Posts tagged as:

discrimination law

“The novel legal claim was filed by Lucie J. Kim in a class action suit against the singer earlier this year that sought $4,000 in damages for each Asian and Pacific Islander living in Los Angeles County.” Kim complained that Cyrus was photographed with an Asian friend and other friends pulling back their eyelids; Cyrus apologized when the photo became public in February. Cyrus sought tens of thousands of dollars in attorneys’ fees for what she felt was a frivolous claim; the request was denied. “Henry M. Lee, Kim’s attorney, said his client is considering appealing the case.”

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Heather Mac Donald in City Journal:

As part of its plan to comply with a federal desegregation order now decades old, Tucson’s school district adopted racial quotas in school discipline this summer. Schools that suspend or expel Hispanic and black students at higher rates than white students will now get a visit from a district “Equity Team” and will be expected to remedy those disparities by reducing their minority discipline rates.

What? They can’t comply by collaring and disciplining a random selection of additional white students?

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Charlotte Allen of the Manhattan Institute on the EEOC’s crackdown on a traditionalist Catholic college for not including contraceptives in its health plan. [Weekly Standard]

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That’s one claim in a lawsuit by the government of Arlington, Virginia against such a plan. The chair of the county board says the issue never came up in county discussions and “only arose [in the lawsuit] because the environmental review includes socioeconomic impact”. [MyFoxDC via Below the Beltway]

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Elie Mystal at Above the Law thinks a Decorah, Iowa “Trial Lawyers for Justice” plaintiff’s firm might want to consider including an “equal opportunity employer” tagline in its hiring announcement. Update: Firm defends its position.

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After forty years

by Walter Olson on July 9, 2009

The Philadelphia School District expects to reach a final settlement in a busing suit brought four decades ago. [Inquirer]

I’m in today’s New York Post with a second take on yesterday’s Ricci (New Haven firefighters) case. Link thanks: Instapundit, Damon Root/Reason “Hit and Run”. My first take on the decision, at Forbes.com yesterday, is linked here.

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Catching up with a story from a while back: a law professor at Oklahoma City University, Danne Johnson, has filed a federal lawsuit accusing the university of discrimination. Per this account six months ago in The Oklahoman, the lawsuit sounds as if it will raise issues of wider interest. It is apparently based at least in part on the handling of an October 2007 memo by four OCU law professors alleging, in The Oklahoman’s words, “sexual harassment, pay disparity and insensitivity”:

The female professors also complained the OCU law school has no regular civil rights course, criminal law classes don’t cover rape, and the landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade is only covered sporadically in constitutional law.

The memo was sparked by two incidents: the alleged sexual harassment of two female professors at Dean Lawrence Hellman’s home in July 2007 and the all-male panel chosen for a Constitution Day program in September 2007. …

The memo notes the lack of women on a faculty appointment committee, which regularly included two university professors who are “openly hostile” to the idea of giving special consideration for women and minorities.

According to The Oklahoman, Johnson’s lawsuit cites as indicative of the university’s discriminatory stance that its general counsel, William J. Conger, “indicated the issues raised by Johnson and the other professors were misunderstandings or ‘cultural’ issues, rather than legal issues” (via Secunda/Workplace Prof Blog).

I’ve got an opinion piece up at Forbes.com on today’s Supreme Court decision in Ricci v. DiStefano, the New Haven firefighter reverse-discrimination case. The title: “Sued If You Do, Sued If You Don’t: Through the Looking Glass on Affirmative Action” (& link thanks to Ramesh Ponnuru, NRO “Corner”, Daniel Schwartz, Connecticut Employment Law Blog, Jon Hyman, Ohio Employment Law (to whom thanks for the kind comments as well), and Scott Greenfield, Simple Justice).

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The New York Times’s “Room for Debate” includes views by Richard Pildes, Jamal Greene and Hans von Spakovsky. Abigail Thernstrom and Edward Blum wrote on the case earlier.

More: Tom Goldstein, Politico; Hans Bader, Examiner.

The Guardian: “Thousands of people are being stopped and searched by the police under counter-terrorism powers simply to provide a racial balance in official statistics, the government’s official anti-terror law watchdog has revealed.” (via Jesse Walker, Reason “Hit and Run”). More: Patrick at Popehat.

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In today’s San Francisco Chronicle, Carolyn Lochhead quotes me on the Supreme Court pick:

“It’s not as if I think Obama’s incapable of nominating someone who is more adventurous and more activist by nature,” said Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute. “Maybe we should save the all-out blast for when he nominates that one.”

I also have a comment on Ricci v. DeStefano, the lawsuit that arose from relatively blatant discrimination by the city of New Haven against non-minority firefighter applicants. I would not be surprised to learn that Sotomayor’s views on reverse discrimination differed widely from my own, but still note that it’s vaguely incongruous to treat as Exhibit A for a charge of judicial activism an instance in which the judge and her colleagues ducked a case.

Finally, my postings on the Sotomayor nomination continue at Point of Law, including an item on a Connecticut school discipline case where the nominee has drawn fire for (as part of a unanimous panel) siding with the school authorities. More: Jake Tapper, ABC.

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May 14 roundup

by Walter Olson on May 14, 2009

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Reading law review articles can be so depressing, though at least in this case the author winds up rejecting the idea of a comprehensive federal law “that would flatly prohibit height-based employment decisions” (via).

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May 7 roundup

by Walter Olson on May 7, 2009

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The federal appeals court has ruled that a mom-of-triplets can proceed with her discrimination suit against an employer she says passed her over in favor of another applicant who was also a mom — but not of triplets. [Michael Fox; Chadwick v. Wellpoint]

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Before you click the link, guess: who wins the $200,000? Was your guess right? Were other guesses just as plausible? And where does race fit in?

More: Coyote (”Here is a real journalistic triumph — the story of a multi-party conflict in which I immediately dislike absolutely everyone in the story on all sides of the conflict, up to and including the jury and the third parties quoted.”) And Scott Greenfield.

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“Lawyers said a ‘new breed’ of serial litigators was pouncing on ‘errors’ in job adverts, particularly referring to age, and taking advantages of weaknesses in the tribunal set-up to pursue discrimination claims.” One woman “was alleged to have made up to £100,000 from complaining that 22 companies had discriminated against her”, and even busier was a man who, according to one of his adversaries, was discovered to have filed around 50 complaints, many successful. A Law Society official dismissed talk of reform, saying, “Protecting employers who are not aware of the law is not a priority for the tribunals.” [Telegraph]