Law Commons^™

Note: Unpaid Interns & The Practice Of Unprotected Working: Building From A History Of Learning On The Job, Troy D. Warner

Troy D Warner

Student interns are provided protection from gender discrimination and sexual harassment in their student capacity by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (CRA), and as employees by Title IX of the CRA. However unpaid student interns are neither considered students nor employees, and thus slip through the cracks of coverage provided by Titles VII & IX. They are working unprotected by the law from sexual harassment and sexual discrimination. The Department of Labor has two classifications created by regulations, which provide protections to workers not legally employees, just as unpaid interns are not employees.

The Department of …

Privacy As A Tool For Antidiscrimination, Jessica Roberts

Jessica L. Roberts

Traditionally, laws that protect privacy and laws that prohibit discrimination have been considered distinct kinds of legal protections. This Essay challenges that binary on both practical and theoretical grounds. Using the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) as a case study, it argues that lawmakers can use privacy law to further antidiscrimination goals. GINA, which prohibits genetic-information discrimination in health insurance and employment, does more than simply outlaw discriminatory conduct. It also prohibits employers from requiring—or even requesting—their employees’ genetic information. While GINA’s privacy and antidiscrimination protections have previously been viewed as discrete, this Essay reads them in concert, arguing that …

Mirror, Mirror On The Wall, Who Are You To Say Who Is Fairest Of Them All?, Ashley R. Brown

Ashley R Brown

No abstract provided.

Snopa And The Ppa: Do You Know What It Means For You? If Snopa (Social Networking Online Protection Act) Or Ppa (Password Protection Act) Do Not Pass, The Snooping Could Cause You Trouble, Angela Goodrum

Angela Goodrum

No abstract provided.

The Tides Are Turning: Eeoc Pattern Or Practice Lawsuits Must Adhere To Title Vii's 300-Day Limitation Period, Lily M. Strumwasser

Lily M Strumwasser

No abstract provided.

Bad Briefs, Bad Law, Bad Markets: Documenting The Poor Quality Of Plaintiffs’ Briefs, Its Impact On The Law, And The Market Failure It Reflects, Scott A. Moss

Scott A Moss

For a major field, employment discrimination suffers surprisingly low-quality plaintiff’s lawyering. This Article details a study of several hundred summary judgment briefs, finding as follows: (1) the vast majority of plaintiffs’ briefs omit available caselaw rebutting key defense arguments, many falling far below basic professional standards with incoherent writing or no meaningful research; (2) low-quality briefs lose at over double the rate of good briefs; and (3) bad briefs skew caselaw evolution, because even controlling for won/loss rate, bad plaintiffs’ briefs far more often yield decisions crediting debatable defenses. These findings are puzzling; in a major legal service market, how …

Discrimination At Will: Job Security Protections And Equal Employment Opportunity In Conflict, Julie C. Suk

ExpressO

The conventional wisdom amongst scholars and advocates of employment discrimination law is that the success of Title VII is significantly hampered by the enduring doctrine of employment at will. As long as employers have broad discretion to fire employees for any reason, no reason, or a bad reason, employers can easily get away with terminating or refusing to promote racial minorities and women as long as some credible nondiscriminatory reason, such as personal animosity, can be presented. This account feeds the widely accepted view that employment at will and the goals of Title VII, namely equal employment opportunity, are at …

The Solomon Amendment, Expressive Associations, And Public Employment, Paul Secunda

ExpressO

Rumsfeld v. FAIR apparently concedes that public employers, in the guise of public law school members of the FAIR association, have expressive association rights. This state of affairs could now mean that public employers could gain constitutional rights at the expense of pubic employees. Thus, to the extent that public employers are considered expressive associations, public employees may see their free speech and other constitutional rights diminished (even more so than they recently have been by the Garcetti v. Ceballos decision).

