Posts Categorized: 1 percent court

Retailer tries to hold customer’s money hostage to forced arbitration

By Trevor Boeckmann
AFJ Dorot Fellow

As we detail in our short documentary Lost in the Fine Print, forced arbitration clauses have become omnipresent in American society.  They’re used by companies to prevent consumers from having the chance to stand up for their rights in court when they’re harmed.  Yet most of these clauses are buried deep in the fine print of contracts and terms of service.

Now Walmart, already a corporate bad actor in so many ways, has taken this strategy to a whole new level.  They found a way to hold a customer’s money hostage until she agreed to forced arbitration.

KTRK-TV in Houston reports that on Black Friday, local shopper Maria Selva tried to buy a new TV at the big-box retailer. Walmart had sold out of the TV by the time Selva came to purchase it, but employees gave her a coupon, and had her pay in full.

She thought she could just pick up the TV at a later date.  But after she’d already paid, she was given a notice telling her she had to register online.  When she went online, she found that registering the coupon meant agreeing to forced arbitration.  She refused to accept the terms, and contacted Walmart to ask for a refund.

Walmart said no.

Instead, the company told her she would have to agree to forced arbitration, receive the TV, and return the TV.  Only then could she receive a refund.

It wasn’t until KTRK contacted the company that Walmart finally relented and issued a refund.

The consequences of forced arbitration can be great.  In Lost in the Fine Print we document the stories of Nicole Mitchell and Debbie Brenner, victims of discrimination and fraud who were never allowed to defend their rights in court.

Walmart isn’t the only company that has tried to find creative ways to impose forced arbitration.

Take General Mills, for example.  Last spring, we told you about their new arbitration policy, which purported to force consumers into arbitration if they entered a company contest, printed a General Mills coupon, or even “liked” Cheerios on Facebook.

But public pressure forced General Mills to back down.  Now we’re putting the pressure on other companies.  Join our campaign to end forced arbitration and protect everyday Americans.

Watch one consumer’s battle against Walmart and forced arbitration

By Abby Bar-Lev
Fellow, National Women’s Law Center

In the last couple of years, the Supreme Court has had a lot to say about working women.  Unfortunately, none of it has been good.

In the past year and a half alone, the Court has made it harder for women to sue their employers for sexual harassment, limited the rights of home health care workers—who are nearly all women—to organize, and given bosses a religious trump card they can use to quash women’s rights to insurance coverage for birth control.  But in the Young v. UPS case, which the Justices heard yesterday, the Court gets another chance to get it right.

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court’s recent record on working women shows just how blind the justices have been to the realities of the workplace.

 

First, the Court in Vance v. Ball State University drastically narrowed the definition of “supervisor” for purposes of Title VII harassment claims to exclude lower-level supervisors.  Your boss may be able to direct you to work late or to work the night shift instead of the day shift.  However, if your boss doesn’t have the ability to take “tangible employment actions” like hiring and firing, then,  according to the Supreme Court, your boss is actually your coworker, not your supervisor.  This means your harassment claim will be evaluated under a much tougher legal standard.

The National Women’s Law Center found that there are 17.4 million low-wage workers in fields with a lower-level supervisor.  The fears that victims of harassment by lower-level supervisors would be denied their day in court because of Vance are being borne out.  Since Vance, of the 120 reported sexual harassment cases in the federal courts, 43 have been thrown out because the harasser didn’t satisfy the new definition of supervisor.

Second, one year after Vance, the Court decided in Harris v. Quinn that unionized home health care workers in Illinois, paid by the state through Medicaid funds, were not “true” public employees.  Therefore, non-union members did not have to pay their “fair share” fees to the union for the benefits of representation they received from the union’s negotiations.  During oral arguments, Justice Samuel Alito said that he did not understand why the “union’s participation” is “essential” in negotiations for wages and benefits with the state.  He then authored the majority decision that will inevitably lead to the defunding of public home health care unions, since the union must continue to represent the non-paying, non-union members.

This decision particularly affects women in low-wage jobs.   According to the Economic Policy Institute, almost 90 percent of the more than one million home health care workers in the United States are women, for whom the median hourly wage is $10.21.  Unions have the ability to boost the pay of workers, narrow the wage gap for working women, improve benefits, and lead the way in improving working conditions.  However, after the Supreme Court’s decision in Harris v. Quinn, the benefits of union representation may soon be out of reach for many of these women workers.

Third, the same day that the Court decided Harris v. Quinn, it struck a second blow to working women by concluding that the religious beliefs of certain for-profit employers give bosses the right to deny their women employees health insurance coverage for birth control, as had been required under the Affordable Care Act.  In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court allowed the religious beliefs of some employers to trump the health needs of women employees.   Although 99 percent of American women use birth control at some point in their lives, five men on the Supreme Court decided that birth control is different  from other health care services.

