Search

Even though the United States Women's National Team ("WNT") has been far more successful than the United States Men's National Team ("MNT"), the team members have experienced unequal treatment from the United States Soccer Federation ("USSF") since its inception. In March 2019, members of the WNT filed suit against USSF, alleging that it had violated the Equal Pay Act ("EPA") and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The complaint alleged that USSF had a policy of discriminating against the WNT due to their players' gender by paying them less than the MNT and providing them with lesser employment conditions than those provided to the MNT. A final judgment on both the EPA and Title VII claims was never given, as both eventually settled outside of court. We analyze the substantive legal and economic arguments made by both parties. We show that USSF's arguments in support of gender pay disparities were misguided and calculate what proper compensation to the two teams should have looked like from the 2015-2019 period of dispute. Although we frame our analysis in the context of the WNT lawsuit, our analysis has far broader implications for pay equity. We illustrate how the outside market force argument in justification of lower pay for women may often be incorrect. We illustrate how the traditional EPA requirement that an individual must work in the same physical location as their comparator to be considered similarly situated is faulty. This investigation is particularly timely and relevant in light of the substantial rise in remote work arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Significantly, these protected characteristics are undefined, and judicial interpretations of race, sex, and national origin have allowed employers to lawfully discriminate against proxies for these protected characteristics. This Note examines the use of race-based hairstyles, gendered-appearance standards, and citizenship as proxies for race, sex, and national origin, respectively, and how the availability of such proxies inhibits Title VII's goal of creating equal employment opportunities. The Supreme Court's dicta in Bostock v. Clayton County offer potential redress to some victims of proxy discrimination through a protected characteristic plus proxy framework, but its application is limited and authority still unclear. Legislative intervention is likely necessary to strike the proper balance between equalizing employment opportunities and preserving employer autonomy to make employment decisions. This Note proposes varying levels of statutory enumeration--broad enumeration, narrow enumeration, and no enumeration--for race, sex, and national origin, respectively, to balance the competing goals of creating equal employment opportunities on the basis of protected characteristics and maintaining employer autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Students for Fair Admissions v. President & Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina, the Supreme Court ruled that affirmative action in university admissions, in which an applicant of a particular race or ethnicity receives a plus factor, is unconstitutional. This ruling was based on both the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This article argues that a more natural fit as the basis for constitutional analysis would be a different clause in the Fourteenth Amendment, the Privileges or Immunities Clause. In the article, a legal analysis based on the clause is applied to medical school admissions. Depending on whether a fundamental rights reading or an antidiscrimination (equality) reading of the clause is applied, opposite conclusions are reached on the constitutionality of affirmative action in medical school admissions. This analysis demonstrates why affirmative action in admissions--in this case medical school admissions, which directly affect the composition of the Nation's physician workforce--is a complex and difficult constitutional question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1972 amendments to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which required employers to reasonably accommodate their employees' religious beliefs if doing so did not cause an undue burden, did not settle the ongoing debate about balancing an employee's right to practice their religion with an employer's right to run their business. One ongoing controversy involves whether an employer can accommodate their employee in such a way that the employee also must compromise on their sincerely-held religious belief. A recent Third Circuit case, Groff v. DeJoy, further added to the circuit split by holding that an employer cannot offer a reasonable accommodation that requires the employee to compromise on their belief--a circuit split which the Supreme Court has yet to resolve, even after it reversed the Third Circuit in Groff. The Third Circuit's reading of the statute is not in line with the plain meaning of the statute, nor the congressional intent behind such a statute. Instead, the courts should look with an eye toward the good-faith standard in labor law and hold that a reasonable accommodation is one offered by an employer in a good faith attempt to accommodate the employee. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the persistence of societal inequities despite the passage of the 1964 Civil Right Act in the U.S. Topics discussed include anti-diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) activists' argument about the discriminatory nature of diversity efforts because they are rooted in equity, the University of Tennessee College of Law's initiatives to diversity the law school and legal profession, and the role of the public and private sectors in DEI efforts.

