Amy K. Matsui, Senior Counsel and Director of Women and the Courts

by Amy Matsui, Senior Counsel, 
National Women's Law Center 

Every year, the Supreme Court is confronted with cases involving legal issues of the utmost importance to women, including the constitutional rights of women to a zone of privacy and to equal protection  of the laws. The Court also considers questions arising under federal laws that protect women from discrimination in the workplace, and in school, including questions of when employers and schools can voluntarily dismantle discriminations against women, as in the case of Ricci v. DeStefano currently pending before the Supreme Court. Moreover, the Court has a tremendous impact on federal laws that provide basic health and safety protections.  

The Supreme Court’s recent decision in AT&T v. Hulteen raised the specter of further questions before the Court of whether longstanding pregnancy discrimination will be allowed to continue into the present. But what other issues important to women could be coming before the Supreme Court in the future? Here are just a few that we see peeking around the corner.

In the wake of Gonzales v. Carhart in 2007, which allowed abortion restrictions without regard for women’s health, increasingly draconian abortion restrictions have begun to work their way through state legislatures, including outright abortion bans, legislation to give fetuses legal status as a “person,” and legislation requiring women to be given particular, often slanted, information before they get an abortion. Some of these laws will pass, and will likely be challenged in court.

In addition, around the country, patients are being denied health care services by health care providers who believe that their religious, moral, or ethical beliefs should come before patients’ needs. As states and the federal government develop policies regarding health care provider refusal protections, including state pharmacy refusal laws/regulations and a harmful regulation passed by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in the last days of the Bush Administration, challenges to these policies are likely to come before the courts.

by Amy Matsui, Senior Counsel, 
National Women's Law Center 

Here at NWLC, we get very excited about Supreme Court nominations – we’re a legal organization, we litigate before the Court, we think and talk and write an awful lot about where the law is going on issues important to women and what that means to women across the country – you get the idea.  We’re especially engaged right now in urging the President to nominate another woman to replace Justice Souter.