Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons^™

Employment Law - Antidiscrimination - Heading Toward Federal Protection For Sexual Orientation Discrimination?, Matthew Barker

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Hundred-Years War: The Ongoing Battle Between Courts And Agencies Over The Right To Interpret Federal Law, Nancy M. Modesitt

All Faculty Scholarship

Since the Supreme Court’s 1984 Chevron decision, the primary responsibility for interpreting federal statutes has increasingly resided with federal agencies in the first instance rather than with the federal courts. In 2005, the Court reinforced this approach by deciding National Telecommunications Ass'n v. Brand X Internet Services, which legitimized the agency practice of interpreting federal statutes in a manner contrary to the federal courts' established interpretation, so long as the agency interpretation is entitled to deference under the well-established Chevron standard. In essence, agencies are free to disregard federal court precedent in these circumstances. This Article analyzes the question left …

Testimony On The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (Enda) And The Religious Exemption : Hearing Before The H. Comm. On Education And Labor, 111th Cong., Sept. 23, 2009 (Statement Of Adjunct Professor David N. Saperstein, Geo. U. L. Center), David N. Saperstein

Testimony Before Congress

We are long past the point when our laws should permit discrimination against any individual because of their sexual orientation. Just as we do not tolerate behavior that discriminates based on race, gender, national origin or religion, so should we be clear about discrimination based on the characteristic of being gay or lesbian. For many of America’s faith traditions, this is a religious value. It is a moral value. And for all of us, it is of great social and economic value, as evidenced by the nearly 90% of Fortune 500 companies that already have policies consistent with ENDA. They …

Conciliación Entre Derecho Al Trabajo Y Libertad De Trabajo Desde La Perspectiva De Los Derechos Sociales,Económicos Y Culturales, Sebastián A. Pizarro

Sebastián A. Pizarro

El orden público laboral se cimenta sobre un sistema de libertades, no estando aparejado ello a un Derecho al Trabajo. Si bien se ha incluido en la legislación chilena este último a través de la inclusión del Pacto Internacional de Derechos Económicos, Sociales y Culturales, no se ha logrado la adecuada armonía entre la libertad y el derecho mencionado. Cuestión que en un país como el nuestro, resulta esencial, toda vez que a nivel de políticas estatales se ha abandonado la meta del pleno empleo, propendiendo a la precariedad de las relaciones laborales. Se estima es posible integrar a la …

Recent Decisions, Phoebe A. Haddon

Phoebe A. Haddon

No abstract provided.

Height Discrimination In Employment, Isaac B. Rosenberg

W&M Law Student Publications

This Article looks critically at heightism, i.e., prejudice or discrimination against a person on the basis of his or her height. Although much scholarship has focused on other forms of trait-based discrimination—most notably weight and appearance discrimination, both of which indirectly involve height as a component—little has focused on “pure” height discrimination. Nevertheless, within the past five years courts, scholars, and legislatures have increasingly tackled these non-traditional forms of discrimination. As such, this Article endeavors to fill the gap in the existing scholarship.

This Article specifically focuses on heightism in the workplace, with an emphasis on prejudice against short people …

How Many Plaintiffs Are Enough? Venue In Title Vii Class Actions, Piper Hoffman

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article critiques the recent rash of federal district court opinions holding that all named plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit alleging employment discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 must satisfy the venue requirements in the court where they filed the action. Neither the text nor the history of Title VII requires this prevailing interpretation; to the contrary, requiring every named plaintiff to satisfy venue requirements in the same court undermines the legislative purpose behind both Title VII and Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 by creating a new obstacle to employees seeking to enforce …

Cuarto Congreso Nacional De Organismos Públicos Autónomos, Bruno L. Costantini García

Bruno L. Costantini García

Memorias del Cuarto Congreso Nacional de Organismos Públicos Autónomos

"El papel de los Organismos Públicos Autónomos en la Consolidación de la Democracia"

Discriminatory Retaliation: Title Vii Protection For The Cooperating Employee, Megan E. Mowrey

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.

Harassment Handbook, Jovon Bell, Kevin Blanch, Vashon Broadnax, Dallas Cline, Candi Lee

Parameters of Law in Student Affairs and Higher Education (CNS 670)

Harassment presents itself as a challenging annoyance, which most everyone will have to confront over a period of time. As defined by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, harassment is commonly transferred via some type of unwelcome communicated behavior, which includes discrimination (2007). There are several motives for which harassment can occur, including race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and disability. Titles VI and VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 are two federal discrimination laws that help protect residents of the United States from occurrences including both discrimination and harassment, that …

Brief For Nicholas Deb. Katzenbach Et Al. As Amici Curiae, Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 V. Holder, Samuel R. Bagenstos

Samuel R Bagenstos

Along with three lawyers from Arnold & Porter, I filed this brief on behalf of former Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, four former Assistant Attorneys General for Civil Rights (two from Democratic administrations, two from Republican administrations) and two former senior career officials in the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice. The brief defends the constitutionality of Congress's 2006 amendments to the Voting Rights Act.

Foreword Symposium: Having It Our Way: Women In Maryland's Workplace Circa 2027, Margaret E. Johnson

All Faculty Scholarship

On November 14, 2007, the University of Baltimore School of Law, the University of Maryland School of Law and the Women's Law Center of Maryland co-sponsored a symposium entitled "Having it Our Way: Women in Maryland's Workplace Circa 2027." The insightful collection of papers in this volume of the University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class represents the work of employment law scholars, public policy specialists, and activists who presented on the current state of Maryland employment law and discussed Maryland's future. This distinguished group of experts and scholars present several themes: the hope of new …

The Antidiscrimination Paradox: Why Sex Before Race?, Kimberly A. Yuracko

Faculty Working Papers

This paper seeks to explain a paradox: Why does Title VII's prohibition on sex discrimination currently look so much more expansive than its prohibition on race discrimination? Why in particular, do workers appear to be receiving greater protection for expressions of gender identity than for expressions of racial identity? I argue that as a doctrinal matter, the paradox is illusory—the product of a fundamental misinterpretation of recent sex discrimination case law by scholars. Rather than reflecting fundamentally distinct antidiscrimination principles, the race and sex cases in fact reflect the same traditional commitments to ending status discrimination and undermining group-based subordination. …

The Slaves’ Own Country, Savad Rahman

savad rahman

No abstract provided.

Procedural Extremism, Melissa R. Hart

Melissa R Hart

No abstract provided.

Balancing Competing Priorities: Affirmative Action In The United States And Canada, Roozbeh (Rudy) B. Baker

Roozbeh (Rudy) B. Baker

This Article shall present a detailed analysis of Equality Rights in the United States and Canada, and their relationship to race based government affirmative action programs as practiced in those two countries. At its most basic level, Equality Rights can be defined generally as the idea that a government must not discriminate against its citizens (i.e. treat some of them differently from others). Yet given this general definition of Equality Rights, how can one reconcile the concept with that of race based affirmative action programs? As this Article shall demonstrate, via its survey of the radically opposed American and Canadian …

Legal Storytelling: The Theory And The Practice - Reflective Writing Across The Curriculum, Nancy Levit

Nancy Levit

This article concentrates on the theory of narrative or storytelling and addresses the reasons it is vital to encourage in law schools in non-clinical or primarily doctrinal courses. Section I traces the advent of storytelling in legal theory and practice: while lawyers have long recognized that part of their job is to tell their clients' stories, the legal academy was, for many years, resistant to narrative methodologies. Section II examines the current applications of Writing Across the Curriculum in law schools. Most exploratory writing tasks in law school come in clinical courses, although a few adventurous professors are adding reflective …

Theorizing And Litigating The Rights Of Sexual Minorities, Nancy Levit

Nancy Levit

One of the best measures of a society is how it treats its vulnerable groups. A central idea in Professor Martha Nussbaum's writings is that all humans "are of equal dignity and worth, no matter where they are situated in society." The strategic challenge in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) rights litigation is how to get courts to see sexual minorities as people worthy of equal dignity and respect. This article focuses on the roles of a positive emotion - love - and a procedural method of proof - science - in the shaping of laws defining the rights …

Constraining Public Employee Speech: Government's Control Of Its Workers' Speech To Protect Its Own Expression, Helen Norton

Publications

This Article identifies a key doctrinal shift in courts' treatment of public employees' First Amendment claims--a shift that imperils the public's interest in transparent government as well as the free speech rights of more than twenty million government workers. In the past, courts interpreted the First Amendment to permit governmental discipline of public employee speech on matters of public interest only when such speech undermined the government employer's interest in efficiently providing public services. In contrast, courts now increasingly focus on--and defer to--government's claim to control its workers' expression to protect its own speech.

