Sweeping bills to end forced arbitration introduced | Public Citizen

Support is growing for an end to forced arbitration of consumer and workers grievances.  Last year  10% of Goggle's global workforce walked out, demanding an end to compulsory arbitration sexual harassment claims.  Last week Google announced it is ending the policy.

Today Representative Hank Johnson and Senator Richard Blumenthal introduced sweeping legislation to bar such agreements.  The measure has already gained the support of a wide array of consumer and progressive organizations.  - GWC





Public Citizen Press Room | Public Citizen: Statements of Public Citizen Experts

Public Citizen Applauds Sweeping Legislation That Would End Secretive, Restrictive Forced Arbitration Agreements

Statements of Public Citizen Experts

Note: Today, U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) and U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) introduced the Forced Arbitration Injustice Repeal (FAIR) Act of 2019, which would prohibit the use of forced arbitration in consumer, civil rights, employment, and antitrust disputes. These clauses – which require disputes to be decided by an arbitrator that is often chosen by a corporation, rather than by a judge and jury – are buried in the fine print of paperwork that consumers must sign to open a bank account, buy a cell phone or enter a nursing home. Public Citizen leads a coalition of organizations to end corporations' use of these insidious clauses.  

"Imagine if the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that corporations could escape lawsuits aiming to enforce consumer protection, worker rights and anti-discrimination laws simply by uttering a secret code. Outrageously, exactly that has happened, except it is not a secret. Corporations of all sorts insert forced arbitration provisions into worker and consumer contracts, and effectively wipe away people's protection against financial rip-offs, wage theft, online swindles, harassment and discrimination and more. The good news is that the public has caught on to this racket and is demanding action. The FAIR Act provides exactly what the public is demanding: an end to the forced arbitration fraud that systematically strips Americans of their legal rights and access to justice."

- Robert Weissman, president

"This legislation is long overdue. Many Americans don't know that they will be forced into arbitration proceedings as an alternative to their right to go to court when they accept job offers, buy a cell phone, take out a loan or enter a retirement home. We can't have one more worker sign away their rights when they start a career, nor can we have one more abused grandmother be robbed of her day in court. This bill gives Americans their rights back."

- Lisa Gilbert, vice president of legislative affairs

"The FAIR Act is an important step in restoring access to justice for those who have been harmed, as it would ensure that systemic claims of wrongdoing are no longer hidden from public view. We will continue to lead a coalition of organizations committed to ending the practice of forced arbitration and urge Congress to quickly act."

- Remington A. Gregg, counsel for civil justice and consumer rights, Public Citizen's Congress Watch division

The Black Sergeant and the White Judge Who Changed Civil Rights History - The New York Times

Black children walking to school pass a white children's school bus  Calhoun County, S.C. 1945


The Black Sergeant and the White Judge Who Changed Civil Rights History - The New York Times: “Unexampled Courage,” by Richard Gergel, is a riveting account of the 1946 legal case that spurred the federal government to act in defense of racial equality.


Briggs v. Elliott - South Carolina's Equalization Schools 1951-1960: Briggs v. Elliott (1947-1951) The advent of World War II brought the nation, and Charleston County, out of the Great Depression. War spending improved the economy, especially in North Charleston as...


J. Waties Waring - dissenting

As heretofore shown, the courts of this land have stricken down discrimination in higher education and have declared unequivocally that segregation is not equality. But these decisions have pruned away only the noxious fruits. Here in this case, we are asked to strike its very root. Or rather, to change the metaphor, we are asked to strike at the cause of infection and not merely at the symptoms of disease. And if the courts of this land are to render justice under the laws without fear or favor, justice for all men and all kinds of men, the time to do it is now and the place is in the elementary schools where our future citizens learn their first lesson to respect the dignity of the individual in a democracy.

To me the situation is clear and important, particularly at this time when our national leaders are called upon to show to the world that our democracy means what it says and that it is a true democracy and there is no under-cover suppression of the rights of any of our citizens because of the pigmentation of their skins. And I had hoped that this Court would take this view of the situation and make a clear cut declaration that the State of South Carolina should follow the intendment and meaning of the Constitution of the United States and that it shall not abridge the privileges accorded to or deny equal protection of its laws to any of its citizens. But since the majority of this Court feel otherwise, and since I cannot concur with them or join in the proposed decree, this opinion is filed as a
dissent. 

Yale Law Journal - An American Approach to Social Democracy: The Forgotten Promise of the Fair Labor Standards Act

Yale Law Journal - An American Approach to Social Democracy: The Forgotten Promise of the Fair Labor Standards Act

by Kate Andrias

ABSTRACT. There is a growing consensus among scholars and public policy experts that fundamental labor law reform is necessary in order to reduce the nation’s growing wealth gap. According to conventional wisdom, however, a social democratic approach to labor relations is uniquely un-American—in deep conflict with our traditions and our governing legal regime. This Article calls into question that conventional account. It details a largely forgotten moment in American history: when the early Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) established industry committees of unions, business associations, and the public to set wages on an industry-by-industry basis. Alongside the National Labor Relations Act, the system successfully raised wages for hundreds of thousands of Americans, while helping facilitate unionization and a more egalitarian form of administration. And it succeeded within the basic framework of contemporary constitutional doctrine and statutory law.

