Federal Law & Legal System – Page 19 – Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

The Uncertain Future of Title VII LGBTQ Rights

Post author:Rebeca Lopez
Post published:January 25, 2017
Post category:Civil Rights Federal Law & Legal System Public

Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII), employers may not discriminate against individuals based on their gender. Whether Title VII protections extend to sexual orientation and gender identity is less clear. Numerous federal courts have taken the position that sexual orientation and gender identity are not covered and it is up to the legislature to amend Title VII to explicitly provide protection from or redress for discrimination on these bases. Hamner v. St. Vincent Hosp. & Health Care Ctr., Inc., 224 F.3d 701, 704 (7th Cir. 2000); Spearman v. Ford Motor Co., 231 F.3d 1080, 1085 (7th Cir. 2000).

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has been critical of the federal courts’ position. Beginning in 2013, the EEOC issued a number of decisions finding that gender identity and sexual orientation discrimination were forms of “sex discrimination.” In the recent past, the EEOC has been the driving force behind seeking protection for employees from discrimination based on their sexual orientation and gender identity. For this reason, many people expressed concern that the Department of Labor (DOL) took down the EEOC’s “Advancing LGBT Workplace Rights” document from their website the day President Donald Trump was elected. Activists worry that the EEOC will not continue to advance LGBTQ protections under the new administration. It is unlikely that Congress will advance any express protections based on gender identity or sexual orientation.

Reprieve may come from the courts.

A New Era: The Rule of Law in the Trump Administration

Post author:Lisa A. Mazzie
Post published:January 20, 2017
Post category:Civil Rights Constitutional Law Federal Law & Legal System Federalism First Amendment Human Rights Immigration Law Labor & Employment Law Legal History Political Processes & Rhetoric Public Race & Law

Well, here we are, January 20, 2017, and Donald J. Trump has been sworn in as this nation’s 45th president, though he achieved that position by losing the popular vote by the widest margin of any winning candidate in recent history (2.9 million more people voted for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton), and he arrives at his new position with the lowest approval rating of any president in recent history.

As numerous others before me have written, President Trump’s campaign was not traditional in any number of ways, and I expect that his presidency will follow that trend. For some, that’s been the whole point. For others, that’s a less-than-inspiring harbinger. I wrote this summer about my concern about the candidate’s rhetoric, proposed policies, and the rule of law.

Though he has since backed off some of his campaign promises (for example, about having a special prosecutor investigate rival Clinton for her use of a private email server—a favorite chant at his rallies was “Lock her up!”), nothing since that time has changed my view. I continue to believe that the president won’t be appreciably different from the candidate.

U.S. Prison Population Continues Slow Decline; Wisconsin’s Inches Up

Post author:Michael M. O'Hear
Post published:January 12, 2017
Post category:Criminal Law & Process Federal Criminal Law & Process Federal Sentencing Public Wisconsin Criminal Law & Process

Ringing in the new year, the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics recently released its data on prisoners in the United States in 2015. After rising consistently for about four decades, the U.S. prison population (state and federal combined) peaked at a little over 1.6 million in 2009. Since then, the population has declined steadily, but very slowly. For 2015, the total was a little over 1.5 million, or about 35,000 less than 2014. The continued reductions are encouraging, but must be kept in perspective: the population remains many times above its historic norms. The current rate of 458 prisoners per 100,000 U.S. residents is over four times greater than the long-term rate of about 100 per 100,000 from before the imprisonment boom. We are still very much in the era of mass incarceration.

The Wisconsin numbers continue to be lower than the national norms, but are moving in the opposite direction. At yearend 2015, Wisconsin’s prison population numbered 22,975, up 1.7 percent from 2014. This amounts to 377 prisoners per 100,000. By comparison, Minnesota’s rate was just 196 per 100,000.

Here are a few additional observations: