Equality Law Amid Sabotage
We have about ended de jure segregation . . . because of the Civil Rights [Act of 1964]. [After the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964], white people were very badly treated . . . . It also hurt a lot of people—people that deserve to . . . get a job were […]
Race-Conscious Data: The New Political Taxonomy
Well before the Court issued Students for Fair Admissions, archconservatives broadcast far more ambitious plans to dismantle the building blocks of race consciousness. The second Trump Administration now levies once-fringe demands: that employers abandon racial data collection, disparate impact doctrine, and even voluntary inquiries about racial self-identification. Such attempts to suppress information about race undermine […]
Moonlighting in the Margins: Protecting the Rights of Workers Engaged in Lawful Off-Duty Online Sex Work
While prostitution is often dubbed the world’s oldest profession, it remains one of the most surveilled, criminalized, and culturally diminished. Sex workers have long been excluded from the legal protections afforded to other laborers, rendered invisible in employment law yet hyper-visible in moral discourse. In the digital age, online sex work has emerged as a rapidly expanding […]
From the Margins to the Citadel: Domestic Workers and a New Moral Economy of the Labor Market
This Essay takes as a starting point federal retrenchment in workers’ rights to envision a stronger legal regime the domestic workers’ movement inspired. That movement has driven twelve states, two cities, and the District of Columbia to adopt Domestic Workers’ Bills of Rights, extending long-denied labor protections while also pioneering new rights and a participatory […]
The EEOC’s Identity Crisis: Considering the Commission’s Future in the Absence of Independence
We cannot allow important matters of national policy to be reduced to simple matters of political posturing . . . . Our personal views on the laws we enforce are, at most, inconsequential. We have sworn to uphold the law. In 2022, Dylan Bringuel, a transgender person, took a job at a Holiday Inn Express […]
As the South Goes: Movement Lawyering for Black-led Worker Cooperatives in Atlanta
Despite a rich history of cooperative economics, the American South is home to few Black-led worker cooperatives. Instead, Atlanta, America’s capital of Black capitalism, and other southern cities, promote the conventional capitalist business structure as the best pathway to Black self-determination. This Essay challenges that position. Despite procedural, structural, and cultural barriers to Black-led worker […]
Filling in the Gap: Using the Common Law Tort of Wrongful Discharge in Violation of Public Policy to Strengthen Protections for Health and Safety Whistleblowers
Catherine Coward had been working as a registered nurse in the adult psychiatric ward of MCG Health in Georgia for eight years. One night while she was working, a patient attempted suicide. In the aftermath of the suicide attempt, management required the employees on staff at the time, including Coward, to give statements so that they could […]