Women in poverty will pay the highest price for the Supreme Court’s decision.  The unintended pregnancy rate for women living below the poverty line is more than five times as high as the rate for women in the highest income level.  As Justice Ginsburg noted in her dissent, “the cost of an IUD,” which is the most effective form of birth control, “is nearly equivalent to a month’s full-time pay for workers earning the minimum wage.”

Now, in Young v. UPS, the Supreme Court has the opportunity to finally do right by working women.   When Peggy Young, a UPS employee, became pregnant, her midwife told her not to lift more than 20 pounds for the rest of her pregnancy.  She informed UPS of her midwife’s order and requested “light duty.”  Even though UPS had a policy providing light duty accommodations to workers injured on the job, workers with disabilities, and workers whose licenses had been suspended due to a DUI conviction, the company denied light duty to Peggy.  It then forced her onto unpaid leave.  UPS argued that it did not have to accommodate Peggy in the same way that it accommodated other workers, even though the Pregnancy Discrimination Act requires that employers treat pregnant workers the same as other employees who are “similar ability or inability to work.”

Over the summer, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued new guidance on pregnancy discrimination, explaining that pregnant workers must be given reasonable accommodations when the employer is accommodating other workers who are similar in their ability to work.  Employers cannot, for example, have a “light duty” accommodation policy that only covers workers injured on the job.  A number of states have passed laws unanimously or nearly unanimously that provide reasonable accommodations to pregnant workers, and even UPS has revised its “light duty” policy to include pregnant workers, though it continues to deny any legal wrongdoing in the case of Peggy Young.

No woman should have to choose between risking her pregnancy or her job.  As Delaware Republican State Senator Colin Bonini, who helped lead the effort to pass the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act in his state, said, “We want to encourage women to be able to keep their jobs. . . .  And we want to encourage women to have successful families.”  In this case, the Supreme Court has the opportunity to finally make clear that employers may not treat women like second-class citizens.  And the plain language of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act compels this result.

Former AFJ Dorot Fellow Abby Bar-Lev is now a Fellow at the National Women’s Law Center, an AFJ Member Organization.

The next time a woman is forced to choose between her job and her pregnancy, she may not even make it into court.

By Michelle D. Schwartz
AFJ Director of Justice Programs

There are a number of things that are incredible about Young v. UPS, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act case set to be argued in the Supreme Court today.

It’s incredible that UPS refused to make a reasonable accommodation for driver Peggy Young after she became pregnant and her doctor advised her against lifting packages heavier than 20 pounds.

It’s incredible that UPS then forced Young to take unpaid leave for the remainder of her pregnancy, causing her to lose both her wages and her health insurance at the time she needed them most.

It’s incredible that UPS refused an accommodation for Young even as it made such accommodations for workers injured on the job, workers with disabilities falling under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and even drivers who lost their commercial driver’s licenses because of DUI convictions.

It’s incredible that, in 2014, Peggy Young was forced to choose between a healthy pregnancy and her job.

And it is incredible that Peggy Young’s case against UPS made it into court at all.

Today, more and more employees are compelled to accept forced arbitration clauses in their employment agreements, employee handbooks—even job applications.  These clauses say that if a dispute should arise between the employee and the company they work for, the employee can’t take that dispute before an impartial jury or judge.  Instead, they have to take their case before an arbitrator picked by the company, losing their fundamental right to go to court.

These arbitration clauses apply even in cases of employment discrimination that allegedly violate such hallowed laws as the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the Equal Pay Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and, yes, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act.

In fact, over the summer we learned that another company that’s no stranger to the Supreme Court—Hobby Lobby—has a forced arbitration clause.  That clause kept an  employee, Felicia Allen, out of court after she was fired for trying to take unpaid leave during her pregnancy.  Hobby Lobby even tried to prevent Allen from receiving unemployment compensation.  As we wrote at that time:

When Allen tried to sue Hobby Lobby for discriminating against her based on her pregnancy, she learned that Hobby Lobby had a forced arbitration clause.  Allen’s lawyers refused to take her case after they learned of the forced arbitration clause and she—like so many other American consumers and employees—was left out in the cold.  Hobby Lobby could take its case all the way to the Supreme Court, but its employee couldn’t even get through the courthouse doors.

In our short documentary Lost in the Fine Print, we tell the story of Nicole Mitchell, another woman forced into arbitration after trying to sue her employer for discriminating against her—this time based on her status as a Hurricane Hunter in the Air Force Reserve.

The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) is a federal law that prohibits employers from firing, demoting, or failing to hire military reservists because of their reserve duty.  But, as Mitchell found, USERRA and other laws protecting against employment discrimination may be worth little more than the paper they’re printed  on when violations are forced into arbitration.

Employees fare far worse in arbitration than they do in the courtroom.  Researchers at Cornell found that outcomes for employees forced into arbitration are “starkly inferior” to those in litigation.