Thankfully, I cannot imagine that the Court, if faced with the question directly, would find that public employers have …

“Statistical Dueling” With Unconventional Weapons: What Courts Should Know About Experts In Employment Discrimination Class Actions, William T. Bielby, Pamela Coukos

ExpressO

When statistical evidence is offered in a litigation context, the result can be bad law and bad statistics. In recent high profile, high-stakes employment discrimination class actions against large multinationals like UPS, Wal-Mart, and Marriott, plaintiffs have claimed that decentralized and highly discretionary management practices result in systematic gender or racial disparities in pay and promotion. At class certification, plaintiffs have relied in part on statistical analyses of the company’s workforce showing companywide inequality. Defendants have responded with statistical presentations of their own, which frequently demonstrate widely varying outcomes for members of protected groups in different geographic areas of the …

A Complete Property Right Amendment, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

The trend of the eminent domain reform and "Kelo plus" initiatives is toward a comprehensive Constitutional property right incorporating the elements of level of review, nature of government action, and extent of compensation. This article contains a draft amendment which reflects these concerns.

Compulsory Labor In A National Emergency: Public Service Or Involuntary Servitude? The Case Of Crippled Ports, Michael H. Leroy

ExpressO

The 13th Amendment ban on involuntary servitude has new relevance as the U.S. grapples with national emergencies such as catastrophic hurricanes, flu pandemics, and terrorism. This Article considers work refusal and coerced work performance in life-threatening employment contexts. Overwhelmed by fear, hundreds of police officers and health care workers abandoned their jobs during Hurricane Katrina. Postal clerks worked against their will without masks in facilities with anthrax. A report by Congress worries that avian flu will cause sick and frightened medical personnel to stay away from work, thus jeopardizing a coherent response to a crisis.

How far can the U.S. …

A Vague And Subjective Standard With Impractical Effects: The Need For Congressional Intervention After Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railway Co. V. White, Lisa Durham Taylor

ExpressO

The anti-retaliation provision of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects employees who report perceived workplace discrimination or who otherwise participate in the investigative or enforcement process of alleged Title VII discrimination. The statute provides little guidance, however, as to the scope of this protection. Thus, disagreement abounded among the lower federal courts, not only as to whether the anti-retaliation provision prohibited employer acts outside the workplace as well as within, but also as to the level of severity to which an alleged retaliatory act must rise in order to support a claim. The Supreme Court sought …

Tough Talk From The Supreme Court On Free Speech: The Illusory Per Se Rule In Garcetti As Further Evidence Of Connick’S Unworkable Employee/Citizen Speech Partition, Sonya K. Bice

ExpressO

Garcetti v. Ceballos was intended to clear up an area of First Amendment law so murky that it was the source not only of circuit splits but also of intra-circuit splits—panels from within the same circuit had arrived at opposite results in nearly identical cases. As it turned out, the Supreme Court itself was as splintered as the circuits. Of all the previously argued cases that remained undecided during the Court’s transition involving Justice O’Connor’s retirement and Justice Alito’s confirmation, Garcetti was the only one for which the Court ordered a second argument. This suggested to some that without a …

The "American Rule" That Swallows The Exception, Joseph E. Slater

ExpressO

The “American” rule of employment at-will cripples the effectiveness of the two most important exceptions to that doctrine, the National Labor Relations Act and Title VII. Scholars often cite at-will as an area in which exceptions swallow the rule but ignore the opposite effect the rule has in undermining rights widely viewed as fundamental. This article goes beyond the standard critiques of the NLRA and Title VII and uses two other areas of law to make this case. The impact of at-will on private sector labor rights under the NLRA is shown by comparing public sector employment. Public sector labor …

Bizarro Statutory Stare Decisis, Jamie D. Prenkert

ExpressO

In Smith v. City of Jackson, the Supreme Court applied to the Age Discrimination in Employment Act one of its decisions interpreting Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which Congress had overridden with the Civil Rights Act of 1991. It treated Wards Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio, dealing with disparate impact theory and burdens of proof, as a binding interpretation of the ADEA, despite that Congress expressed disapproval of Wards Cove. The Court relied on two interpretive approaches to arrive at this result: the presumption that identical language in the ADEA and Title VII should be interpreted consistently …

