the case and analyzes possible outcomes in light of caselaw involving employment discrimination in various contexts. …

The Emerging First Amendment Law Of Managerial Prerogative, Lawrence Rosenthal

Lawrence Rosenthal

In Garcetti v. Ceballos, the Supreme Court, by the narrowest of margins, held that allegations of police perjury made in memoranda to his superiors by Richard Ceballos, a supervisory prosecutor in the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office, were unprotected by the First Amendment because “his expressions were made pursuant to his duties. . . .” The academic reaction to this holding has been harshly negative; scholars argue that the holding will prevent the public from learning of governmental misconduct that is known only to those working within the bowels of the government itself.

This article rejects the scholarly consensus …

Summary Judgment Rates Over Time, Across Case Categories, And Across Districts: An Empirical Study Of Three Large Federal Districts, Theodore Eisenberg, Charlotte Lanvers

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Prior research on summary judgment hypothesizes a substantial increase in summary judgment rates after a trilogy of Supreme Court cases in 1986 and a disproportionate adverse effect of summary judgment on civil rights cases. This article analyzes summary judgment rates in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania (EDPA) and the Northern District of Georgia (NDGA), for two time periods, 1980-81 and 2001-02. It also analyzes summary judgment rates for the Central District of California (CDCA) for 1980-81 and for other civil rights cases in the CDCA in 1975-76. The combined sample consists of over 5,000 cases. The three-district sample for 1980-81 …

Taming The Paper Tiger: A Comparative Approach To Reforming Japanese Gender Equality Laws, Kristina T. Geraghty

Cornell International Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Title Ii Of The Americans With Disabilities Act Of 1990 And Its Prohibition Of Employment Discrimination, Jamie L. Ireland, Richard A. Bales

Northern Illinois University Law Review

Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) prohibits employment discrimination. Title II of the ADA prohibits discrimination in the provision of programs, services, or activities by federal, state, and local government entities. Title I, however, contains significant coverage gaps: federal employees, and employees of employers with less than fifteen employees, are not covered. When these employees are discriminated against on the basis of disability, they often sue under Title II, which does not contain the Title I exclusions. The federal circuit courts are split on the issue of whether the ADA Title II applies to employment discrimination claims. …

Pragmatism Over Politics: Recent Trends In Lower Court Employment Discrimination Jurisprudence, Lee Reeves

Missouri Law Review

This Article has five parts. After considering empirical evidence, Part I concludes that judges' political ideology plays only a limited role in their decisionmaking. Part II identifies the increase in case filings over the last two decades as a likely non-ideological cause of the increased judicial skepticism towards claims of employment discrimination. This Part begins by examining aggregate trends in the district and appellate caseload and then translates caseload into the more meaningful metric of workload. Part II next evaluates various steps courts have taken to handle these workload increases. Finally, Part II concludes with a discussion of why employment …

Discrimination After Daugherty: Are Missouri Courts Contributing To Or Motivated By The Number Of Cases On The Discrimination Docket, Amanda Stogsdill

Missouri Law Review

For more than twenty years, Missouri courts have applied the federal McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting analysis to determine the outcome of a defendant's motion for summary judgment in claims of employment discrimination. However, the Missouri Supreme Court recently abandoned the McDonnell Douglas framework in favor of a new method of analysis derived from a Missouri Approved Jury Instruction. This new analysis has become known as the "contributing factor" test. In the months since Daugherty, controversy has surrounded this standard. Many defense attorneys claim that the "contributing factor" test significantly lowers the bar that a discrimination plaintiff must meet in order to …

The Disappearing Dilemma: Why Agency Principles Should Now Take Center Stage In Retaliation Cases, Sandra F. Sperino

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

In Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad v. White, the Supreme Court soundly rejected the idea that the plaintiff must establish that conduct rose to the level of an adverse employment action to constitute retaliation under Title VII. This Article posits that, in an effort to square Burlington with other Title VII agency jurisprudence, the courts will be required to re-import the concept of tangible employment action into decisions regarding whether an employer is vicariously liable for actions committed by supervisors.

While the lower courts appear to recognize that agency issues come into play when retaliation is conducted by co-workers, …

Unifying Disparate Treatment (Really), Martin J. Katz

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

The Article will proceed in three parts. Part I will show the fragmented state of current disparate treatment law. Part II will demonstrate why this fragmentation is problematic as a normative matter, and why the I99I Civil Rights Act framework is superior to the Price Waterhouse and McDonnell Douglas frameworks. Part III will point the way toward a unified disparate treatment doctrine, in which all litigants will use the 1991 Act framework.

