The saga of Wal-Mart v. Dukes, the largest class-action discrimination lawsuit in history, came to a close todaywhen the Supreme Court ruled that the lawsuit could not proceed. The suit, brought on behalf of 1.6 million female Wal-Mart employees who faced discrimination in hiring or promotions, was dismissed because it failed to target a specific [...]
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New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg announced this week that he would back any Republican senator who agreed to support gay marriage (New York Times). In his visit to Albany on Tuesday, May 17, Bloomberg strongly encouraged New York state senators to get on “the right side of history” by voting yes on same-sex marriage. [...] Funding for Planned Parenthood and women’s health services in general appears to be in the crosshairs this week as Republicans and Democrats try to resolve budget differences. Planned Parenthood provides a variety of women’s health services, including cancer screenings and STD testing, at over 800 locations nationwide. 75 percent of Planned Parenthood clients live at [...] Earlier this week, the DOJ Civil Rights Division announced that it was launching a formal investigation into use of force policies in the Seattle Police Department. The DOJ did not identify specific incidents that prompted their investigation, but said their investigation would be focused on excessive use of force and racial profiling. This investigation follows [...] In a ruling issued last week, a superior court judge in Indianapolis ordered several news outlets to disclose the identifying information of people who posted anonymous comments to their online message boards. The ruling, which came as a result of a defamation suit filed by a local charity organization head against several commenters who had [...] The Washington Post this week reminds readers that abortion rights can’t defend themselves. Apparently if Democrats and Pro-Choice groups do not keep an extremely watchful eye on their anti-abortion counterparts, those rights, or at least the ability to exercise them, can vanish quickly. Republicans in the Virginia House began with a seemingly innocuous bill regulating [...] Contrary to the suggestion of one Amicus author, the Justice Department today announced that it will stop defending parts of the Defense of Marriage Act in federal court. The Washington Post, citing many of the same arguments put forth in that Amicus post, calls the move risky. Amicus will of course continue to cover the developments on the legal and social fallout from this [...] Frances Kissling, the former president of Catholics for Choice and a visiting scholar at the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, writes in the Washington Post that the Pro-Choice movement needs to change its tack. She says that the focus purely on women’s independence in making medical choices makes pro-choice advocates seem callous [...] The Washington Post reports today that the slow progress of judicial confirmations in the Senate has combined with the rapid departure of judges from the federal bench to achieve a judicial crisis of unprecedented proportion. Nearly 1/8 of federal judgeships are now empty, and though the pace of confirmations has picked up slightly, it is [...] Update: If you thought democracies didn’t need to answer this question, check out this post on the “Protect Cyberspace as a National Asset Act” introduced in our own Congress. And, Egypt is back online. With the turmoil in Egypt leading to a near complete shut-down of the nation’s internet by the government, the internet is [...] |
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