The impact is immediate, says Helen Blank, an expert on childcare with the National Women's Law Center. "Low income parents are just one unstable childcare arrangement away from losing their job or having to drop out of school," Blank says.
Nancy Duff Campbell, of the National Women’s Law Center, says this isn’t true. Campbell helped with a 2010 report, commissioned by the Pentagon, that advocates an end to all women-in-combat restrictions because there “isn’t any evidence,” in her words, that men are trying to protect their fellow female service members more than their male peers.
He has won acclaim both as a scholar and teacher, and he has served on the boards of Stanford University, the American Constitution Society, the National Women's Law Center, and the Alliance for Excellent Education.
Joan Entmacher is the vice president for family economic security at the National Women's Law Center in Washington D.C. She says women faced greater risks from unemployment even before the recession.
The 5th Circuit was asked by the Vermilion Parish School Board to dismiss the suit. Part of the school district's argument was that the ACLU's allegations—later backed by the U.S. Department of Justice and the National Women's Law Center—were directed at the 2009-10 program.
Each of the three female justices “had a very different style,” said Marcia Greenberger, co-president of the National Women’s Law Center. Having three women on the bench for a gender-discrimination case “in and of itself was extraordinary to see,” she said.
Marcia Greenberger, who is supporting the plaintiffs as co-president of the National Women’s Law Center, said: “If the plaintiffs did not prevail and the court adopted a new principle, it could end up shielding discrimination and allowing it remain unchecked and unremedied.”
"Some employers have made the economic calculus that they'll never be held accountable for discrimination, if it exists, and they might as well continue the status quo until someone holds them accountable for it," said Marcia Greenberger, co-president of the National Women's Law Center. "I think a victory [against] Walmart would change that."
Some of the nation's largest companies, including Intel and DuPont, and the most prominent employee rights groups, including the NAACP and the National Women's Law Center have submitted briefs to the justices on opposite sides of the case.