And the harms of forced arbitration extend beyond the outcomes in individual cases.  Because arbitration generally occurs in secret, systemic abuses are never exposed and remedied.  So even on the rare occasion that an employee wins in arbitration, there is little incentive for the employer to protect employee rights moving forward.

Take the case of UPS.

In October, with Peggy Young’s case already pending before the Supreme Court, the company announced that, beginning on January 1, 2015, it would offer light duty assignments for pregnant workers.  That offer comes too late for Peggy Young, but it is unlikely that it would have come at all if not for the public attention the Supreme Court case has brought.  If Peggy Young had been forced into arbitration as Felicia Allen and Nicole Mitchell were, , that policy change likely never would have come.

Laws like the Pregnancy Discrimination Act vindicate critically important societal goals.  Their  proper interpretation should be decided in the full sunlight of the courtroom—not in a secret corporate tribunal.

Today, we stand with Peggy Young, and we hope that the Supreme Court will reverse its recent trend of hostility to working women.  In the long term, though, we know that protecting Peggy Young and all who face discrimination at work will require reversing the Supreme Court’s decisions upholding forced arbitration under virtually any circumstances.

Everyone who cares about fair, discrimination-free workplaces should join us in our campaign to do just that.

 Hear Michelle Schwartz discuss these issues on WBAI’s Julianna Forlano Show

By Trevor Boeckmann
AFJ Dorot Fellow

It’s no surprise to see the majority on the United States Supreme Court siding against consumers, employees, and everyday
Americans. In the past, we’ve told you about the Court upholding forced arbitration clauses that keep those harmed by big businesses out of court, preventing women from banding together to stop employment discrimination, and allowing employers to impose their religious views on employees.

At some point, one would think the majority would start to feel bad about how their actions affect us. Apparently not.

This week, the Court heard oral arguments in a case involving health insurance for retirees.  M&G Polymers USA, LLC v. Tackett involves a chemical company in West Virginia that had a series of collective bargaining agreements with its employees’ union. At issue was a clause in the agreement that said retired employees “will receive a full company contribution towards the cost of [health] benefits.” The union argued the benefits were guaranteed for life. The company argued it could take away these benefits whenever it chose—which it did in 2007.

As Professors Susan Cancelosi and Charlotte Garden wrote in a previous post: “The equitable case for retirees is compelling: they devoted their working lives to their employer with the expectation that they would then have health insurance to see them through their retirement.” Compelling, unless you’re Justice Antonin Scalia.

During oral argument, Justice Scalia mused:

 You know, the nice thing about a contract case of this sort is you can’t feel bad about it.  Whoever loses deserves to lose. I mean, this thing [the duration of the health benefits] is obviously an important feature.  Both sides knew it was left unaddressed, so, you know, whoever loses deserves to lose for casting this upon us when it could have been said very clearly in the contract.  Such an important feature.  So I hope we’ll get it right, but, you know, I can’t feel bad about it.

 Justice Stephen Breyer was quick to disagree:

Well, you know, the workers who discover they’ve been retired for five years and don’t have any health benefits might feel a little bad about it.

Listen to the comments of Justice Scalia and Justice Breyer:

This is nothing new for Justice Scalia.  Last year, he referred to the Voting Rights Acts as a “perpetuation of racial entitlement.”

And if the majority sides with the chemical company, that won’t be anything new either.

By Prof. Susan Cancelosi & Prof. Charlotte Garden

 

On Monday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in M&G Polymers v. Tackett, a potential landmark case for retired workers who rely on their former employers for health insurance. A ruling in favor of the chemical company M&G could open the door for many other employers to walk away from decades-old commitments to workers, forcing countless retirees to find new ways to obtain needed healthcare.

The case asks how courts should interpret union collective bargaining agreements that require employers to provide retiree health insurance. In the early 1990s, M&G negotiated with its unionized workforce and agreed to pay for retiree health benefits. Today, M&G argues that its commitment expired at the end of the contract term, and that it is accordingly free to cut or eliminate benefits. M&G’s retirees—like hundreds of thousands of other union retirees who have faced similar claims—argue that the company’s commitment was intended to last their lifetimes.

The equitable case for retirees is compelling: they devoted their working lives to their employer with the expectation that they would then have health insurance to see them through their retirement.Unfortunately, though, their collective bargaining agreement did not state clearly how long their health benefits would last, opening the door to M&G’s argument that benefits were to last only until the contract expired. Still, the lower court ruled for the retirees, ordering that their health insurance be continued without changes.

Now, M&G wants the U.S. Supreme Court to adopt a rule that bargained-for retiree health benefits are not guaranteed for life unless an agreement contains unequivocally clear language—a deviation from standard contract interpretation principles. The company argues that its proposed rule captures the likely intent of most employers that signed collective bargaining agreements offering health insurance to retirees. As the argument goes, healthcare costs are so expensive and unpredictable that no rational employer would ever agree to be on the hook for a retiree’s lifetime.  At oral argument, Justice Alito nodded to this argument when he asked the following question:  “This is an important benefit and an expensive one.  Why is it that in this collective bargaining agreement and apparently many others . . . there isn’t anything explicit [about whether benefits are vested] one way or the other?”

