Tagged: Clarence Thomas
“Kerry Washington will hang up her white hat temporarily when she stars as Anita Hill in HBO’s upcoming film Confirmation. The film centers on the explosive 1991 Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination hearings, at which Anita Hill, his former assistant, testified about his repeated sexual harassment. The hearings brought the country to a standstill and forever changed the way people think about sexual harassment, victims’ rights and modern-day race relations….Confirmation debuts this April on HBO.”
They replaced Thurgood Marshall with this man?!? No wonder he typically votes with the white conservative, Republican appointed majority!! Thomas needs to be IMPEACHED!
Source: Kate Stanhope. “Kerry Washington Reveals Why She Was ‘Terrified’ to Play Anita Hill in HBO’s ‘Confirmation.'” The Hollywood Reporter. January 7, 2016. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/kerry-washington-reveals-why-she-853108.
“[Chief Justice John] Roberts’s ‘colorblindness’ bears only a superficial resemblance to the concept as understood by past champions of equal rights, since as applied by the conservative majority on the court the approach has had dire consequences for racial minorities. Since Roberts became chief justice, the high court has struck down school desegregation plans, narrowed affirmative action, crippled the Voting Rights Act, limited the circumstances under which Americans can sue for racial discrimination, and enabled the denial of health insurance to millions of financially struggling people of color. Though the opportunity has not yet presented itself, the conservative movement from which Roberts sprung would see the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 destroyed as well.”
With regards to civil rights related cases, especially those involving the rights of African Americans, it is clear that our judicial system is completely rigged and set up in a way that would ensure that many of the gains made during the civil rights movement, would be eviscerated over time while racism continues to thrive. Smdh.
Source: Adam Serwer. “Sonia Sotomayor: Court’s Right Wing ‘Out Of Touch With Reality.’” msnbc. http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/sonia-sotomayor-slams-supreme-court-right-wing-race-matters.
“The Supreme Court’s decision in University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center v. Nassar[, 133 S. Ct. 2517 (2013)] represents a watershed moment in employment discrimination litigation. The majority opinion posited that an employee might try to avoid termination by filing a fake retaliation claim against his employer. It also expressed fears about courts, administrative agencies, and employers being subjected to floodgates of litigation. It then explicitly used these concerns about fakers and floodgates to tip substantive discrimination law in an employer-friendly direction.”
Nassar expresses three ideas about employees and their claims. First, the sheer volume of cases is enough to favor a more onerous causal standard. Second, enough employees will bring false claims that substantive retaliation doctrine needs to protect courts, administrative agencies, and employers from fakers. Third, existing procedural mechanisms are not adequate to ferret out these false claims. Rather, they must be dealt with by altering the substantive law.
This Article responds to the alleged fakers and floodgates problem. First, it argues that the Court has created reasons to alter the law that are not grounded in congressional intent. Title VII contains numerous provisions that limit the reach of the statute. Beyond these restrictions, Congress never expressed any intention to limit the number of claims heard by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) or the courts based on concerns about the sheer volume of such claims. Nor did Congress express any intent that the courts use the substantive law to screen for false retaliation cases. Through various provisions in Title VII, Congress established a statute designed to protect employers, employees, and courts. Multiple provisions establish a mechanism to ensure that employees are able to bring claims, that employers can adequately defend against claims, and that courts do not hear claims that can be resolved by the EEOC. Moreover, Title VII was enacted in the presence of several existing devices that can be employed to stem any false claims and any related floodgates of litigation. These devices allow judges to sanction parties who file false claims and to dismiss these cases. While the Supreme Court considers these devices to be adequate to handle the misbehavior of employers, in Nassar the Court rejected the possibility that procedural mechanisms are sufficient to deal with false claims filed by employees.
Second, although we argue that the Court’s fakers and floodgates arguments are improper, they are also problematic because they are not supported by empirical or other evidence. To the contrary, available evidence shows that the number of employment-related civil rights claims is decreasing both in raw numbers and in proportion to the number of civil claims filed in federal court.” This Article questions whether the judiciary generally, and the Supreme Court in particular, is the best institution to make factual claims about fakers and floodgates.
Third, this Article also challenges the accuracy of the Court’s assertion that changing the substantive law will reduce the number of spurious claims. At best, such a change is a blunt instrument for handling frivolous claims. Most importantly, changing the law represents a choice about what counts as legal retaliation and what does not. By requiring plaintiffs to establish but for cause, the Supreme Court has declared that an employer does not retaliate against an employee (in a legal sense) if the causal connection is less strong. In other words, if an employee can show only that retaliatory motive was a motivating factor in her termination, she has not suffered retaliation under Title VII.
Fourth, we discuss the dangers of the floodgates and fakers arguments becoming explicitly embedded in judicial doctrine. Such a default position distracts from the larger congressional goal of preventing retaliation and confuses the underlying legal doctrine. Thus far, two courts have already cited the Court’s concerns in their opinions. This Article calls for the EEOC and other organizations concerned with employment discrimination to develop a factual response to arguments about fakers and floodgates before these myths develop into an uncontestable judicial narrative that courts can use to justify other changes in the law.
Finally, we argue that the fakers and floodgates arguments are consistent with a broader problem-courts’ infusion of their own views of evidence of discrimination into procedure and substance. Courts use these devices to prevent juries from hearing factually intensive civil rights cases, even when a plaintiff presents evidence of a colorable claim. (emphasis added)
Smh…
Source: Sandra F. Sperino and Suja A. Thomas. Fakers and Floodgates. Stanford Journal of Civil Rights & Civil Liberties. pg. 223-225. June 2014.
“Today, the Supreme Court continued that tradition in a pair of five-to-four decisions narrowly construing the scope of Title VII’s retaliation and employer liability rules. In University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center v. Nassar, the Court strictly interpreted a statute that Congress enacted to overrule a prior Supreme Court decision, holding retaliation claims to a stricter standard of proof than other forms of discrimination claims. In Vance v. Ball State University, the same majority narrowly defined who counts as a “supervisor” whose discrimination is automatically attributed to an employer. Justice Ginsburg, writing for the Court’s four more liberal Justices, invoked the history of congressional overruling of the Court’s employment discrimination decisions to call upon Congress to once again reverse both decisions issued today.”
There goes that word (“narrowed”) again! Smh! I’m curious to know since 2000, how many employment discrimination and civil rights cases has the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the employee? Given that majority of the justices on the Supreme Court were appointed by Republican Presidents, this 5-4 outcome in favor of employers and corporations will continue to persist in employment discrimination and civil rights related cases until the ideological makeup of the court changes. No matter what the Civil Rights Act of 1964 states or what one argues, the majority white justices always find a way to narrowly apply the statute to the facts of the case — to the point that over time, the case law becomes ineffective in combating more institutional, systemic and insidious forms of racism and discrimination in the workplace. This is not accidental. Ultimately, the SCOTUS’s decisions in these cases are predetermined due to their overall ignorance and hostility to the civil rights laws of this country. How can this problem be corrected?
Source: Kevin Russell. Court Rules For Employers in Two Employment Discrimination Cases. June 24, 2013. http://www.scotusblog.com/2013/06/court-rules-for-employers-in-two-employment-discrimination-cases/.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor publicly defends AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, but what good are her views (or mine for that matter) if she will always constitute the SCOTUS MINORITY on this issue and others related to civil rights?
Justice Sonia Sotomayor said she supports affirmative action in higher education because she believes that alternatives based on geographic or economic status don’t work to ensure a diverse student body.
Sotomayor has said race-conscious programs in the 1970s that opened the Ivy League to minorities were essential to her rise from the Bronx housing projects to her admissions to Princeton and Yale Law School, where she excelled.
In a segment taped for ABC’s “This Week,” George Stephanopoulos asked Sotomayor, the court’s first Latina, about programs that might increase diversity in higher education that would be “less fractious” than the use of race.
She said other programs have not proven to be as successful in diversifying student bodies and that universities should be able to consider race and not just academic measurements.
“What does qualifications mean in an academic setting?” she said. “A place like Princeton could fill their entire beginning freshman class with students who have scored perfectly on undergraduate metrics.
“They don’t do it because it would not make for a diverse class on the metrics that they think are important for success in life.”
Reminded that President Obama has said his children should not receive special consideration for their race, because of their privileged backgrounds, Sotomayor said: “I agree. But even privileged people will show you dramatic accomplishment that doesn’t go just to grades.”
It is unusual for Supreme Court justices to appear on television, but most make exceptions when they have a book to promote. Sotomayor has actively promoted her memoir, “My Beloved World,” released in paperback this year.
Majority of justices who sit on the Supreme Court were appointed by Republican presidents. This has generally resulted in a 5-4 vote (or worse) to uphold and protect the interests of whites. This is not accidental or “due to chance.”
“For 145 years the Federal courts in the continental United States — the Supreme Court, Courts of Appeals and District Courts — were entirely made up of white males. The first woman, Florence Allen, was appointed by Franklin D. Roosevelt, in 1934, and the first African-American, William H. Hastie, in 1949, by Harry S. Truman.”
It’s not just about the quantity of black judges being appointed to the federal court if they think and act like Clarence Thomas and Timothy K. Lewis.
Source: Leon A. Higginbotham. The Case of the Missing Black Judges. New York Times, July 29, 1992. http://www.nytimes.com/1992/07/29/opinion/the-case-of-the-missing-black-judges.html.
Supreme Court issues 7 to 1 ruling remanding affirmative action case to lower court. Thomas likens AA to slavery and segregation. Ginsburg stands alone and acknowledges true reasons why affirmative action is necessary in Amerikkka.
WASHINGTON — Courts must take a skeptical look at affirmative-action programs at public colleges and universities, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, in a decision that is likely to set off a wave of challenges to race-conscious admissions policies nationwide.
Abigail Fisher, who was denied admission to the University of Texas at Austin, said her race was held against her.
The 7-to-1 decision avoided giving a direct answer about the constitutionality of the program used by the University of Texas at Austin that was before the court. The program will continue for now, but the justices ordered an appeals court to reconsider the case under a demanding standard that appears to jeopardize the program.
The ruling was simultaneously modest and significant, and its recalibration of how courts review the constitutionality of race-conscious decisions by the government will reverberate beyond higher education.
The brief decision, issued eight months after the case was argued, was almost surely the product of intense negotiations among the justices.
The compromise that the majority reached was at least a reprieve for affirmative action in higher education, and civil rights groups that had feared for the future of race-conscious admission programs were relieved. Conservatives and other opponents of the current version of affirmative action vowed to use the court’s ruling as a road map to bring future cases.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote the majority opinion,joined by the four members of the court’s conservative wing — Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. — and two of its liberals, Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor.
Only Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented, writing that lower courts were correct to uphold the Texas program. Justice Elena Kagan disqualified herself from the case, presumably because she had worked on it as solicitor general in the Obama administration.
The decision did not disturb the Supreme Court’s general approach to affirmative action in admissions decisions, saying that educational diversity is an in terest sufficient to overcome the general ban on racial classifications by the government. But the court added that public institutions must have good reasons for the particular methods they use to achieve that goal.
Colleges and universities, Justice Kennedy wrote for the majority, must demonstrate that “available, workable race-neutral alternatives do not suffice” before taking account of race in admissions decisions.
That requirement could endanger the Texas program when it is reconsidered by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans. The university’s program admits most undergraduates under race-neutral criteria, accepting all Texas students who graduate near the top of their high school classes. But the university also uses a race-conscious system to choose the remaining students.
Courts reviewing government programs that make distinctions based on race subject them to a form of judicial review known as “strict scrutiny,” requiring the government to identify an important goal and a close fit between means and ends. Justice Kennedy’s opinion focused on and tightened the second part of the test.
“Strict scrutiny,” Justice Kennedy wrote, “does not permit a court to accept a school’s assertion that its admissions process uses race in a permissible way without a court giving close analysis to the evidence of how the process works in practice.”
Courts reviewing affirmative action programs must, he wrote, “verify that it is necessary for a university to use race to achieve the educational benefits of diversity.” That requires, he said, “a careful judicial inquiry into whether a university could achieve sufficient diversity without using racial classifications.”
Justice Ginsburg, who announced her dissent from the bench, said the race-neutral part of the Texas program worked only because of “de facto racial segregation in Texas’ neighborhoods and schools.”
They weren’t bold enough to say that affirmative action is unconstitutional…but that’s where things are headed if we (e.g. Whites) continue to ignore the realities of racism in America.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/25/us/affirmative-action-decision.html?hp&_r=1&. For commentary on Clarence Thomas’ — the only African American justice on Supreme Court that is adamantly against affirmative action — opinion on this issue, click here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/24/clarence-thomas-affirmative-action_n_3491433.html?utm_hp_ref=black-voices&ir=Black%20Voices. Thurgood Marshall is turning over in his grave right now! Thomas is a disgrace to all people of African descent.
the connection between loeb & loeb llp and hollywood.
After nearly two years of litigating this case, I randomly decided at 4 AM to research the history of Loeb & Loeb LLP — law firm representing William Morris. I immediately found a valuable bit of information. In the first paragraph detailing the firm’s history, their website states:
Loeb & Loeb was established in 1909. Founders Edwin and Joseph Loeb played a major role in the development of the City of Los Angeles in the early 1900s, helping to establish such institutions as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Union Bank of California. In 1986, Loeb & Loeb merged with Hess Segal, a New York firm of comparable quality and vintage.
If the William Morris Agency was the first talent agency in the world and is credited with creating “Hollywood”, Mr. Zelman Moses (aka William Morris) clearly did business or knew Edwin or Joseph. And the Loebs’ relationship with our judicial system spans 103 years so by the time Leonard Rowe filed his racial discrimination case in 1998 with the Southern District of New York, the court was already in the firm’s back pocket. For 14 years, attorney Michael P. Zweig (http://www.loeb.com/michael_zweig/) and his coconspirators have been paid handsomely to assure that, but those days are now numbered. As God continues to reveal clues, this “conspiracy” makes more and more sense…
I wonder what the racial makeup is like at Loeb & Loeb LLP, the Southern District of New York, Creative Artists Agency, MGM, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, etc. Let me make an educated guess: the same as William Morris Endeavor Entertainment! This would be a great place for the EEOC to direct it’s E-RACE Initiative — an alleged effort to combat employment practices which create a systemic disparate treatment against federally protected groups in the U.S. workplace. (http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/initiatives/e-race/index.cfm)
Me Against Iniquity: Understanding the Complexities of Global White Supremacy (Racism) Through The Eyes of an Unapologetically BLACK Intellectual 