More specifically, courts increasingly permit government …

Postracial Discrimination , Girardeau A. Spann

The Modern American

No abstract provided.

The New Sex Discrimination: Family Responsibilities, Cynthia Thomas Calvert

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Making Good On Good Intentions: The Critical Role Of Motivation In Reducing Implicit Workplace Discrimination, Katharine T. Bartlett

Faculty Scholarship

Discrimination in today’s workplace is largely implicit, making it ambiguous and often very difficult to prove. Employment discrimination scholars have proposed reforms of Title VII to make implicit discrimination easier to establish in court and to expand the kinds of situations to which liability attaches. The reform proposals reflect a broad consensus that strong legal norms are crucial to addressing the problem. Yet it is mistaken to assume that strengthening plaintiffs’ hands in implicit discrimination cases will necessarily achieve the long-term goal of reducing its occurrence. This Article brings together several strands of social science research showing that (1) implicit …

Lawrence: An Unlikely Catalyst For Massive Disruption In The Sphere Of Government Employee Privacy And Intimate Association Claims, Matthew W. Green Jr.

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down Lawrence v. Texas, the landmark decision that overturned a Texas statute proscribing homosexual sodomy. The Supreme Court held that the Texas statute infringed the right of 'free adults" to engage in private, consensual, non-commercial sexual conduct in their home. In doing so, the Court overturned a prior case, Bowers v. Hardwick, which had upheld a Georgia sodomy statute. In his Lawrence dissent, Justice Scalia predicted that overruling Bowers would cause a massive disruption of the current social order. To substantiate his point, he cites numerous cases, many in the area of public …

Civil Rights Litigation From The October 2007 Term, Martin A. Schwartz

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Evaluating Policy Solutions To Sex-Based Pay Discrimination: Women Workers, Lawmakers, And Cultural Change, Vicky Lovell

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Antidiscrimination Law In The Workplace: Moving Beyond The Impasse, Dale Larson

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Opening The Doors To The Local Courthouse: Maryland’S New Private Right Of Action For Employment Discrimination, Deborah Thompson Eisenberg

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Commentary: Women’S Employment Rights In The Workplace Of 2007 And 2027, Marley S. Weiss

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Pregnant Employees, Working Mothers And The Workplace - Legislation, Social Change And Where We Are Today , Thomas H. Barnard, Adrienne L. Rapp

Journal of Law and Health

Accordingly, the focus of this Article is on the legal and social evolution resulting from the Civil Rights Act's prohibition of sex-based discrimination- and, in particular, pregnancy-related discrimination - in the workplace. Section II of this Article details the reluctance with which courts and employers initially extended workplace rights to women. Sections III and IV discuss Title VII's prohibition against "sex" discrimination and initial court hesitation to interpret that prohibition to include employees discriminated against on the basis of pregnancy. Sections V and VI provide an overview of federal and Ohio law granting pregnancy-related rights to women, including the PDA, …

Making Pregnancy Work: Overcoming The Pregnancy Discrimination Act's Capacity-Based Model, Joanna L. Grossman, Gillian Thomas

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This article considers the gaps and obstacles in current law faced by the pregnant woman whose job duties may conflict with pregnancy's physical effects. While there is no inherent conflict between pregnancy and work, women in physically strenuous or hazardous occupations, from nursing to law enforcement, routinely confront situations in which they are physically unable to perform aspects of their job or, though physically able, they seek to avoid certain tasks or situations because of the potential risks to maternal or fetal health. The Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 (PDA) broadly protects against "pregnancy discrimination," but it provides absolute rights …