The problem with M&G’s position (and with the premise to Justice Alito’s question) is that it ignores history. Decades ago, when employers and unions negotiated the terms of most retiree health plans, these benefits were cheap. It may seem impossible today, but some insurance companies actually once offered retiree coverage to employers as a “freebie” to win contracts to cover active workers. That meant employers could use lifetime retiree health insurance as a low-cost bargaining chip to trade in negotiations with strong unions.

That was then; this is now. Skyrocketing health costs have transformed those formerly low-cost benefits into major financial obligations, and benefits that were once easy to give now seem out of reach. One can understand why companies today regret their promises of the past. But regret does not void a contract.

As the Supreme Court considers this important case, we hope the Justices look at the historical context of these agreements, rather than viewing them through the lens of what an employer might be willing to agree to today. A ruling making it easier for companies to reduce or cancel retiree health benefits would prioritize companies over their former workers, who negotiated and relied on their employer’s promises for the future. Retirees deserve better.

Susan Cancelosi and Charlotte Garden are law professors at Wayne State University Law School and Seattle University School of Law, respectively.  They filed an amicus brief in M&G Polymers USA, LLC v. Tackett in support of the retirees, on behalf of 34 labor and employee benefits legal scholars.

 

Ever been ripped off by a big bank?  Were you charged fees you never expected?  Were you misled about the terms of a loan?

   If so, you may have a tough time standing up for your rights in court.  That’s because many big banks have buried forced arbitration agreements in the fine print of their customer contracts.  As we explain in our short documentary, Lost in the Fine Print, if the bank has a forced arbitration clause you can’t take the bank to court.  Instead, you have to go to an arbitrator effectively chosen by the bank itself.

One study found when consumers go up against businesses in arbitration, the business wins 94 percent of the time.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has the power to ban forced arbitration in contracts for consumer financial products, including banking services.   It is expected to issue a report on the issue next year.

But we’re not waiting.  We’ve joined with other activist and consumer groups to demand that five big Wall Street banks drop their forced arbitration clauses.  Want to join us?  Click here to sign our petition.

If we don’t stop them, the practice of forced arbitration will only spread.  And you can take that to the bank.

Sign the petition

It’s not just banks: See who else uses forced arbitration and tell them to stop, too

Find out more about forced arbitration

Good thing the Federal Trade Commission is acting, because forced arbitration prevents consumers from effectively fighting for themselves.

Have you been “throttled” by AT&T?  

According to the Federal Trade Commission, since 2011 it’s happened more than 25 million times, affecting 3.5 million customers.

Throttling refers to slowing down your internet connection when you use more data than your provider wants you to use, whether for email, streaming video or anything else.

The FTC alleges AT&T throttled customers who pay $30 a month for data plans that AT&T calls unlimited – in some cases slowing their internet speeds by up to 90 percent. AT&T says it told its customers they could be throttled.  The company says it put notices in bills (and who doesn’t read every word of their cell phone bill)?  They also claim to have sent emails and text messages to customers on the verge of being throttled. But, according to The New York Times:

While AT&T said that customers were notified by text message before the program was put into effect, the commission said that “most unlimited mobile data plan customers have never been sent a text message or email” about it.

 And, as The Washington Post reports:

 The FTC found in its investigation that AT&T was aware that consumers saw throttling as inconsistent with promises of “unlimited” data. When the company explained the concept to focus groups, the FTC reported in its suit, customers grew upset. The company’s own researchers then urged AT&T’s marketers that “saying less is more” when it comes to selling such services. …

 “AT&T promised its customers ‘unlimited’ data, and in many instances, it has failed to deliver on that promise,” said [FTC chairwoman Edith] Ramirez in a statement. “The issue here is simple: ‘unlimited’ means unlimited.”

 And, the Post reports, this is not the first time AT&T has come under scrutiny from the FTC.  In addition to “throttling,” the company also has been accused of “cramming” :

 AT&T is also paying $105 million to settle charges from this month that it loaded consumers’ wireless bills with bogus third-party fees without their consent. Those fees, according to the FTC and the [Federal Communications Commission], added “hundreds of millions of dollars” to AT&T’s bottom line over a five-year period and misled customers into thinking that they were being charged for AT&T’s own services.

Since becoming FTC chairwoman a year ago, Ramirez has won high marks from consumer advocates.  But the rights of consumers should not be dependent on who happens to be running a government agency – when an agency has the power to act at all.  Consumers should be able to band together and fight for their rights in court.

But when it comes to AT&T, they can’t.  That’s because AT&T has something else in the fine print, along with the notice about throttling: AT&T has a forced arbitration clause – the kind of clause we take on in our 20-minute documentary Lost in the Fine Print.