Volunteer Discrimination, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

ExpressO

This Essay analyzes a debate regarding the potential racial motivations behind the new National Basketball Association (NBA) Dress Code. Specifically, this Essay examines whether the defense of the new NBA dress code by some Blacks—as pure business, free from racial discrimination—should be viewed as action negating other Blacks’ claims of improper racial motivation behind the policy. I contend that, rather than negating allegations of racism, the reactions of the policy-defending black NBA athletes and leaders only highlight the immense pressures that Blacks have in our society to perform their identity in a way that is racially palatable. In particular, I …

Reasonable Burdens: Resolving The Conflict Between Disabled Employees And Their Co-Workers, Nicole Porter

ExpressO

This Article addresses one of the most difficult issues under the reasonable accommodation provision of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA): how to resolve the conflict that arises when accommodating a disabled employee negatively affects or interferes with the rights of other employees. Several scholars and the Supreme Court (in US Airways v. Barnett) have weighed in on this debate but their analyses fall short of the ultimate goal of this Article—to achieve equal opportunity for individuals with disabilities without unnecessarily interfering with the rights of other employees. In order to achieve that goal, this Article proposes a statutory amendment …

Bond Repudiation, Tax Codes, The Appropriations Process And Restitution Post-Eminent Domain Reform, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

This brief comment suggests where the anti-eminent domain movement might be heading next.

Finding New Constitutional Rights Through The Supreme Court’S Evolving “Government Purpose” Test Under Minimum Scrutiny, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

By now we all are familiar with the litany of cases which refused to find elevated scrutiny for so-called “affirmative” or “social” rights such as education, welfare or housing: Lindsey v. Normet, San Antonio School District v. Rodriguez, Dandridge v. Williams, DeShaney v. Winnebago County. There didn’t seem to be anything in minimum scrutiny which could protect such facts as education or housing, from government action. However, unobtrusively and over the years, the Supreme Court has clarified and articulated one aspect of minimum scrutiny which holds promise for vindicating facts. You will recall that under minimum scrutiny government’s action is …

The Small Firm Exemption And The Single Employer Doctrine In Employment Discrimination Law, Richard R. Carlson

ExpressO

The small firm exemption is a provision of Title VII and the other major federal employment discrimination laws that exempts very small firms from coverage as “employers.” Under the Title VII version of the exemption, for example, an employer is exempt as long as it employs no more than fourteen employees. However, a small firm might be affiliated or integrated with other firms, which collectively employ more than the number of employees required for coverage. The single employer doctrine is a rule for treating separately organized firms as if they were one employer, for purposes of meeting the statutory threshold …

The Ineffectiveness Of Capped Damages In Cases Of Employment Discrimination: Solutions Toward Deterrence, Vanessa M. Ruggles

ExpressO

Although the Civil Rights Act of 1991 helped victims of employment discrimination in a variety of ways, including the authorization of jury trials and the accompanying possibility of compensatory and punitive damages, the caps Congress placed on damages do not serve the purpose of deterrence. Because the caps are based on the number of employees a defendant employer has, the goal of protecting small businesses from exorbitant damages is accomplished. However, because the top category of the caps is “500 or more” employees, giant corporations escape meaningful awards. This article identifies the problem citing specific examples, and proposes several solutions …

The Day Laborer Debate: Small Town, U.S.A. Takes On Federal Immigration Law Regarding Undocumented Workers, Margaret B. Hobbins

ExpressO

Herndon, Virginia is the latest example of small town immigration issues exploding into the national debate on illegal immigration. This four-square mile town, population 22,000, was propelled into the national spotlight after a dramatic public reaction to Mayor Michael O’Reilly’s proposal to construct a hiring site for day laborers. Three months before the center even opened its doors, Herndon and Fairfax County faced a law suit challenging the legality of funding a day labor center that would inevitably extend its services to undocumented immigrants.

Small towns, adjusting to significant increases in the immigrant worker population, have become a new battlefield …

New International Human Rights Standards On Unauthorized Immigrant Worker Rights: Seizing An Opportunity To Pull Governments Out Of The Shadows, Beth Lyon

Working Paper Series

Governments cannot ignore international human rights standards for unauthorized migrant workers forever. This chapter presents a call for comparative work on the issue of the legal regimes affecting unauthorized immigrant workers in order to bring governments into greater awareness and compliance with their obligations to unauthorized immigrant workers.

