Tag Archives: Supreme Court

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Take Action: Support the Women of Wal-Mart

03/02/2011 Nativegrl77

As you may already know, the women of Wal-Mart have taken their fight for fair pay all the way to the Supreme Court.

Today the National Women’s Law Center, together with the American Civil Liberties Union and 32 other organizations, took a stand in support of the women of Wal-Mart by filing a friend-of-the-court brief in Wal-Mart v. Dukes, the Supreme Court case.

Pledge now to Stand with the Women of Wal-Mart and to continue to fight against pay discrimination. www.nwlc.org

The brief tells a shocking story. Women at Wal-Mart on average earned $5,000 less than men, even though women tended to have higher performance ratings and more seniority. Women also were less likely to be promoted to store manager positions and had to wait significantly longer for promotions than men.

As our new fact sheet highlights, scores of statements from women employed at Wal-Mart describe the gender stereotyping women regularly faced on the job. The claim in this case is that these sorts of stereotypes affected pay and promotion decisions at Wal-Mart because of Wal-Mart’s company-wide reliance on unchecked, subjective decision making by individual managers.

At the heart of this case is an important question — Is Wal-Mart too big to be held accountable?

We don’t think so. The Supreme Court has long held that when informal personnel practices lead to a discriminatory result, a class of employees can challenge this practice. The Supreme Court should rule that under these laws, there is no such thing as “too big to be held accountable.”

We will keep you updated on this case and provide opportunities to take action. Cases like this remind us of the profound and lasting impact our courts have on women and their families and why it’s important to confirm federal judges who understand the impact of the law on individuals and who are willing to hold powerful corporate interests accountable when they violate the law.

Will you pledge to Stand with the Women of Wal-Mart and continue to fight against pay discrimination? www.nwlc.org

Thank you for continuing the fight against pay discrimination.

Sincerely,

Fatima Goss Graves

Vice President for Education and Employment

National Women’s Law Center

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Stand by the Women of Wal-Mart

01/21/2011 Nativegrl77

When Lilly Ledbetter fought back against pay discrimination, you were there. After thousands of e-mails, phone calls, and letters to the editor, we helped to pass the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and were just two votes short of moving forward with the Paycheck Fairness Act last fall.

Now it’s time to come together behind another group of brave women fighting pay discrimination. The women of Wal-Mart have taken their fight for fair pay all the way to the Supreme Court and they need our support.

Pledge now to stand with the women of Wal-Mart and to continue to fight against pay discrimination.

http://www.nwlc.org/what-you-can-do

So what is this case about? Ten years ago a group of women who worked at Wal-Mart stores filed a lawsuit alleging that their employer engaged in company-wide sex discrimination, by paying women less than comparable men, promoting fewer women to management positions, and promoting male employees more quickly.

On the very same day that the Center’s analysis showed that in 2010 women working full-time in sales and related occupations have the biggest wage gap in any industry, Wal-Mart filed a brief in the Supreme Court challenging the legality of its employees to proceed together in court. If Wal-Mart succeeds, the already uphill battle for women to fight pay discrimination will get even worse.

The Court’s ruling will affect women who face pay discrimination around the country, for generations to come. Cases like this remind us of the profound and lasting impact our courts have on the women and their families who rely on courts for justice, and the importance of confirming federal judges who understand the impact of the law on individuals and who are willing to hold powerful corporate interests accountable when they violate the law.

We will keep you updated on this case and provide opportunities to take action. Please join our efforts to bring attention to this critical issue. The Women of Wal-Mart need to know that we have their backs! Will you pledge to stand with the women of Wal-Mart and continue to fight against pay discrimination?

Thank you for continuing the fight against pay discrimination.

Sincerely,

Fatima Goss Graves

Vice President for Education and Employment

National Women’s Law Center

P.S. For more information about what’s at stake for women in this case, read our latest article in The Huffington Post.