Indeed, AT&T has a notorious place in the annals of forced arbitration.  When customers were charged more than $30.00 each for phones AT&T said would be free, they tried to band together to sue the company.  AT&T appealed all the way to the Supreme Court.  In a decision written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the five-member conservative majority ruled that AT&Ts forced arbitration clause shut the customers out of court.

So now that AT&T is at it again, victims of throttling can’t come together to stand up for their rights in court.  Instead they have to go one at a time to an arbitrator essentially chosen by AT&T, or they can go, again one at a time, to small claims court.  One person actually did that.   It took a lot of time and effort.  And though he got a refund on part of his bill, even then he couldn’t stop AT&T from continuing to throttle him.

The other 3,499,999 customers allegedly throttled by AT&T shouldn’t have to do the same in order to get justice.

So please go to www.lostinthefineprint.org and click on the “Take Action” link.  It will take you to a page where you can demand that AT&T – and other companies you deal with that use forced arbitration – remove those clauses from their terms of service.

Watch Lost in the Fine Print and take action

Watch this story about AT&T and throttling from NBC Nightly News: 

By Kasey Burton
Extern, National Employment Lawyers Association

On October 8, I attended the oral argument at the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc. v. Busk. The issue before the Court is whether employees should be paid for time they spend, after their shifts are over, waiting to complete a mandatory security screening used to see if the employees are trying to steal anything. Workers at Amazon.com warehouses, employed by Integrity Staffing, are required to undergo a mandatory search of their body and belongings before being permitted to leave the facility. The search, which is similar to that conducted at airports, requires employees to empty their pockets, have their bags searched, and walk through a metal detector. Long lines often form at the screening stations, requiring workers to wait up to 25 minutes before they can leave the premises.

Although this case will address the specific issue of whether warehouse employees must be compensated for anti-theft inspection of their person and belongings and the waiting time involved, the impact of the Court’s decision will likely be far broader. As counsel for the workers Mark R. Thierman said, this is about Integrity Staffing’s attempt to push the line of compensation to encompass less and less. (The workers are also represented by Professor Eric Schnapper, University of Washington School of Law.)

Counsel for Integrity Staffing Paul D. Clement characterized the wait time as simply a “logical part of the egress process” that did not merit compensation. He argued that the Portal-to-Portal Act of 1947, which amended the Fair Labor Standards Act, requires the screening to be an “integral and indispensable” component of the workers’ “principal activities” in order to mandate compensation under the law. Clement repeatedly asserted that the screenings were in no way “integral and indispensable” to the work the employees performed. He compared the screening to checking out at the end of the workday—an activity for which employees are not compensated.

Curtis E. Gannon, Assistant to the Solicitor General, arguing for the government, agreed. He urged the Court to find that the screening failed to rise to the level of compensable activity. When pressed by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg for an example of how invasive a security screening had to be before it could be compensable, Gannon stumbled, eventually capitulated, and stated that he could not provide a specific example of when a screening would cross the line into compensable territory.

Thierman reframed the discussion, distilling the Court’s inquiry to two questions: Is it work? If it is work, is it a “principal activity” requiring compensation? Although Justice Samuel Alito chastised Thierman for failing to argue whether the screenings were “integral and indispensable” to the employees’ work of packing and shipping merchandise, Thierman persevered, picking up steam as he continued. He focused his argument on the practical realities of the security screenings, arguing that they went far beyond a basic check-out process. He explained that had the employees been required to remain at their workstations for screeners to inspect them, the time would certainly be compensable. The warehouse workers, he explained, are “engaged to wait.” Because they are required to wait for up to 25 minutes each workday to be screened, he argued, they must be compensated for their time.

The Justices, based on their questions and comments, appeared to be split along predictable lines, with Justice Anthony Kennedy’s vote hanging in the balance. The conservative justices appeared concerned with the abstractions of the law, while the liberal justices aimed to reconcile the law with the practical realities of the retail workplace in the 21st Century. Justice Elena Kagan focused her questioning on the anti-theft nature of the screenings, categorizing the screening procedure as inventory control. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked about what appeared to be the intentional shortage of screening staff that, as she noted, shifted the cost of conducting the screenings onto the employees who were forced to wait. Justices John Roberts and Antonin Scalia both insisted that a “principal activity” could not include going through a security screening, because a “principal activity” must be an important, central function of the job.

Justice Kagan asked one of the more interesting questions, positing a hypothetical based on real life. She said that there was a judge years ago in New York who required his law clerks to arrive early every workday to cut up his grapefruit and make his breakfast. She wondered whether the government thought that was compensable time. Gannon had to concede that it was.

Kasey Burton is a third year law student at the University of Washington School of Law, in Seattle. She is externing at the National Employment Lawyers Association, an AFJ member organization, which filed an amicus brief in this case. 

