Law Commons^™

Disabling The Gender Pay Gap: Lessons From The Social Model Of Disability, Michelle Travis

Michelle A. Travis

As we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Title VII’s prohibition against sex-based compensation discrimination in the workplace, the gender wage gap remains robust and progress toward gender pay equity has stalled. This article reveals the role that causal narratives play in undermining the law’s potential for reducing the gender pay gap. The most recent causal narrative is illustrated by the “women don’t ask” and “lean in” storylines, which reveal our society’s entrenched view that women themselves are responsible for their own pay inequality. This causal narrative has also embedded itself in subtle but pernicious ways in antidiscrimination doctrine, which helps …

Irrational Women: Informed Consent And Abortion Regret, Maya Manian

Maya Manian

This chapter explores the law’s failure in the twenty-first century to treat pregnant women as capable of making their own decisions concerning whether to have an abortion. The Supreme Court’s 2007 decision in Gonzales v. Carhart, which upheld a federal ban on a type of second-trimester abortion that many physicians believe is safest for their patients, brought the question of women’s capacity for abortion decision-making to the forefront of public legal consciousness. In Carhart, the Court abandoned its previous deference and respect for a woman’s right to be her own decision-maker with regard to abortion and instead determined that a …

A (Trans) Gender-Inclusive Equal Protection Analysis Of Public Female Toplessness, Luke Boso

Luke A. Boso

Federal, state, and municipal laws have long regulated, and often blanketly prohibited, the exposure of female breasts in public venues for a variety of purported reasons. Generally worded to prohibit the exhibition of the “female breast with less than a fully opaque covering or any portion thereof below the top of the nipple,” nudity-regulating laws lack a similar provision for male breasts, and, in fact, exclude the male torso from coverage entirely.

Pursuant to the Supreme Court’s sex-based discrimination jurisprudence, advocates for topfree equality have repeatedly challenged these laws in court, arguing that they violate U.S. and state constitutions’ equal …

The Pda's Causation Effect: Observations Of An Unreasonable Woman, Michelle A. Travis

Michelle A. Travis

While many scholars rightfully have critiqued the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (“PDA”) as falling short of achieving the ultimate goal of equal employment opportunities for women, this Article reveals one of the PDA’s most important successes. By recognizing pregnant women as a “given” in the workplace, the PDA launched a quiet revolution in the way that judges make causal attributions for adverse employment outcomes. Specifically, the PDA provided judges with the conceptual tools that were needed to help shift causal attributions to an employer, rather than attributing a pregnant woman’s struggles in the workplace to her own decision to become a …