Proposing A Uniform Remedial Approach For Undocumented Workers Under Federal Employment Discrimination Law, Craig Robert Senn

Fordham Law Review

Given the recent influxes of undocumented workers who have entered the United States in order to obtain employment, the issue of their remedial rights under federal employment discrimination law has become highly significant. Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and/or the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), these remedies could include back pay, front pay (in lieu of reinstatement), compensatory damages, punitive damages, liquidated damages, and/or reasonable attorneys’ fees, as applicable. At present, there is no uniform judicial approach for determining the monetary remedial rights of the millions of undocumented workers under …

A Chain Of Inferences Proving Discrimination, Michael J. Zimmer

University of Colorado Law Review

There are three elements in a plaintiff's prima facie case of individual disparate treatment discrimination: (1) the plaintiff suffered an adverse employment action, (2) the action was linked to the defendant, and (3) the defendant's action was motivated by a protected characteristic of the plaintiff. The third element-the defendant's intent to discriminateis the most challenging to prove. Thus, most individual disparate treatment discrimination cases, and this Article, focus on this inquiry. Part of the difficulty is that the second element-the level of linkage between the plaintiff's harm and the defendant's action-has been tied up in the discussion of intent. After …

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 …

Law On The Street: Legal Narrative And The Street Law Classroom, Elizabeth L. Macdowell

Scholarly Works

This Article argues that the failure of anti-discrimination law to address the problems of subordination reflects the hegemonic perspective in legal narratives. For the lawyer concerned with social change, it is imperative to identify these narratives and the ways in which they not only inhibit deep social change, but may perpetuate the conditions of subordination. Yet, law school polices against the consciousness necessary for the lawyer to identify the hegemonic narrative in the law, and often instills attitudes, which are antithetical to the project of social change. In this context, Street Law - a practical law course taught by law …

Title Vii: What's Hair (And Other Race-Based Characteristics)G Ot To Do With It?, D. Wendy Greene

University of Colorado Law Review

Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination in employment on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, and sex. Many Title VII cases have arisen when an applicant's or employee's non-conformity with an employer's policy barring certain hairstyles or clothing has resulted in an adverse employment action, such as a denial or termination of employment. Generally, courts have not deemed an adverse employment action resulting from an applicant's or employee's non-conformity with an employment policy banning the display of mutable characteristics commonly associated with a particular racial or ethnic group a violation of Title VIis proscription …

Settling The Matter: Does Title I Of The Ada Work?, Sharona Hoffman

Faculty Publications

Analysis of cases decided under Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which addresses employment discrimination, reveals that defendants have consistently prevailed in well over 90% of cases since the ADA's inception. This empirical evidence has led many commentators to conclude that the ADA's Title I has failed to improve workplace conditions for individuals with disabilities.

This article attempts to assess the efficacy of Title I through a different lens. It focuses on several data sets that have previously received little attention. It examines Equal Employment Opportunity Commission merit resolutions, lawsuit settlement statistics, and reports concerning reasonable accommodation …

The Truth Is Out There: Revamping Federal Antidiscrimination Enforcement For The Twenty-First Century, Marcia L. Mccormick

All Faculty Scholarship

Employment discrimination laws in the United States have not created full equality in the workplace, although that was their goal. Real change requires greater accountability for those who make employment decisions and greater transparency to bolster that accountability. To provide that transparency and accountability, we need greater federal involvement in enforcement and a mechanism to publicize the state of the nation's workplaces. To accomplish this, I propose taking private sector employment discrimination disputes away from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission entirely, and starting with a new agency. The current model, with the EEOC writing compliance guidelines, encouraging mediation, and acting …

Mandatory Arbitration: Why It's Better Than It Looks, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

"Mandatory arbitration" as used here means that employees must agree as a condition of employment to arbitrate all legal disputes with their employer, including statutory claims, rather than take them to court. The Supreme Court has upheld the validity of such agreements on the grounds that they merely provide for a change of forum and not a loss of substantive rights. Opponents contend this wrongfully deprives employees of the right to a jury trial and other statutory procedural benefits. Various empirical studies indicate, however, that employees similarly situated do about as well in arbitration as in court actions, or even …

Civil Rights And Related Decisions, Eileen Kaufman

Scholarly Works

This article analyzes two cases from the October 2006 Supreme Court Term, Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. and Gonzales v. Carhart. The cases have much in common, even though Ledbetter concerns pay disparity claims based on gender and Gonzales concerns second trimester abortions. Both are five-four decisions which demonstrate how profoundly the appointment of Justice Samuel Alito to occupy Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's seat has affected the balance of power on the Court. The net result of this shift has been a devastating setback for women's rights. Both decisions prompted Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to uncharacteristically read aloud …

Mega-Cases, Diversity, And The Elusive Goal Of Workplace Reform, Nancy Levit

Nancy Levit

Employment discrimination class action suits are part of a new wave of structural reform litigation. Like their predecessors - the school desegregation cases in the 1950s, the housing and voting inequalities cases in the 1960s, prison conditions suits in the 1970s, and environmental lawsuits since then - these are systemic challenges to major institutions affecting large segments of the public. This article explores the effectiveness of various employment discrimination remedies in reforming workplace cultures, promoting corporate accountability, and implementing real diversity.

Reviewing the architecture and aftermath of consent decrees in five major employment discrimination cases - the cases against Shoney's, …