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Take Back Democracy on Citizens United Anniversary

01/14/2011 Nativegrl77 1 Comment

Last year, the five-justice conservative majority on the Supreme Court decided to reaffirm its inclination to rule on behalf powerful corporate interests by giving corporations a gift that was not theirs to give: the People’s democracy.

January 21 will mark the one-year anniversary of the Citizens United v. FEC decision, which reinterpreted the Constitution to give corporations the same First Amendment rights as people and opened the floodgates of limitless, undisclosed spending by corporations and their shadowy front groups to influence elections.

PFAW‘s marking the anniversary by joining with our friends at the Coffee Party, Public Citizen, MoveOn and others to hold a weekend of events in Washington and promote citizen-organized local events around the country.

Please be a part of next week’s grassroots actions to take our democracy back for the People.

Find a local event near you here:

http://www.movementforthepeople.org/get-involved/organize-locally/distributed-events/find-an-event/

If you know of an event that is not on this list, please add it or contact Sergio Lopez at slopez@pfaw.org.

If there is not an event near you, and you think you can organize or hold something yourself (anything from a street protest or a small rally to a house party or a town hall-style meeting at a public venue), also please contact Sergio at slopez@pfaw.org for help doing that.

After the D.C. rally on January 21, we’ll be joining with our allies to deliver hundreds of thousands of petition signatures to Congress calling for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to overturn the Roberts Court‘s disastrous decision by giving lawmakers explicit authority to limit corporate spending in elections.

If you have not yet had a chance to join our petition, please do so now.

And ask others to join at http://www.pfaw.org/Amend.

Thank you for your activism to reel in the corrupting influence of unlimited corporate spending, and to take our democracy back for We the People.

— Diallo Brooks, Director of Field and Mobilization

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Don’t Believe the Hype about Today’s Court Ruling on the New Health Care Law

12/13/2010 Nativegrl77


	Help Spread the Word



	All we’ve got are the facts and you — 2 out of 3 judges have found the health care law constitutional. So why is the conservative media saying the law is at risk? Forward this email to your friends and help us fight the misinformation machine.

The headline should read, “2 out of 3 judges have found the new health care law constitutional,” but we have a feeling the conservative media machine has something else up its sleeve.

After being unable to stop the passage of the new health care law, opponents decided to try to challenge the law in court as unconstitutional. So far two courts have rejected these challenges — a Michigan court and another court in Virginia which found the law constitutional. However, today a judge in Virginia has handed down the first ruling that one piece of the law is unconstitutional. This judge has no greater authority than the other two but that is no matter to conservative media pundits, who have sounded the alarms for the death knell of the health care law.

We need your help to spread the word — forward this email to five of your friends today.

Millions of women across the country are already benefiting from the new health care law. Since September 23, insurance companies can no longer drop you when you become sick or deny health coverage to children with pre-existing conditions. Also, when you enroll in a new health plan, you no longer have co-pays for recommended preventative health care services like mammograms and pap smears. And the law provides even more relief to women, like making it illegal to charge them more than men for insurance. But opponents of the new law just don’t care.

Make no mistake — the minimum coverage provision that was struck down in this one court is an important piece of the new law that will help ensure the success of the important insurance reforms that will end the harmful and discriminatory insurance practices that women have faced. While we are certainly disappointed in today’s ruling, it is not the final word. The conservative media machine shouldn’t use this one ruling — one of three — to undermine the health care law we’ve all worked so hard to pass.

Not so fast — we’ve got the facts. Help us spread the word that the sky is not falling, the insurance companies have not won, and the health care law is alive and well. Forward this email to five of your friends today.

Opponents of the law are not going to stop. We know that they will try to fight the law all the way to the Supreme Court. But we are confident that this important law is constitutional and will be fully implemented to the benefit of millions of women and families around the country.

Interested in the status of the legal challenges to the health care law? Check out this helpful chart from the Washington Post.

Sincerely,