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Articles 1 - 12 of 12
Full-Text Articles in Law
Power V. Power: Federal Pattern-Or-Practice Enforcement Actions Applied To Local Prosecutors, Thomas P. Hogan
Power V. Power: Federal Pattern-Or-Practice Enforcement Actions Applied To Local Prosecutors, Thomas P. Hogan
Maine Law Review
One of the most powerful tools available to the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) to stop abuses in the criminal justice system is the federal pattern-or-practice statute, which allows DOJ to bring an enforcement action to prevent discriminatory conduct by government agencies. The most powerful actor in the criminal justice system is the district attorney, the local prosecutor who is at the center of the system. Does DOJ’s pattern-or-practice enforcement authority extend to local prosecutors? This crucial question remains unresolved in formal precedent and has not been addressed in the relevant literature. This Article explores the issue in detail, …
The Color Of Property And Auto Insurance: Time For Change, Jennifer B. Wriggins
The Color Of Property And Auto Insurance: Time For Change, Jennifer B. Wriggins
Faculty Publications
Insurance company executives issued statements condemning racism and urging change throughout society and in the insurance industry after the huge Black Lives Matter demonstrations in summer 2020. The time therefore is ripe for examining insurance as it relates to race and racism, including history and current regulation. Two of the most important types of personal insurance are property and automobile. Part I begins with history, focusing on property insurance, auto insurance, race, and racism in urban areas around the mid-twentieth century. Private insurers deemed large areas of cities where African Americans lived to be “blighted” and refused to insure all …
Maine's "Act To Protect Traditional Marriage And Prohibit Same-Sex Marriages": Questions Of Constitutionality Under State And Federal Law, Jennifer B. Wriggins
Maine's "Act To Protect Traditional Marriage And Prohibit Same-Sex Marriages": Questions Of Constitutionality Under State And Federal Law, Jennifer B. Wriggins
Maine Law Review
In 1997, Maine's Legislature passed “An Act to Protect Traditional Marriage and Prohibit Same-Sex Marriages” (Act). The summary attached to the bill states that the bill “prohibits persons of the same sex from contracting marriage.” The bill was the verbatim text of an initiative petition. Civil marriage in Maine and other states is regulated by state statute, and marriage regulation is generally considered to be within the state's police power. However, the state's power to regulate marriage is subject to constitutional limitations. I maintain that “heightened scrutiny” should be applied to the Act because the Act creates a gender-based classification, …
The Pregnancy Discrimination Act: Legitimating Discrimination Against Pregnant Women In The Workforce, Judith G. Greenberg
The Pregnancy Discrimination Act: Legitimating Discrimination Against Pregnant Women In The Workforce, Judith G. Greenberg
Maine Law Review
The Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) has been effective in making the most egregious and obvious forms of pregnancy discrimination illegal. Unfortunately, the PDA has also acted as a shield behind which employers can hide as they discriminate against their pregnant employees. The result is that the PDA permits discrimination based on the very sort of stereotyping that it was expected to eradicate. There are two dominant stereotypes of pregnant women. Both are inconsistent with the image of a good worker. One stereotype connects pregnant women with the home. In one form or another it says, “Pregnant women are/should be preoccupied …
Never On Sunday: Workplace Religious Freedom In The New Millennium, Marianne C. Delpo
Never On Sunday: Workplace Religious Freedom In The New Millennium, Marianne C. Delpo
Maine Law Review
Imagine being fired for refusing to sing Happy Birthday. Now imagine collecting $53,000 for that firing--from a waitressing job. Science fiction? Not exactly. Try religious discrimination in the workplace--1990s style. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 has long proscribed such treatment, but lawsuits claiming this type of workplace discrimination were relatively rare for many years. Now claims are on the rise, up 18% over the past five years, and the substance of religious discrimination claims is changing to include some unprecedented fact patterns. This new activity in employment discrimination law, as well as the growing likelihood that …
The Supreme Court Reverses The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's Directive That Disability Determinations Should Be Made Without Regard To Mitigating Measures: Sutton V. United Airlines, Sara Gagne Holmes
Maine Law Review
In Sutton v. United Airlines, identical twin sisters with severe myopia, filed suit under Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) alleging that United Airlines (United) discriminated against them on the basis of a disability, or because United regarded them as having a disability. This case invited the United States Supreme Court to decide for the first time whether mitigating measures such as glasses, medication or prosthetics should be considered when determining if an impairment is an “actual disability” under the ADA, and what constitutes a proper allegation for being “regarded as” disabled under the ADA. In a …
