Emily Martin, Vice President and General Counsel

Emily Martin

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
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My Take

Really? Playing Games with the Violence Against Women Act

Posted by Emily Martin, Vice President and General Counsel | Posted on: April 25, 2012 at 10:08 am

Remember when some issues in Congress were exempt from political football — even in an election year? That used to be the case with the Violence Against Women Act. Until now.

This week the Senate is taking up the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), the first U.S. federal law that acknowledged domestic violence and sexual assault as crimes. Though it's a bipartisan bill with 61 cosponsors, we're facing an uphill battle to get it passed in the current Senate.

Why? Because this bill strengthens protections for those experiencing violence at the hands of a same-sex partner, as well as for immigrants and Native American women. Given the particular needs of these communities, the bill's focus on these women makes a lot of sense. But some Senators would rather leave these women behind. It's time to jam the phones on Capitol Hill! Please call your Senators to make sure they do the right thing and reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act. Here is exactly what you have to do to take action:

  1. Call (202) 224-3121 and ask the operator to connect you to your Senator's office. Since you have two Senators, remember to call twice! To look up your Senator's name and direct line, please check this website.
  2. When you get someone on the phone, please read this sample script: My name is _____ and I'm a constituent. I'm calling to urge Senator ______ to support the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, S. 1925. I urge Senator _____ to keep all of the critical provisions, including those protections for Native American women, immigrants, and LGBT victims, in the bill.
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Tags: Platform for Progress, Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), A Women's Agenda | 3 comments

April 17th: A Day to Remember That Women Can’t Afford an Unfair Economy

Posted by Emily Martin, Vice President and General Counsel | Posted on: April 16, 2012 at 03:03 pm

Tomorrow, April 17, 2012, is both Equal Pay Day and Tax Day—which means it’s a very good day to focus on economic fairness and what achieving it would mean for women.

First, fairness also requires closing the pay gap. Almost fifty years after passage of the Equal Pay Act, the typical woman working fulltime, year-round continues to be paid only 77 cents for every dollar paid by her male counterpart—a loss of close to $11,000 a year at the median.To catch up with the wages her male equivalent had been paid by December 31 of last year, this typical woman had to work through April 17. Even after taking into account factors such as occupation, education, and hours worked, women still consistently earn less than men, and this pay gap translates into lower unemployment benefits when women lose their jobs, lower Social Security benefits when they retire, and less ability to meet their families’ needs.

Because more and more families depend in whole or in part on a woman’s earnings, the pay gap doesn’t just shortchange women. It shortchanges everyone. Yet the pay gap persists, in part because pay discrimination is hard to identify and hard to challenge.

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Tags: Equal Pay, Taxes, Wage Gap, Equal Pay and the Wage Gap, Federal Tax Policy, Tax Reform, Employment, Tax & Budget | Add new comment

The Supreme Court Questions the Individual Responsibility Provision

Posted by Emily Martin, Vice President and General Counsel | Posted on: March 28, 2012 at 12:46 pm

Given the strength of the precedent supporting the constitutionality of the individual responsibility provision, most legal observers going into the argument yesterday expected the Supreme Court to uphold it. A poll of prior Supreme Court clerks and attorneys who frequently argue before the Court, for example, showed this group of insiders thought it very unlikely that the law would be struck down.  After all, some of the most high-profile conservative Court of Appeals judges in the country have found it to be constitutional. The argument yesterday therefore surprised many. While the Justices’ questions at argument aren’t necessarily a reliable indicator of their ultimate votes, questions by several of the conservative Justices showed both little concern for precedent and little understanding of the impact of the health care law on individuals’ lives.

There’s no question the Commerce Clause of the Constitution gives Congress the power to pass laws regulating commercial markets, including the insurance industry. The Constitution and Supreme Court precedent are also clear that Congress has the authority to craft national solutions to national economic problems. The individual responsibility provision, which requires non-exempt people to maintain insurance (and provides subsidies to low- and moderate-income individuals) or pay a fine, is an integral piece of just such a national solution. Congress designed the individual responsibility provision to work in tandem with the ban on preexisting condition exclusions and the requirement that all insurers must sell health insurance to anyone who wants to purchase it, recognizing that near-universal participation—which the individual responsibility provision and the associated subsidies for purchasing health insurance are meant to achieve—is required for these insurance reforms to succeed. Otherwise, some people would likely forego insurance coverage until they get sick, sharply driving up the costs of insurance for all when they eventually seek care. Because (in constitutional terms) the provision is a “necessary and proper” means for carrying out these reforms of the insurance industry, it should be constitutional under long-established Supreme Court precedent.

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Tags: Affordable Care Act (ACA), Health Care, Health Insurance, Issues Before the Courts, Supreme Court, Supreme Court, Health Care Reform, Health Care & Reproductive Rights, Judges & the Courts | Add new comment

Day Three at the Supreme Court: A High Stakes Fight on Severability and Medicaid

Posted by Emily Martin, Vice President and General Counsel | Posted on: March 28, 2012 at 10:31 am

Today, the Supreme Court will hear argument on two issues, both critically important to women. First, if the individual responsibility provision is struck down as unconstitutional, do other parts of the Affordable Care Act go with it? And second, is the Medicaid expansion in the ACA unconstitutional?

The first issue is a question of what is called “severability.” Some laws have a provision called a severability clause, which says that if any part of the law is deemed unconstitutional, the rest of the law will remain in force. The ACA doesn’t have a severability clause, and so if any part of it is held unconstitutional, it is up to the Court to decide whether Congress would have intended other parts of the law or all of the law to remain in force in its absence. The government has argued that the individual responsibility provision is constitutional, but that if it is struck down, then the provisions prohibiting insurance companies to make insurance available to anyone who wants it, regardless of preexisting conditions, should be struck down as well.

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Tags: Affordable Care Act (ACA), Health Care, Health Insurance, Issues Before the Courts, Medicaid, Supreme Court, Supreme Court, Health Care Reform, Medicaid & Other Public Funding, Health Care & Reproductive Rights, Judges & the Courts | Add new comment

Today at the Court: The Justices Consider the Individual Responsibility Provision

Posted by Emily Martin, Vice President and General Counsel | Posted on: March 27, 2012 at 10:55 am

Today is the headline day at the Supreme Court in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) cases as the Court considers the constitutionality of the personal responsibility provision. Yesterday, by all accounts, the Justices seemed inclined to hold that they need not wait until 2015 to decide whether this provision is constitutional, which means that the argument today is likely to lead to a decision on the fate of the provision in June.

Women should be watching. The individual responsibility provision, which requires nonexempt individuals to maintain health insurance or pay a fine, and provides subsidies to low- and moderate-income people for this purpose, is closely bound up with the provisions in the ACA banning pre-existing condition exclusions and requiring insurance companies to make coverage available for all. As Speaker Pelosi declared the night the House voted for the legislation, echoing the words of a National Women’s Law Center campaign, “After we pass this bill, being a woman will no longer be a preexisting medical condition.”

Insurers in the individual market have routinely denied coverage for so-called “pre-existing conditions,” such as having given birth by Caesarean section. For example, in 2009, Peggy Robertson of Colorado testified in Congress that because of her previous C-section, an insurer told her that she could only obtain coverage if she were sterilized. Other women have been deemed to have a preexisting condition because they are pregnant or because they are survivors of domestic violence or sexual assault.

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Tags: Affordable Care Act (ACA), Health Care, Health Insurance, Issues Before the Courts, Supreme Court, Supreme Court, Health Care Reform, Health Care & Reproductive Rights, Judges & the Courts | 1 comment