The latest news about the corporation with religious rights takes  irony to new heights

By Michelle D. Schwartz
AFJ Director of Justice Programs

Justice Ginsburg’s masterful dissent in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. begins with this chilling sentence:

In a decision of startling breadth, the Court holds that commercial enterprises, including corporations, along with partnerships and sole proprietorships, can opt out of any law (saving only tax laws) they judge incompatible with their sincerely held religious beliefs. 

When I read that line, two words immediately came to mind:  forced arbitration.

Except that in the forced arbitration context, you could end that sentence after the phrase “can opt out of any law.”  Full stop.

The Supreme Court has already held, in decision after decision, that commercial enterprises can opt out of virtually any federal or state law merely by inserting a few words into the fine print of their contracts and online terms of service.

President Obama understands how harmful this is.  Today, he plans to sign an executive order barring companies seeking government contracts from forcing their employees into arbitration over civil rights or sexual harassment claims.

Of course, Hobby Lobby isn’t likely to be pursuing government contracts.  So the company will be able to continue to impose forced arbitration on its employees.

More on that below, but first, a quick review of what forced arbitration is all about (for more, check out AFJ’s page on the subject):  Every day, when you use Instagram, buy a cell phone, use a Microsoft product, get a credit card, and generally live in the 21^st Century, you are forced to sign away your constitutional rights.  We’re all familiar with the “click-through contracts” to which we’re frequently asked to consent without any opportunity to negotiate.  Today, an increasing number of those contracts in the consumer context and even in the employment realm include, in the fine print, a requirement that any dispute with that corporation be resolved not in the courtroom, but in a private, rigged system called forced arbitration.

What’s so bad about forced arbitration?  The decision-maker is chosen and paid for by the corporation that harmed you—not surprisingly, a study found that an arbitration firm ruled for the company 93.8 percent of the time.  The normal rules of evidence don’t apply.  No appeal is possible.  And everything is done in secret, so wrongdoing doesn’t get exposed and stopped.

Yet the Supreme Court has held that companies’ right to force their customers and employees into arbitration trumps not only the Seventh Amendment right to trial by jury, but all manner of rights guaranteed under federal and state laws.  Sound familiar?

In short, forced arbitration is a get-out-of-jail-free card for corporations that puts such hallowed laws as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, and the Equal Pay Act at risk.  So if your employer harasses you at work because you’re an African American, your employer pays you less because you’re a woman, or you get fired because of your age, you could be forced out of court—and forced to grin and bear it.

And so, ever since the Hobby Lobby decision came down just over a month ago, I’ve been telling anyone who would listen about the similarities between Hobby Lobby and forced arbitration.  And then things came full circle.  Earlier this week, RH Reality Check reported that Hobby Lobby itself has a forced arbitration clause in its employment contract.

Hobby Lobby’s clause came to light after it allegedly fired employee Felicia Allen when she tried to take unpaid leave for her pregnancy.  Then Hobby Lobby tried to prevent the employee from receiving unemployment compensation.  That hardly sounds like the company that argued not only that its owners’ religious beliefs prohibited them from providing insurance coverage for certain kinds of birth control, but also that those beliefs compelled it to provide health insurance for its employees.

It gets worse.  When Allen tried to sue Hobby Lobby for discriminating against her based on her pregnancy, she learned that Hobby Lobby had a forced arbitration clause.  Allen’s lawyers refused to take her case after they learned of the forced arbitration clause and she—like so many other American consumers and employees—was left out in the cold.

Hobby Lobby could take its case all the way to the Supreme Court, but its employee couldn’t even get through the courthouse doors.

If you’re like me, you’re mad as hell about the Hobby Lobby decision.  And if you’re mad about Hobby Lobby, you should also be furious about forced arbitration and take action to support the solution, the Arbitration Fairness Act.

 

From AFJ President Nan Aron’s latest column in The Huffington Post:

This is a very bad time for American women in the Supreme Court.

Three big cases were decided right at the end of its term that will profoundly affect women’s lives, subject them to conditions that are never applied to men, and damage their ability to control their own lives and health.

In McCullen v. Coakley, the Court in a “faux-nanimous” decision in which the four moderate-liberals clearly played defense, found that a 35-foot buffer zone around the entrance to abortion clinics in Massachusetts was a violation of the First Amendment. The Commonwealth had established the zones in reaction to the brutal murder of two people at a Boston clinic in 1994 and the endless harassment of women and their families attempting to enter reproductive health clinics.

But Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the Court, swept aside reality, superimposed his own view of what happens outside clinics, and somehow found that so-called “sidewalk counselors” need to be protected more than the people who work at or make use of the clinics.