Gender Typing In Stereo: The Transgender Dilemma In Employment Discrimination, Richard F. Storrow
Gender Typing In Stereo: The Transgender Dilemma In Employment Discrimination, Richard F. Storrow
Maine Law Review
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII) prohibits discrimination against men because they are men and against women because they are women. This familiar characterization of the Act has been quoted in dozens of sex discrimination cases to support a narrow view of who is protected against sex discrimination in this country. When transsexuals file suit, “[e]mployment discrimination jurisprudence at both the federal and state levels ... captures transsexuals in a discourse of exclusion from social participation. This wide net, using a remarkably refined system of semantic manipulations, snags all claims launched by transsexuals and reveals …
Hiv And The Ada: What Is A Direct Threat?, Dawn-Marie Harmon
Hiv And The Ada: What Is A Direct Threat?, Dawn-Marie Harmon
Maine Law Review
Anne, a surgical technician at a local hospital, recently learned that she was HIV-positive. She works in the emergency room and, as a part of her job, she hands surgical instruments to doctors performing emergency surgery. It is a fast paced and unpredictable environment. Her hands often come in contact with sharp instruments. Although Anne has never put her hands into a patient's body cavity, there is a remote possibility that she may need to do so in the future. There is always a possibility, however small, that she will cut herself and come into blood-to-blood contact with a doctor …
Jespersen V. Harrah's Operating Co.: Employer Appearance Standards And The Promotion Of Gender Stereotypes, Hillary J. Bouchard
Jespersen V. Harrah's Operating Co.: Employer Appearance Standards And The Promotion Of Gender Stereotypes, Hillary J. Bouchard
Maine Law Review
In Jespersen v. Harrah’s Operating Co., Harrah’s Casino (Harrah’s) gave Darlene Jespersen (Jespersen), a female employee, thirty days to comply with the new mandatory makeup requirement the business imposed on its female beverage service employees. Jespersen refused, thirty days passed, and Harrah’s immediately terminated her. After unsuccessfully seeking administrative relief with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Jespersen filed a lawsuit against Harrah’s in federal district court. The claim alleged “disparate treatment sex discrimination” by Harrah’s in violation of Title VII. Subsequently, Harrah’s moved for summary judgment, and the district court granted the motion. The court found that Harrah’s employee …
Response To Keeping Cases From Black Juries: An Empirical Analysis Of How Race, Income Inequality, And Regional History Affect Tort Law, Jennifer Wriggins
Response To Keeping Cases From Black Juries: An Empirical Analysis Of How Race, Income Inequality, And Regional History Affect Tort Law, Jennifer Wriggins
Faculty Publications
Issues of race and racism in the U.S. torts system continue to deserve much more attention from legal scholarship than they receive, and Keeping Cases from Black Juries is a valuable contribution. Studying racism as it infects the torts system is difficult because explicit de jure exclusions of black jurors are in the past; race is no longer on the surface of tort opinions; and court records do not reveal the race of tort plaintiffs, defendants, or jurors. Yet it is essential to try and understand the workings of race and racism in the torts system. The authors pose a …
Who Says You're Disabled? The Role Of Medical Evidence In The Ada Definition Of Disability, Deirdre M. Smith
Who Says You're Disabled? The Role Of Medical Evidence In The Ada Definition Of Disability, Deirdre M. Smith
Faculty Publications
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), enacted by Congress seventeen years ago, offered disabled people a hope of equality and access that has not been fulfilled. 1 Court decisions halt an overwhelming majority of claims, particularly in the employment context, at the summary judgment stage. 2 A key mechanism for fencing out disabled people's claims is the pernicious requirement, based upon the very construction of disability that the ADA's proponents aimed to dispel, that medical evidence is required as a threshold matter to demonstrate that the plaintiff is entitled to seek protection under the statute. 3 The medical evidence requirement …
The Paradox Of Personality: Mental Illness, Employment Discrimination, And The Americans With Disabilities Act, Deirdre M. Smith
The Paradox Of Personality: Mental Illness, Employment Discrimination, And The Americans With Disabilities Act, Deirdre M. Smith
Faculty Publications
Both medicine and the law devote considerable concern to drawing lines, that is, to classifying and making distinctions. In medicine, such line-drawing occurs when a person is designated healthy or ill, normal or disordered. In the law, such line-drawing determines who does and does not bear legal responsibility for a given situation. This Article reviews the demarcation drawn by psychiatry and the courts between disfavored personality and mental illness, a dichotomy not based upon empirical science and therefore, wholly susceptible to social construction and implementation. While society may pathologize noxious personalities, thus making them disabilities, it is loath to extend …