By telling the story of FLSA’s industry committees, this Article shows that collective labor law and individual employment law were not, and need not be, understood as discrete regimes—one a labor-driven vision of collective rights and the other built around individual rights subject to litigation and waiver. It also demonstrates that, for longer than is typically recognized, the nation experimented with a form of administration that linked the substantive ends of empowering particular social and economic groups to procedural means that solicited and enabled those same groups’ participation in governance (to the exclusion of other groups). Ultimately, recovering this history provides inspiration for imagining alternatives to the current approach to worker participation in the American political economy and to administrative governance more broadly.

AUTHOR. Professor of Law, The University of Michigan Law School. 

Yale Law Journal - An American Approach to Social Democracy: The Forgotten Promise of the Fair Labor Standards Act

Yale Law Journal - An American Approach to Social Democracy: The Forgotten Promise of the Fair Labor Standards Act

Supreme Court's Domineque Ray Ruling -- SCOTUS Upholds a Grave Violation of the First Amendment | National Review

Supreme Court's Domineque Ray Ruling -- SCOTUS Upholds a Grave Violation of the First Amendment | National Review: 

by David French - National Review



Ray’s execution was just. The circumstances were not. The state’s obligation is to protect and facilitate the free exercise of a person’s faith, not to seek reasons to deny him consolation at the moment of his death.

Louisiana can deny death row man his Imam - SCOTUS

18A815 Dunn v. Ray (02/07/2019)

Hakim Ray, facing death wanted his imam with him a the moment of death.  Alabama offered him a Christian minister.  The 11th Circuit granted a stay to hear the religious freedom argument.  The Supreme Court 5-4 vacated the stay of execution.   “A court may consider the last-minute nature of an application to stay execution in deciding whether to grant equitable relief.”  Really.


Elena Kagan dissents, saying

Why couldn’t Ray’s imam receive whatever training in execution protocol the Christian chaplain received? The State has no answer. Why wouldn’t it be sufficient for the imam to pledge, under penalty of contempt, that he will not interfere with the State’s ability to perform the execution? The State doesn’t say. The only evidence the State has offered is a conclusory affidavit stating that its policy “is the least
restrictive means of furthering” its interest in safety and security. That is not enough to support a  denominational preference. 

Court approves $1.5 M plus counsel fees in strip search class action

U.S. District Judge Noel L. Hillman (D- NJ) Thursday approved a $1.5 million settlement for plaintiffs illegally strip-searched while held for minor offenses at the Burlington jail.  The settlement order in Haas v. Burlington County provides an additional $900,000 in counsel fees to plaintiffs counsel .

Noel Hillman

The federal judge’s ruling affects a class of about 14,000 people, but confirmed claimants so far could each get a $400 award for being subjected to mandatory strip searches at the jail.

The named plaintiffs and class members were held on nonindictable charges, such as not paying fines. They say they were forced to remove their clothing for searches under a policy carried out prior to arraignment or before defendants have an opportunity to post bail. They allege the jail’s practice is degrading, unreasonable, had lasting traumatic effects, and violated their rights under New Jersey law and the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

“The plaintiffs were gratified by the result,” said Haddonfield attorney William Riback, one of three lawyers for class representatives Tammy Marie Haas and Conrad Szczpaniak.

Balkinization: Hardball, Again

Balkinization: Hardball, Again: A group blog on constitutional law, theory, and politics

Joseph Fishkin and David Pozen

Last spring, an eon ago in political time, we published an essay in the Columbia Law Review titled “Asymmetric Constitutional Hardball.”  The central claim of the essay is that over the past twenty-five years or so, an asymmetry has arisen between the two major parties in their propensity to push the constitutional envelope, straining unwritten norms of governance or disrupting established constitutional understandings.  Democrats and Republicans both do this.  But, the essay argues, Republicans lately do it more.  The essay is a deep dive into the potential causes and consequences of this asymmetry.

The Columbia Law Review is now publishing two responses to our essay, by David Bernstein and Jed Shugerman.  They come at us from opposite directions.  In “Constitutional Hardball Yes, Asymmetric Not So Much,” Bernstein argues (among other things) that there is no asymmetry.  Once one appreciates that Democrats bear as much responsibility as Republicans do for recent government shutdowns, and once one considers the unique lawlessness of the Obama Administration, the perception of partisan imbalance disappears.  In “Constitutional Hardball vs. Beanball,” Shugerman argues (among other things) that the asymmetry is even starker than our essay suggests.  Once one appreciates the fundamentally antidemocratic character of certain hardball tactics—the “beanball” kinds—used mainly by Republicans, the partisan imbalance turns out to be nothing short of terrifying.

We have just posted a draft of our reply to both Bernstein and Shugerman: “Evaluating Constitutional Hardball: Two Fallacies and a Research Agenda.”  In a nutshell, we try to show why Bernstein’s whole approach represents a step backward for the study of constitutional hardball whereas Shugerman’s represents a step forward.  Our reply also briefly discusses some political events from the past several months, at both the federal and state levels, that tend to reinforce and illustrate the asymmetry thesis.