Global illegal migration by laborers seeking economic opportunities is expanding, resulting in an increasing number of migrants in every country who are working in violation of immigration laws. Unauthorized immigrant workers are numerous enough to form a recognizable group in every major world economy, because most receiving countries have immigration laws that …

Latino Inter-Ethnic Discrimination And The "Diversity Defense", Tanya K. Hernandez

Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers

With the growing racial and ethnic diversity of the U.S. population and workforce, scholars have begun to address the ways in which coalition building across groups will continue to be necessary but will become even more complex. The growing scholarship has focused on analyzing how best to promote effective coalition building. Thus far, scholars have not examined what that growing racial and ethnic diversity will mean in the individuated context of racial and ethnic discrimination claims. In other words, what will anti-discrimination litigation look like when all the parties involved are non-White but a racial hierarchy is alleged to exist …

Paid Family Leave In American Law Schools: Findings And Open Questions, Laura T. Kessler

ExpressO

There exists a substantial literature on the status of women in the legal profession, including studies on women students’ experiences in law schools, gender bias on law school faculties, and family leave policies and practices among legal employers. However, no recent study examines the family leave policies and practices in American law schools. This study seeks to fill that gap. Its findings are threefold. First, almost three quarters of law schools provide wage replacement during a family leave that is more generous than required by federal law. Second, there is a positive relationship between teaching at top-tier and private law …

Card Check Recognition: The Ongoing Legal And Legislative Battle, Michael E. Aleo

ExpressO

A great debate has been brewing for years over whether unions should be able to organize employees outside of the traditional election procedures provided by the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA” or “the Act”). Typically, in an organizing drive, a union solicits support from employees to indicate a desire to run a National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB” or “Board”) election. The union does this by collecting cards from employees affirming the employees’ desire to have a representation election. If the union collects valid cards from at least one-third of eligible employees in the appropriate bargaining unit, the union may then …

Seeing Straight In The Workplace: An Examination Of Sexual Orientation Discrimination In Public Employment In The Aftermath Of Lawrence V. Texas, Devin A. Cohen

ExpressO

Title VII does not explicitly protect homosexual employees from sexual orientation discrimination and the courts have generally refused to bootstrap sexual orientation discrimination into Title VII as a form of gender discrimination. Therefore, homosexual employees have had to depend on their constitutional rights to protect them from their public employers’ sexual orientation discrimination. Traditionally, the courts have allowed public employers to discriminate against homosexual employees so long as the employers’ reasons were rationally related to legitimate business purposes.

I argue that the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Lawrence v. Texas forces future courts to question the reasonableness of employers’ rational bases. …

Breaking The Bank: Revisiting Central Bank Of Denver After Enron And Sarbanes-Oxley, Celia Taylor

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

State Legislation As A Fulcrum For Change: Wisconsin's Public Sector Labor Law, And The Revolution In Politics And Worker Rights, Joseph E. Slater

ExpressO

The rise of public sector unions is one of the most significant but least examined movements for legal rights and social change. Through the 1950s, government employees typically had no right to bargain collectively or even to organize unions–rights often regarded as fundamental human rights–and public sector unions were small and relatively powerless. Yet today, unions represent more than 40 percent of all public workers, government employees make up about 40 percent of the entire U.S. labor movement, and public sector unions are among the strongest political advocacy groups in the country. This became possible only through a revolution of …

Employment Discrimination In A High Velocity Labor Market, Alan Hyde

Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers

Silicon Valley employers employ few African-Americans, Latino/as, or older workers, yet do not fit the usual paradigms of employment discrimination: they exhibit no taste for uniformity and do not employ job tournaments or internal labor markets. A new model of employment discrimination attributes disparate hiring in Silicon Valley to a combination of: demands for specific skill sets at hiring (the opposite of the subjective criteria that have long beguiled scholars of discrimination) and concomitant refusal to train; hiring through networks of personal contacts; and rewards to career paths that alternate employment with self-employment. Overcoming the disparate impact of these employment …