Read the full column here

By Adam Sonfield
Senior Public Policy Associate, Guttmacher Institute

 

Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores on June 30 has already been the subject of reams and megabytes of analysis, speculation and rhetoric. You have undoubtedly read about how the majority’s decision, written by Justice Samuel Alito, allows closely held for-profit corporations—such as Oklahoma-based arts and crafts chain Hobby Lobby and Pennsylvania-based furniture manufacturer Conestoga Wood Specialties—to exclude coverage of certain contraceptive methods to which they have religious objections from the health insurance plans they sponsor for their employees and their family members, undermining a well-known requirement of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).  And you have surely read about the concerns—raised in dissent by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and commented on by the federal government and countless outside observers—that granting corporations religious rights that can let them ignore laws that apply to other companies could have a host of negative consequences for workers, customers and society.

(I have written here before about many of the key facts behind this case, including the benefits of contraceptive use for women and families and the importance of covering the full range of contraceptive methods and services without out-of-pocket costs, such as copayments or deductibles.)

As with many important Supreme Court rulings, this one raises far more questions than it answers.  Here are some of the most important of those questions: Read more

By Gretchen Borchelt
Senior Counsel and Director of State Reproductive Health Policy, National Women’s Law Center

The majority opinion in Hobby Lobby erases women from the picture altogether.  In a decision that is squarely about women’s health and equality, the male justices in the majority refuse to acknowledge the centrality of women.  And in evidencing greater concern for protecting corporations from discrimination than in protecting women from discrimination, the majority opinion creates a hierarchy of discrimination where women are at the bottom (if they even merit consideration at all).

To begin with, Justice Alito’s opinion for the majority barely mentions women.  As the Washington Post reported, the opinion uses the word “women” or “woman” a mere 13 times in 49 pages.  Closer reading of the majority decision makes clear that seven of those mentions were either because the majority was refuting Justice Ginsburg (and her use of “women”); summarizing the government’s position (and its use of “women”) or describing the birth control coverage requirement (a simple recitation of fact).

That leaves precisely six instances in which the majority—on its own—mentioned the word “women.”  There are two possible explanations.  Both are troubling.

One is that the majority purposely, as a legal and literary strategy, left out “women”—the better to hide the actual women whose rights are at stake behind asserted concerns about religious freedom.  Alternately, it was unintentional, but nevertheless the result of an unacknowledged but deep-seated and culturally-reinforced worldview that just does not take women into account.

Either way, women’s literal absence from the majority opinion highlights how this decision furthers legal doctrine that denigrates and erases women’s reproductive health and rights and recognizes certain forms of discrimination while dismissing others.

The majority opinion does this in a two-step process.  The first is by treating birth control as different and less worthy of health coverage than other basic preventive health care services.  This is clear in a passage that negatively compares the birth control coverage requirement to other coverage requirements like immunizations.  Legal requirements to provide these other health care services are not automatically invalidated by this decision because, the majority explains, they “may be supported by different interests (for example, the need to combat the spread of infectious diseases).”  In other words, the majority is saying, birth control is not like those other good, valuable preventive services that actually help people live better, healthier lives.

The majority opinion also merely assumes, for the sake of argument, that the interests served by the birth control coverage requirement—namely promoting public health and gender equality— are compelling and satisfy that prong of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act test.  In making an assumption rather than delving into the analysis, the justices in the majority get to avoid any discussion of the benefits of birth control to women, including its place alongside immunizations in promoting public health and its value in furthering women’s equality by addressing discrimination in health care and promoting women’s social and economic opportunities.  In fact, the majority opinion puts these interests in quotations, suggesting that they are questionable or invalid (believe me, they are not).

By setting up birth control as separate and less valuable than other health care needs, the majority opinion sets the stage for step two: creating a hierarchy of discrimination with women at the bottom.

The justices in the majority are very concerned about discrimination, but only when it appears to harm for-profit corporations.  The majority opinion paints a picture of for-profit corporations that are trying to operate according to religious beliefs, but are threatened by discrimination at every turn.  Focusing on the need to protect these corporations allows the majority to ignore the other harm that is at issue in the case: discrimination against women.

If birth control does not really promote public health, then it doesn’t matter if taking the benefit from these female employees means more unintended pregnancies.  If requiring insurance plans to cover birth control isn’t acknowledged to close gender gaps in health care, then it doesn’t matter if only female employees lose a health insurance benefit that they earned with their work.  If gender equality is not a real result of birth control access, then there is no need to consider whether women are forced to give up educational or career opportunities.  If birth control is not directly linked to a woman’s health and the course of her life, then sex discrimination deserves no attention by the majority.  And so it gets none.

The bottom line for the majority is that when discrimination against women is tied to their reproductive health, it is different from other forms of discrimination and consequently less important.  In this case, it is certainly less important to the majority than protecting for-profit corporations—which the majority decided, for the first time, can exercise religion—from asserted religious discrimination.  That justifies the decision’s final conclusion: it is not just acceptable but legally required that the religious beliefs of bosses are allowed to trump a woman’s health and access to the health care she needs.

Read Gretchen Borchelt’s previous Guest Blog about these cases.

