Part 6: The Future Does Not Look Bright
by Gretchen Borchelt
Now that the Supreme Court term has ended, we’ve offered our take on what the term overall meant for women. But what about Gonzales v. Carhart? What are the implications of all the aspects of the decision I’ve blogged about? I’m warning you – it doesn’t look good:
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NWLC, Intern | Posted on: July 03, 2007 at 06:47 pm
By Kristina Petronko
Lilly Ledbetter testifies before the House Education and Labor Committee
In what may be a speed record for Congressional response, Congress has started the process of reversing the Supreme Court’s May 29 decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. As we’ve written about before, the Court’s decision eviscerated a bedrock principle of Title VII civil rights enforcement.
But there’s hope that this unjust result will be quickly overturned. Legislation is making its way through the House, and last week there was progress on two fronts.
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Posted by | Posted on: July 03, 2007 at 02:00 pm
The Supreme Court’s term just came to a close, and thank goodness. A quick look back at the term provides a chilling picture of a new Court that is all too willing to eviscerate important constitutional rights and statutory protections for women. First, there was Gonazales v. Carhart, in which the Court allowed a nationwide ban on a medically approved abortion procedure even though there was no exception permitting the procedure when necessary for a woman’s health, in direct contravention of Roe v. Wade. Then, women in the workplace took a major hit when the Court issued Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., holding that a victim of continuing pay discrimination cannot get into court if she doesn’t complain almost immediately after the discrimination – even if she continues to receive paychecks that are discriminatorily reduced. In a one-two punch, the Court next upheld a Department of Labor regulation that exempted certain home-care providers – a predominantly female and especially minority female workforce – from the Fair Labor Standard Act’s wage and overtime protections in Long Island Care at Home, Ltd. v. Coke. And then, going out with one final bang, the Court yesterday struck down the Seattle and Louisville school districts’ racial integration plans, in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle Sch. Dist. No. 1, putting new limits on the methods schools can use to ensure diversity.
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Posted by | Posted on: July 02, 2007 at 05:00 pm
“Well, I can speak to the issue of diversity in education from a little bit of my own experience . . . having these people in the class with diverse backgrounds and outlooks on the issues that we were discussing made an enormous contribution to the class . . . So in that setting I have personal experience about the -- how valuable having people with diverse backgrounds and viewpoints can be. And the Supreme Court has expressed the view that diversity is a compelling interest; having a diverse student body is a compelling interest.”
Associate Justice Samuel Alito, speaking at his confirmation hearings, December 12, 2006.
Last Thursday, Justice Alito became the fifth vote in a 5-4 majority decision of the Supreme Court striking down the methods used by two school districts to ensure that their students benefited from a diverse learning environment. Even more disturbing, he joined a plurality that invalidated the schools' efforts to promote diversity by unfairly characterizing them as racial balancing. Had this portion of the plurality opinion garnered one more vote, the legacy of Brown – the promise to the nation’s children that they would go to school together, enjoy equal opportunity in education and learn from each other – would have been shattered. As it stands, the plurality opinion tarnishes the legacy of Brown and undermines its promise by purporting to follow it while ignoring its context and import. This is deeply disturbing for everyone who prizes the values of Brown and who took comfort in the new appointees’ assurances that they shared those values too. And it is a sobering reminder of how important each judicial nomination is for women’s rights and civil rights.
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by Jill Morrison
Last week, I was invited to speak to a health law class on religious refusals to provide health care after the professor saw an article on the subject in Self Magazine. While the questions asked by the law students were far more technical and challenging than those I get from a “lay” audience, one thing remained the same: they were shocked that they could be denied critical health care services, information or referrals because of a doctor’s religious beliefs. We depend on doctors to tell us about all our medically and legally available options. Not everyone knows about things like emergency contraception. Having information withheld feels like a serious violation of our right to bodily autonomy. We have no idea how many women are simply not told of options that are available to them. A recent study showed that 14% of surveyed doctors would withhold options based on their own religious beliefs.
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NWLC, Intern | Posted on: June 29, 2007 at 05:46 pm
by Paige Herwig
The past several months haven’t been kind to proponents of abstinence-only education. First, an independent, nonpartisan policy organization released a report which found that abstinence-only education programs had no impact whatsoever on teen sexual behavior (incidentally, that report – by Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. – was commissioned by the federal government). Then the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was put on notice by several nonprofit organizations that many federally-funded abstinence-only programs are in violation of a federal law that requires accurate information about condom effectiveness. Finally, the ACLU called attention to the fact that taxpayer dollars in Oregon are being (mis)used to pay for abstinence-only programs that promote a specific religion (which is a constitutional no-no).
You might think that in the face of mounting evidence that abstinence-only education is ineffective at best, and promotes harmful misinformation at worst, our elected representatives would reconsider whether federal funding for such programs (to the tune of almost $1 billion since 1996) is actually a good idea. Instead, politicians who are abstinence-only advocates tried to discredit comprehensive sex education programs – which provide medically accurate, age-appropriate information about contraception and abstinence – by issuing a report of their own last week claiming that a small number of comprehensive programs contained scientific inaccuracies.
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Posted by | Posted on: June 29, 2007 at 03:35 pm
by Joan Entmacher and Karen Schulman
A new report from the Department of Labor demonstrates that there is broad consensus among employers and employees that the Family and Medical Leave Act is a success in helping employees balance work and families. The report summarizes 15,000 comments submitted in response to a request for information about employees’ and employers’ experiences with the Family and Medical Leave Act. When the Department initially issued the request, there was concern among FMLA’s supporters that it could be a prelude to an effort to scale back FMLA’s protections. To make sure that DOL heard from workers and their families, not just employers, advocates put out the word—and thousands responded by sending in their comments and stories to DOL. It seems to have had an impact—the report highlights the many comments detailing the significant benefits of the FMLA. The report, however, also emphasizes a number of employers’ concerns, particularly with employees’ use of unscheduled, intermittent leave. It will be important to continue to monitor what the Department proposes in the wake of this report.
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