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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.

Chicago, New York Heading in Opposite Directions on Crime; Where Does Milwaukee Stand?

Post author:Michael M. O'Hear
Post published:January 24, 2017
Post category:Criminal Law & Process Milwaukee Public Wisconsin Criminal Law & Process

To judge by some of the political rhetoric last fall, violent crime must be surging in our nation’s cities. Is that true? The answer may depend on which city you are talking about, and which neighborhood within that city.

Consider the contrast between Chicago and New York. The Windy City had about 762 homicides in 2016, while the Big Apple had just 334. The difference is shocking, especially when you consider that New York has three times Chicago’s population.

To some extent, the contrasting figures from 2016 reflect longstanding trends. Although murders did spike in Chicago last year, New York has been doing better than Chicago on this score for a long time. The two cities had essentially identical per capita homicide rates in the late 1980s, but New York’s fell much faster and further than Chicago’s in the 1990s. New York has maintained a wide advantage ever since.

Still, the dramatic widening of that advantage in 2016 should be of great concern to Chicagoans. The chart below indicates the trends in recent years, based on FBI data. Note that the two cities moved in sync from 2013 through 2015: homicides down the first year, basically unchanged the next, and then up a little in 2015. However, in 2016, even as Chicago’s homicides shot up, New York’s dropped back down to where they had been in 2013 and 2014.

One should not get the sense, however, that one faces a dramatically elevated risk of violence throughout the Windy City.

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.