HerringLaw: Civil Rights & Discrimination Law in Iowa

A good quote for today

None of us has gotten where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps.  We got here because somebody bent down and helped us - Thurgood Marshall.

Family Status Discrimination in Employment [California]

One employment law claim that has been quickly becoming more popular these days is "family status discrimination". That is, discriminating against someone based on their familial obligations or simply because they have a family in the first place.

via www.calemployeerightsblog.com

I was conducting some research into 'familial status discrimination' in housing and in a Google search came across this blog comment from a couple of years ago which sets out some of the arguments in favor of applying it to employment discrimination.  Some circuits have said there is no such thing under Title VII, but as this author notes, there are theories [e.g., sex role stereotyping, moral stereotyping] which would seem to permit this case to proceed even under Title VII as a form of gender discrimination.

Filiblustering - why your Senate doesn't work & plays parlor games

Sen. Begich from Alaska was asked on a radio show recently what the reality is about today's filibuster [which I renamed in the title, 'filibluster'] in the US Senate.

[from themudflats.net blog]

Felling: I think when a lot of people hear the word “filibuster,” they go back to Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and they think about a Republican senator reading from the dictionary or the phone book, but that’s not the way it goes any longer. How exactly do they do it then?

Begich: It’s just kind of a parlor game, it’s a parlor trick and what they do is they claim a “cloture vote” which is a vote that requires 60 votes instead of a real filibuster where you actually have to sit on the floor and talk about why you’re doing this. You just go home! And they get 30 hours to do nothing and the senate really just stands in stall. If people turn on C-Span they’ll see people presiding and the room empty, because they just get to burn up 30 hours of time and that’s it. In days gone by you’d actually have to come down and debate the reason why you’re holding up the legislation that might be in front. But the reason they don’t do that now, especially the minority, is because they’d be embarrassed. Because all they’re doing is coming down and delaying for the sake of delaying and costing this economy, costing American jobs, costing Alaskan jobs. It’s really a shame. So I hope in a lot of ways we can get beyond that a lot of the freshmen on both Democrat and Republican are somewhat fed up with that process and want to move forward and doing the business that this country, that my state, sent me here to do.