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- Employment Opportunity Commission Ruling Protects Transgender Individuals From Workplace Discrimination
“The opinion came in a decision delivered on Monday, April 23, to lawyers for Mia Macy, a transgender woman who claims she was denied employment with the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) after the agency learned of her transition. It also comes on the heels of a growing number of federal appellate and trial courts deciding that gender-identity discrimination constitutes sex discrimination, whether based on Title VII or the constitutional guarantee of equal protection of the laws.
The EEOC decision, issued without objection by the five-member, bipartisan commission, will apply to all EEOC enforcement and litigation activities at the commission and in its 53 field offices throughout the country. It also will be binding on all federal agencies and departments.” - New survey details BP oil spill’s human health damages
People living along the Gulf Coast from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle continue to suffer health problems as a result of the BP oil disaster, according to a new survey conducted by the Louisiana Environmental Action Network.
“As a result of previous as well as ongoing exposure to the crude oil, community members have been made ill,” according to LEAN’s findings. “The health impacts experienced by the coastal community members correspond to the health impacts associated with the chemical components of the BP crude and the dispersants.”
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The most prevalent set of health problems reported by those surveyed included headaches, fatigue and loss of memory. “The second set of most prevalent symptoms consisted of nausea, dizziness, difficulty breathing, chest pains, and skin irritation, lesions and boils,” LEAN reports. “The third set of most prevalent symptoms consisted of vomiting, coughing, numbness in fingers and toes, ear ache, and abdominal pain.”
- California voters to consider ending capital punishment
California voters will decide whether to abolish the death penalty this November, the Silicon Valley Mercury News reported. A group in favor of doing away with the nation’s largest death row gathered more than 800,000 signatures –- enough to put capital punishment on the ballot.
Death would be replaced with life in prison without possibility of parole, according to the Mercury News. Inmates currently on death row would live out life in prison instead.
- Controversial Arizona Law Reaches Supreme Court
[T]he case is a “facial challenge,” meaning the government contends that even before the law goes into effect, the provisions in question are, on their face, unconstitutional in all applications. That makes this a particularly difficult case for the Obama administration to win.
In addition to the show-me-your-papers provisions at issue in Wednesday’s case, there are two other provisions that may be on somewhat shakier ground at this stage. One makes it a state crime, punishable by a mandatory jail sentence, for an immigrant to fail to register under federal law. Another provision makes it a state crime for illegal immigrants to work or seek work. Currently, federal law makes it a crime for businesses to hire illegal immigrants, and for workers to use false documents, but federal law does not make it a crime for the employees to work. The state contends that it is thus free to legislate against workers because the federal law is silent on the subject. But the administration counters that state law unconstitutionally interferes with Congress’ decision not to make working, by itself, a crime.
The federal government also argues that allowing 50 states to set their own immigration policies, many of which would be inconsistent with each other, would create exactly the kind of patchwork of immigration laws that the founding fathers sought to avoid in giving the federal government regulatory authority over immigration. Such a patchwork, the government contends, would make it difficult to do business in the U.S. and could create “significant foreign-policy consequences” as well.
- The Plot to Demonize Black Youth — And Their Mothers, Too
- Senate Women Safety Legislation to Exclude 40 Percent of Tribes
Approximately 230 out of the 566 federally recognized tribes would not be covered under tribal provisions of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) reauthorization, currently being considered in the U.S. Senate.
Tribal advocates are concerned that the exclusion of these tribes — all based in Alaska — will allow a large number of Native women to go unprotected under Sections 904 and 905 of the proposed legislation. The provisions are meant to expand tribal court jurisdiction and protection orders involving crimes committed against Indians.
The current language of Section 904 contains a caveat that says, “Nothing in this section … shall apply to an Indian tribe in the State of Alaska, except with respect to the Metlakatla Indian Community, Annette Islands Reserve….”
Section 905, too, says that it “shall not apply to an Indian tribe in the State of Alaska, except with respect to the Metlakatla Indian Community….”
The omission of the Alaska tribes is gaining increased attention at the same time that some Senate Republicans are trying to get the tribal protection provisions removed altogether
A disturbing trend is increasingly making national news in the United States: poor black mothers jailed for sending their children to schools outside their zoned school districts. The arrests of these mothers may seem novel, but given what we know about the criminal justice system’s propensity for arresting black adults and children at disproportionate rates, we shouldn’t be surprised. Not unlike truancy sweeps that target large numbers of black and poor children with legal sanctions for missing school, arrest for so-called “fraudulent enrollment” has become yet another avenue through which to target people of color.
As it turns out, schools are playing a key role in the demonization of black children – and their parents. As data recently published by the federal Office for Civil Rights – and collected by the Department of Education – has shown, black students often face far stricter school disciplinary penalties than their white peers do. In a recent report, NPR highlighted the fact that black children are three and a half times more likely to be suspended from school than white children. The new data paints a troubling picture of the prevalence of institutionalized racism in schools, and echos the results of a study released by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2010, which found similar racial discrepancies and noted that suspension rates for middle-school students of color, in particular, had skyrocketed.
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