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It's go time!

The Vote is Coming — Call Today!

We need your help to call on the Senate to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Dial 1-888-876-9527 Today!

For the next 48 hours, the National Women's Law Center and organizations across the country are joining forces to turn up the heat on the Senate in support of equal pay. You can help: call 1-888-876-9527 today!

What's the rush?

We expect a vote on the Paycheck Fairness Act in the coming weeks and we need to make sure our Senators hear from us now. For the next 48 hours we want to jam the phones to send a clear message of support for the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Can you take two minutes of your time to call your Senators in support of the Paycheck Fairness Act?

We will make it super-easy. This is all it takes:

1. Dial 1-888-876-9527.
2. Listen to the sample script and follow the instructions for connecting to your Senator's office.
3. Don't neglect your other Senator. Call back and make sure he/she gets a call, too!
4. Double your impact by forwarding this message to a friend.

If you haven't already heard...

The Paycheck Fairness Act would deter wage discrimination by updating the nearly 50-year-old Equal Pay Act, in part by barring retaliation against workers who disclose their own wages to coworkers. Read more »

Contact Your Senators Today!

Tell your Senators to show their support for equal pay by co-sponsoring the Paycheck Fairness Act.

"Ladies, put your lipstick on, square your shoulders, and get ready to do battle. This calls for a revolution!"

That's what Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) said on the floor of the Senate during the successful fight to pass the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. And now she needs our help for the next battle over equal pay — passing the Paycheck Fairness Act.

In the coming weeks, we expect a Senate vote on this vital legislation so we need you to contact your Senators today.

Please tell your Senators to show their support for equal pay by co-sponsoring the Paycheck Fairness Act.

The Paycheck Fairness Act would deter wage discrimination by updating the nearly 50-year-old Equal Pay Act and barring retaliation against workers who disclose their own wages to coworkers. Read more »

When policymakers formulate their agenda priorities, whose interests are at the forefront of their minds?

Put Child Care on the Map!

Join the initiative - Register for the kickoff conference call on Thursday, May 17 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern!

It is hard to remember that even though access to good quality child care is something that you and I spend a lot of time working on and advocating for, not everyone does - including our policymakers. And unfortunately, not all of us have strong relationships with the people that vote on critical policies like child care that affect women, children, and families.

We want to change that – and we need you! Join our new initiative: Putting Child Care on the Map.

Over the next year, with your help, we plan to cover a lot of ground to make sure Members of Congress hear about child care while they’re in their state and district offices. We’ll be working with advocates nationwide who know first-hand that child care matters in order to break through the political noise. We’ll put child care on the map for Congress – and then we’ll put it on our OWN map, to track our successes! Read more »

Today, the Senate confirmed two judges to district courts in Texas, Gregg Costa to the Southern District and David Guaderrama to the Western District. These individuals were nominated last September, ready for a Senate vote last December, and were confirmed by votes of 97-2 – hardly nominees that warranted nearly five months of delay, especially considering that one of the nominations was designated a judicial emergency. Especially especially considering that these nominees had the support of their home-state Republican Senators. Not a surprise, given the levels of obstruction by a determined minority in the Senate in recent years, but frustrating all the same.

Under the terms of a deal worked out last month by Senate leadership, two more district court nominees and one circuit court nominee will receive a vote on May 7. And that is where the March deal ends – unfortunately with a lot of ground left to cover. How much ground? I have spent a few evenings this week lightly assisting my third-grade daughter with her math homework, so the following is inspired by our running conversation:

There are 34 individuals nominated to vacancies on federal courts. 22 of them are ready for a Senate vote (extra credit: six of them are women), and at least eight or nine more will be ready for votes by the end of June. The Senate has 11 weeks when it will be in session before it takes its long break in August.  Three nominees will get votes on May 7. How many judges would the Senate have to schedule votes on per week in order to clear this backlog by August? Read more »

The Judicial Crisis Must End

Tell your Senators to vote on all judicial nominees and help end the judicial crisis now.

It's been six weeks since Senate leadership reached a deal to move forward on judicial nominations, and the deal has almost played itself out. And where do we stand? Exactly where we were in March: one in nine federal judgeships sits empty, and nearly half of those vacancies are in courts so overburdened that they have been deemed judicial emergencies. Right now there are 22 nominees ready for a vote on the Senate floor, of whom 6 are women.

We're right back where we were six weeks ago. Tell your Senators to vote on all judicial nominees and help end the judicial crisis now.

Some have argued that we can't expect the Senate to get anything done with partisan gridlock. Some have argued that the confirmation process shuts down as the November elections approach, even though November is months away. But there's too much at stake to give up that easily to such excuses. While judicial seats remain vacant, trial courts' caseloads have increased. When judicial seats remain vacant, it takes longer for civil cases to be resolved. When judicial seats remain vacant, justice is not served for all Americans. Read more »

You've heard of slash and burn, but how about slash and burden?