The Reconstruction Congress provided for civil rights removal jurisdiction to enable a state-court defendant with defenses based on federal civil rights to remove the case against them to federal court. A series of late nineteenth-century Supreme Court decisions rendered the provision practically useless until Congress invited federal courts to reinterpret the statute in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. New archival research reveals how lawyers at the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement immediately embraced the tool, now codified at 28 U.S.C. § 1443, to shift from state to federal court thousands of cases brought against demonstrators and local residents seeking to exercise their federal civil rights. That brief moment came to an end when the Supreme Court reaffirmed its narrow view of the provision just two years later, and the statute has remained mostly dormant ever since. This Note argues that the utility of civil rights removal, as revealed in the overlooked story of its use during the Civil Rights Movement, should be restored through a modernized statute that clearly defines removal's role in shifting the power over forum choice to defendants when other forms of relief and review are inadequate to address the potential for bias against those raising civil rights defenses. It includes an analysis of court records for almost 5,000 criminal cases filed in federal courts in Mississippi from 1961 through 1969, including almost 1,200 cases removed from Mississippi state courts between 1964 and 1966. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the concept of creating a Bill of Rights for engineering students to address issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in engineering education. The author, a Black engineering professor, shares their personal experiences and highlights the need for better support for marginalized students. They propose that a Bill of Rights could establish minimum expectations for undergraduate and graduate education and provide a framework for accountability. The author suggests using Young's Five Faces of Oppression as a conceptual framework to outline rights that address exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence. The article emphasizes the importance of implementing a Bill of Rights to address oppressive circumstances and hold individuals accountable, and suggests specific rights and accountability practices to mitigate oppression. The author encourages discussion and engagement within the engineering education community to bring about necessary changes. [Extracted from the article]

One of the heroes in American history, Associate Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993) sought legal remedies against racial discrimination in education and health care. As director of the Legal Defense Fund (LDF) of NAACP from 1940 to 1961, his success in integrating law schools in Texas led to the first black medical student admitted to a state medical school in the South. Representing doctors and dentists needing a facility to perform surgery, the LDF brought cases before the courts in North Carolina that moved the country toward justice in health care. His ultimate legal victory came in 1954, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the decision that declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. In 1964, the LDF under Jack Greenberg, Marshall's successor as director, won Simkins v. Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital, a decision that held that hospitals accepting federal funds had to admit black patients. The two decisions laid the judicial foundation for the laws and administrative acts that changed America's racial history, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Social Security Act Amendments of 1965 that established Medicare and Medicaid. His achievements came during the hottest period of the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Well past the middle of the twentieth century, black Americans were denied access to the full resources of American medicine, locked in a "separate-but-equal" system woefully inadequate in every respect. In abolishing segregation, Marshall initiated the long overdue remedy of the unjust legacies of slavery and Jim Crow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The early development of employment discrimination law is often perceived as a string of important victories for plaintiffs, although the real story is quite different. Although there were solid victories, including the early creation of the disparate impact theory, the Supreme Court continually refused to adopt a more progressive judicial vision that had been percolating in the lower courts, a vision that imposed far greater scrutiny on employers and their practices. In contrast, the Supreme Court quickly moved from questioning the validity of employer practices to deferring to employer judgments, even when those judgments produced a workplace where Black workers were generally absent or holding the least desirable jobs. And as the first decade of case development progressed, the Supreme Court became increasingly worried about the plight of white workers, ultimately approving of seniority systems that effectively locked Black workers into the jobs they had held prior to the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. This Article explores the first decade of employment discrimination law’s development by looking not only at Supreme Court opinions but also at what lower courts were doing. Additionally, this Article incorporates insights from the papers of Justice Powell to demonstrate how the Court moved from a short-lived protective stance to one that seemed more focused on the interests of white workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Overall, however, Wulfhart seems to stay true to her perspective - that of Patt and Tommie. In I The Great Stewardess Rebellion i , Nell McShane Wulfhart transports her readers to the American Airlines' stewardess training center, the so-called "Charm Farm" of the 1960s. Wulfhart tackles subjects, such as gender discrimination and labor negotiations, that could be complex and boring in a simple, common sense, and engaging manner, much the same way as Patt and Tommie must have. [Extracted from the article]

"Into the Bright Sunshine: Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights" by Samuel G. Freedman is a book that explores the early life and political career of Hubert Humphrey, a prominent figure in American liberalism. The book focuses on Humphrey's activism for civil rights, including his influential speech at the 1948 Democratic National Convention. Freedman also delves into the depth of racism and anti-Semitism in Minneapolis, where Humphrey served as mayor. The book highlights the importance of cross-cultural alliances in combating racism and intolerance, drawing parallels between the racial situation in Minneapolis during the 1940s and the present day. [Extracted from the article]

