Courts

Sixty years ago, the California Supreme Court courageously became the first in the country to strike down a law that prohibited interracial marriage — a full twenty years before the United States Supreme Court effectively wiped such laws off the books nationwide. Tomorrow, the California Supreme Court will once again confront marriage discrimination as it hears oral arguments in the consolidated lawsuits challenging the state's refusal to allow same-sex couples to marry. Although the California legislature passed a bill that would have ended this discrimination , it was vetoed by the Governator, and it is now once again up to the state Supreme Court to ensure that, in California at least, equality under the law is a reality for all.

Individual Rights, Access to Justice Threatened
President Bush's final State of the Union address will in part be an effort to shape the public view of his presidency. But here's something he won't say: a long-lasting part of his legacy will be the weakening of Americans' rights and legal protections due to the dangerous state of the federal judiciary created by judges he has placed on the federal bench.

On Monday, December 3, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Sprint v. Mendelsohn, an employment discrimination case brought by Ellen Mendelsohn, a former Sprint employee who believes that she was unlawfully selected for a company-wide reduction in force because of her age. At trial, the judge prohibited Mendelsohn from presenting the testimony of other terminated workers who would have testified to age-related bias within the company unless those workers had the same supervisor that Mendelsohn had had. Mendelsohn lost at trial, but the court of appeals reversed, holding that the testimony of the other employees should have been allowed.

The Supreme Court heard oral argument today in Federal Express v. Holowecki, an employment discrimination case in which the employee's access to justice through the courts is at stake, as we have previously described. Under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, an employee who believes that she has been subjected to unlawful discrimination must file a "charge" with the EEOC before she can sue, and the EEOC must then notify the employer and attempt to resolve the matter.

On October 19, 2007, PFAWF joined 11 other civil rights groups in filing an amicus curiae brief in Sprint v. Mendelsohn, an employment discrimination case pending in the Supreme Court and one of the cases that we highlighted in our preview of the Court's term because of its importance to the right of employees who believe that they have been subjected to workplace discrimination to obtain justice in the courts. Other groups joining this brief include the NAACP, MALDEF, the National Women's Law Center, the Asian American Justice Center, and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, a diverse coalition underscoring the importance of this case to the civil rights community.

American Federation of Labor, et al. v. Michael Chertoff, No. C 07-04472 CRB (N.D. Cal.)

A federal district court judge in California last week gave America another good example of why courts matter. Judge Charles R. Breyer put a stop, at least for now, to a governmental effort that would likely have resulted in the firing of potentially tens of thousands of legal workers this fall, all in the guise of a crackdown on illegal immigration.

The first day of October will be the first day of the Supreme Court’s new term, and the justices have already chosen to hear several cases that may well be decided by narrow majorities, as Scalia and Thomas have been joined by Roberts and Alito to form a reliable, ultraconservative voting bloc, with Kennedy as the new swing vote on a Court transformed by Bush Administration nominees.

People For the American Way Foundation has published a preview of several of these cases — cases that could have a profound impact on the rights of Americans, the limits of presidential power, and the conduct of partisan politics. The issues at stake include: