Emily Martin, Vice President and General Counsel

Emily Martin is Vice President and General Counsel at the National Women's Law Center, where she undertakes cross-cutting projects addressing women's health, economic security, and education and employment opportunities. She also provides in-house legal advice and representation to the Center. Prior to joining the Center, Ms. Martin served as Deputy Director of the Women's Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, where she spearheaded litigation, policy, and public education initiatives to advance the rights of women and girls, with a particular emphasis on the needs of low-income women and women of color. She also served as a law clerk for Senior Judge Wilfred Feinberg of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Judge T.S. Ellis, III, of the Eastern District of Virginia and previously worked for the Center as a recipient of the Georgetown Women's Law and Public Policy Fellowship. She has served as Vice President and President of the Fair Housing Justice Center, a non-profit organization in New York City. She is a graduate of the University of Virginia and Yale Law School.

Expert in: Issues Before the Courts, Platform for Progress, Treaty on the Rights of Women, Supreme Court, Voter Education, Women & the Constitution, Unemployment, Employment

My Take

Fired for a water break?

Posted by Emily Martin, Vice President and General Counsel | Posted on: June 07, 2012 at 02:03 pm

Help Pregnant Women in the Workplace

Share your story about pregnancy discrimination on the job.

Unfortunately, this is exactly what happened to a pregnant retail worker in Kansas. She was fired for following her doctor's advice and drinking water while working because it violated store policy.

So how can this be legal?

Courts have created a pregnancy loophole that allows many employers to refuse to accommodate even simple requests to help workers maintain healthy pregnancies. Pregnant women have been fired because they asked to avoid heavy lifting, or to stay off ladders, or to sit on a stool instead of standing at a cash register all day. It happens a lot. Maybe it happened to you.

The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act would change this. It would require employers to make the same sorts of reasonable accommodations for pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions that they do for disabilities, ensuring pregnant women can continue to do their jobs and support their families.

But as we advocate for this bill in Congress, we hear the same question again and again: Has this happened to any of my constituents? We need to know your story.

Last Week DOMA, This Week Prop 8: Thoughts on What's Next

Posted by

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

Emily Martin, Vice President and General Counsel

| Posted on: June 06, 2012 at 10:31 am

Last week, the First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines marriage for all purposes under federal law as between one man and one woman, violates the U.S. Constitution. And yesterday, the Ninth Circuit announced that it would not review en banc the panel decision in Perry v. Brown, which held that California's constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage violates the federal Constitution's Equal Protection Clause. The First Circuit's decision last week paired with the Ninth Circuit's decision not to further review Perry raises the possibility that the Supreme Court may weigh in on questions of marriage equality under the Constitution sooner rather than later.

The First Circuit's decision is the first time a federal court of appeals has held that DOMA is unconstitutional. (The National Women's Law Center joined a friend-of-the-court brief arguing that DOMA violated the Equal Protection Clause.) The First Circuit's ruling was issued in two consolidated cases. In Gill v. Massachusetts, same-sex couples married under state law argued that Section 3 of DOMA violated the Equal Protection Clause by preventing same-sex spouses of federal employees from receiving the same spousal benefits as opposite-sex spouses; and in Massachusetts v. Department of Health and Human Services, the commonwealth of Massachusetts argued that this section of DOMA was invalid under the Tenth Amendment and the Spending Clause because federal funding for specific programs was premised on denying benefits to same-sex married couples. In 2010, a Massachusetts district court had ruled that Section 3 of DOMA was unconstitutional in both cases.

The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act: Long Past Due

Posted by Emily Martin, Vice President and General Counsel | Posted on: May 08, 2012 at 03:11 pm

A pregnant woman’s job shouldn’t depend on her willingness to ignore her doctor’s advice. But many women face just this choice, particularly women working in physically demanding jobs. When an employer refuses to accommodate, say, a request to shift job duties so a pregnant worker can avoid lifting more than twenty pounds for a few months, the worker will often lose her job (and possibly her health insurance), at the worst possible moment for her family. Today, Representative Nadler (D-NY) and more than 60 cosponsors introduced the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA), a bill that would ensure women are no longer forced into this impossible position.