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects employees from workplace discrimination and harassment on account of sex. Courts have historically failed to extend Title VII protections to LGBTQ+ people. However, in 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County changed this. Bostock explicitly extended Title VII's protections against workplace discrimination to "homosexual" and "transgender" people, reasoning that it is impossible to discriminate against an employee for being gay or transgender without taking the employee's sex into account. While Bostock is a win for LGBTQ+ rights, the opinion leaves several questions unanswered. The reasoning in Bostock heavily implies the existence of a sex and gender binary, and the Court names only two groups--transgender and homosexual people--for protection. Therefore, it remains unclear whether people who fall outside of the sex or gender binary are protected under Title VII. This Comment focuses on one non-binary group, intersex people, and asks whether Title VII covers intersex people after Bostock. This Comment starts by defining the term intersex and exploring the cultural and legal context of intersex people in the United States. It then turns to Title VII, detailing Title VII's history and the Court's reasoning in Bostock v. Clayton County. This Comment concludes that Title VII covers intersex people after Bostock because the Court's definition of sex discrimination includes discrimination on the basis of sex traits. Because all intersex people have a natural variation in at least one sex trait (i.e., a trait that humans use to determine sex), Title VII categorically covers intersex people after Bostock. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers insights into pay equity statutes in the U.S. Topics mentioned include the theory of intersectionality, a description of the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the political economy of the gender pay gap, and the existence of economic inequality for women of color and African American women.

The article presents examples for teachers to incorporate primary source documents with language arts as primary source documents to help students gain an understanding of historical events. It includes the resources such as the Library of Congress site and exposes students to a variety of text structures and formats.

In his analysis of language rights legislation at the federal scale, Faingold also considers such rights in the workplace, pitting the historical stigmatization of what is called "code-switching" against the history of employers enforcing English-only policies. While this omission is regrettable, it takes little away from the value of Faingold's study in proposing solutions to the question of protecting minority language rights by legal means in the United States of America. Faingold narrows the scope of his analysis of language rights and legislation by looking for "language that defines the linguistic obligations of the United States and the language rights of persons in the United States" in the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (27). [Extracted from the article]

When the Eisenhower administration proposed an omnibus civil rights bill in 1956, the LCCR encouraged members to support a strong version of the bill. The book examines the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), the most prominent civil rights-focused interest group coalition in national politics, from its early status as a "permanent ad hoc committee" in the 1950s to its central coordinating role in the lobbying campaign for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That year, when the Kennedy administration proposed a new omnibus bill, the LCCR took on the role of coordinating civil rights groups' lobbying efforts. [Extracted from the article]

Danns shows that there were many success stories to Chicago desegregation, such as Black and Latino access to better resourced schools and deeper racial empathy among all students. Successive desegregation policies achieved only mixed results due to the opposition of local authorities and White residents who voted with their feet on their way to Chicago's sprawling suburbs. [Extracted from the article]

On July 21, 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Frappied v. Affinity Gaming Black Hawk, LLC held that sex-plus-age discrimination claims are cognizable under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. By taking a stance on the viability of sex-plus-age claims, the Tenth Circuit became the first circuit court to weigh in on the debate among the lower courts. Many federal district courts, relying on the availability of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act to address age discrimination claims, have rejected sex-plusage claims under Title VII. This Comment argues that the Tenth Circuit's decision is sound policy and logically follows the Supreme Court's recent ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the status of the U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education as a constitutional icon in the U.S. political culture. It explains the role of efforts to constitutionalize the actions of nonjudicial actors to restrict the reformist potential of the ruling in the iconic status of Brown. It mentions the challenge posed by the elite opinion to the jurisprudential merit of the ruling. The role of the passage of the Civil Rights Act in the reputation of Brown is cited.

The article focuses on the history of psychiatric hospitals in Alabama between 1952 and 1972. Topics include the Mental Retardation and Community Mental Health Centers Construction Act of 1963, the racial segregation happening within hospitals in Alabama, and the impact of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 making the segregation unconstitutional.

Despite the tremendous growth in female sports participation opportunities under Title IX, black females have not benefited to the same degree as their white female counterparts. While gender complaints about female athletes still lagging behind males in participatory opportunities, scholarships, facilities and equipment are being discussed, larger structural inequities associated with being black and female remain absent from the Title IX conversation, demonstrating the dual invisibility of black females. Not only is this true at predominantly white institutions, it's also true at historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), academic institutions which have been sources of educational and athletic opportunities for black females long before the passage of Title IX prohibited sex discrimination in any federally funded educational programs and activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]