On Thursday, the House is expected to vote on a budget for Fiscal Year 2013 introduced by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI). The Ryan budget would devastate vital services for women and their families while giving trillions in new tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans and large corporations — on top of extending provisions of the Bush-era tax cuts that benefit only the very wealthy.

Let's make it clear that we will not stand for a budget that slashes programs for women and families and puts the burden of paying for tax breaks for millionaires and corporations on middle- and low-income Americans.

Tell your Representative to oppose the Ryan Budget. As your Members of Congress start budget negotiations, they need to know that their constituents expect them to protect programs for women and families — and to require the wealthy and corporations to pay their fair share of taxes.

What's wrong with Rep. Paul Ryan's Budget? For starters, it would:

• Repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Insurance companies could continue to charge women higher premiums than men, deny coverage to women due to preexisting condition, and refuse to cover maternity care.

As the Senate is poised to start the first of 17 cloture votes on district court judges, and in the midst of Women’s History Month, we over at NWLC took a mental step back to look at the big picture of women in the federal judiciary. Yes, women make up 50% of the population and, for twenty-five years, nearly 50% of law students. But only 30% of federal judges, even today, are women.

And yes, over the past several years, the number of women on the federal bench has largely stagnated. We clearly have a long way to go before women, especially women of color, are adequately represented on our federal courts. But we should still celebrate when progress is being made.

The White House yesterday released an infographic on President Obama’s judicial nominees. 47% of President Obama’s confirmed judicial nominees have been women, and about 19% have been women of color. In addition, President Obama’s nominees have broken a number of long-overdue gender barriers. For example, there are three women on the Supreme Court for the first time in history (with the nomination of Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic Justice and the first Justice with a disability, and Justice Elena Kagan). Five of his district court nominees became the first woman to serve in their district. And one of his pending nominees, Judge Jacqueline Nguyen, would be the first Asian American woman to serve on a federal appellate court. (The infographic has information about other nominees who have added other long-overdue kinds of diversity to the federal courts as well). Read more »

We just recently updated you about how a minority of Senators have continued to block yes-or-no votes for judicial nominees, some who have been waiting for months. Yesterday, in a bold move for justice, Senate Majority Leader Reid filed cloture on 17 nominations, in order to move them one step closer to a yes-or-no vote on the Senate floor. Your Senators need to hear from you to ensure that these nominees receive a yes-or-no vote.

CALL YOUR SENATORS AT 1-866-338-5720 TODAY! Tell them:

• I am your constituent and I live...
• I am calling to urge the Senator to allow yes-or-no votes on all 17 judicial nominees for whom Senate Majority Leader Reid filed cloture petitions.
• With 83 judgeships sitting empty, 35 of which are considered judicial emergencies, the Senate's continued failure to act is unconscionable.
• Americans deserve to have a federal judiciary that is functioning at full capacity.

Last night, Senator Harry Reid took one giant step forward towards clearing the backlog of judicial nominations. As you’ll recall, the Senate’s recent track record on confirming judges is less than stellar: twenty nominees were left waiting for votes at the end of last year, and the Senate has only confirmed 7 judges in 2012. With 83 vacancies in the federal judiciary, 35 of which are judicial emergencies, what possible justification could there be for leaving twenty-two nominees waiting for votes? Just ask Senator Lee of Utah, who has flat-out stated that he is holding up judicial (and executive branch) nominations in retaliation for President Obama’s recess appointments to the Consumer Protection board and the NLRB in January…

But I digress. So what has Senator Reid done to move nominations forward? Yesterday evening, he filed cloture petitions on 17 district court nominations. It will be timely to start voting on the first of these petitions, for the nomination of Gina Groh to a district court seat in West Virginia that has been vacant since 2006, on Wednesday morning. After that, the rest of the 17 will be taken up one at a time.  If the cloture vote is successful, then the Senate will schedule a yes-or-no vote on the nomination.* Read more »

The U.S. Senate has only confirmed a handful of judges in 2012 — despite the fact that over ten percent of judicial seats are vacant and people around the country are waiting for justice. Why? Because Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has refused to allow yes-or-no votes on judicial nominees. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid recently stated that he's ready to take extraordinary steps to move nominees, if a deal isn't reached soon.

We need to make the most of this opportunity: tell your Senators to vote on ALL judicial nominees in March.

Eighteen judicial nominees are currently waiting for a vote, twelve of whom were approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2011. Most of these nominees are individuals who would add sorely needed diversity to the federal bench, including by gender diversity. These are highly qualified nominees with bipartisan support. The only thing standing between them and a yes-or-no vote is a minority of Senators determined to slow down the confirmation process.

Justice delayed is justice denied. Tell your Senators to call on their leadership to schedule votes on judicial nominees this work period. Tell them you expect votes on ALL pending judicial nominees. Read more »