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Articles 1 - 11 of 11
Full-Text Articles in Labor and Employment Law
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 …
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.
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 …
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 …
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.
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.
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. …