The PWFA provides that employers must make reasonable accommodations when employees have limitations related to pregnancy or childbirth and when these accommodations do not pose an undue hardship to employers. In other words, it requires employers to provide pregnant workers the exact same sort of accommodations they already provide employees with disabilities under the Americans with Disabilities Act. In the absence of the PWFA, courts have often rejected the claims of women whose employers fired them when they sought modifications that would allow them to continue to do their jobs.

Help Close the Pregnancy Loophole

Posted by Emily Martin, Vice President and General Counsel | Posted on: May 08, 2012 at 11:13 am

Help Close the Pregnancy Loophole!

Tell your Representative to co-sponsor the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act to ensure that pregnant women are treated fairly on the job.

Call (202) 224-3121 today!

Yes it's true: In 2012, getting pregnant can still cost you your job.

Thanks to a gap opened between discrimination laws and disability laws by court decisions, some employers are refusing to accommodate even simple requests that help workers maintain a healthy pregnancy.

Here are three startling examples of women who, thanks to the pregnancy loophole, were fired for doing what was best for their pregnancies:

A retail sales associate in Salina, Kansas was fired for drinking water while working because it violated store policy.

A nursing home activities director in Valparaiso, Indiana lost her job because she could no longer lift heavy tables, an activity that took up less than 10 minutes of her workday and with which her coworkers routinely volunteered to assist.

A pregnant truck driver in Tennessee was instructed by her obstetrician not to lift more than 20 pounds and sought light duty work. Her employer terminated her, as it made such modifications only to those injured on the job.

Sounds crazy, right? Unfortunately, thousands of pregnant women are forced to choose between losing their jobs (or taking unpaid leave) and endangering their pregnancies, when just a few small workplace accommodations are usually all that's needed.

To close this egregious pregnancy loophole, Pregnant Workers Fairness Act was introduced today in the House of Representatives by Reps. Nadler (D-NY) and a number of his colleagues. To give this bill a solid start, we need as many Representatives to co-sponsor this bill as possible.

Will you take 3 minutes to call your Representative and ask them to co-sponsor the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act? Calling is easy to do.

Supporting State Efforts to End Violence Against Women: Unconstitutional?

Posted by Emily Martin, Vice President and General Counsel | Posted on: April 30, 2012 at 04:34 pm

Last week, the Senate voted to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act by a bipartisan vote, an important step forward for the many thousands of women who depend on its protections. But before we forget the Senate debate, we should note not only the surprising resistance the bill met there, but also the specific basis Mike Lee (R-Utah) offered for opposing it. Senator Lee, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee and whose views on the Constitution are thus particularly influential, implied that VAWA was unconstitutional.

Senator Lee objected to VAWA’s grants to state and local governments. VAWA provides funding for programs operated by courts, law enforcement, state agencies, local governments, and others, in order to address the needs of victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. In general, recipients must apply to receive these funds. Senator Lee asserted that somehow providing this funding to the state and local governments seeking it compromises states’ rights under the Constitution, because violent crime is regulated primarily by the states. “As a matter of constitutional policy,” Senator Lee stated, “Congress should not seek to impose rules and standards as conditions for federal funding in areas where the federal government lacks constitutional authority to regulate directly.” He also protested that “the strings that Congress attaches to federal funding in the VAWA reauthorization restrict each state’s ability to govern itself.”

Senator Lee’s theory of the Constitution seems to forbid Congress from imposing any sort of standards on the money it gives to state and local governments, even when state and local governments have specifically sought the money and voluntarily assumed the conditions that come with it. This is a radical theory that would make it impossible for Congress to fund the VAWA programs that have been so important for improving the criminal justice response to violent crime against women and for creating coordinated community responses to address the needs of those who experience domestic violence, dating violence, stalking, and sexual assault.

Emily Martin, Vice President and General Counsel

My Take