Read all of our blog posts on these cases

Read AFJ’s overview of the cases

Monday’s Supreme Court decisions in Hobby Lobby and Harris v. Quinn threaten women’s right to participate equally in the workplace

By Michelle D. Schwartz,
AFJ Director of Justice Programs

It’s probably fair to speculate that the vast majority of the 60,000 SCOTUSblog readers Monday morning were there to see what happened in Hobby Lobby—the Affordable Care Act contraception case—and that most casual Supreme Court observers have at most a passing awareness that the Court also decided a major union case, Harris v. Quinn.  There are many reasons why we all should pay attention to Harris v. Quinn, but here I will focus on just one that is at the heart of both Hobby Lobby and Harris:  In both cases, a majority of five men led by Justice Alito put at risk women’s ability to participate fully and equally in the modern American workforce.

 

The availability, accessibility, and affordability of contraceptive care are critical to women’s ability to excel and compete in the workplace.  Planned Parenthood has demonstrated that birth control has led to dramatically increased workplace participation, higher college graduation rates, and better wages for women.  Furthermore, contraceptive coverage is a benefit women have earned—and paid for.  As Gretchen Borchelt of the National Women’s Law Center wrote on this page in March:

[I]t’s actually women workers who are paying for this benefit.  Health insurance is part of an employee’s compensation—women pay with their labor and through the premium they contribute for their health insurance.  A woman worker is entitled to all of the preventive services without cost-sharing, as guaranteed by the law.  She deserves to be able to meet her health care needs through her regular insurance plan, just as she accesses other health care benefits, and just as men are able to access the health care they need. This critical health care service—which 99% of women have used at one point in their lives—should not be carved out just because her employer objects to it. Read more

 The computer giant is trying to force us into forced arbitration

Microsoft, the company that gave us Vista, Ctrl-Alt-Delete and Clippy, has something in store for us that’s even worse.  The company has been phasing in forced arbitration clauses in its “services agreement.”

That means if you are harmed by a Microsoft product or service, you can’t stand up for your rights in court.  Instead, you have to take your case to an arbitrator hired by Microsoft.  Arbitrators do not need to be lawyers or follow precedent, yet their word is nearly always final and unappealable.  One study found that such arbitrators rule for the businesses that hire them 94 percent of the time.

Microsoft also won’t let you band together with others the company has wronged and bring a class-action suit – often the only way to stop a corporation from cheating millions of consumers.  The latest version of the services agreement makes this ban even more strict.

One can see why Microsoft might be fond of forced arbitration.  In a 2003 e-mail, company founder Bill Gates used the following terms to describe what it was like to use one of his own products:

 disappointed, backwards, unusable, totally confusing, strange, pathetic, completely odd, weird, scary, crazy, slow, garbage, not usable, crapped up, crap, absolute mess, craziness, terrible.

Microsoft joins a lengthening list of big businesses that are taking away our rights when we’re harmed by their products and services.  Public outrage forced General Mills to back down.  But odds are you’ve clicked through at least one contract with a forced arbitration clause in the fine print. They are showing up everywhere, from credit card contracts to the Instagram terms of use.  And in the case of Microsoft, using one of the affected products means you’ve consented to surrendering your rights.

Perhaps the best indicator of just how bad a deal forced arbitration is for consumers is the sneaky way big businesses force it on us.

Take Microsoft’s latest email announcing the changes.  “Our users’ needs are at the center of everything we do,” says the happy little email. “That’s why we are updating the Microsoft Services Agreement.”  But there’s no mention of forced arbitration in the email itself.  And there’s no mention of it in the FAQ that supposedly offers the “highlights.”

No, you have to click on the link to the fine print and scroll down to Section 10 before you find out what Microsoft is taking away.  If forced arbitration is so great, why does it have to be forced?  Why not offer it on a voluntary basis?  And why aren’t companies bragging about it instead of tucking it away in those long, long “agreements” that few of us have the time to read?

There is a solution.  The Arbitration Fairness Act would put an end to these outrages.  If you don’t want your rights “clipped” by the company that gave us Clippy – or by all the other corporations on the forced arbitration bandwagon – tell your Members of Congress to pass the Arbitration Fairness Act.

 Read more about forced arbitration

“Forced arbitration” undermines
our civil rights laws

By Michelle D. Schwartz
AFJ Director of Justice Programs

When I was a teenager, I spent two summers working as a counselor at a day camp in suburban New Jersey.  Toward the end of the second summer, I received an offer to return the following year.  Later that day, I happened to be chatting with a friend who had similarly received an offer to return—for several hundred dollars more.

We had both worked at the camp for two summers, held the same job, were the exact same age and at the exact same educational level, and were well-liked and recognized as hard workers.

The only difference?  He’s a man.

I was angry, but I was left with little recourse other than fuming.  That’s because my terms of employment forbade me from discussing my salary with anyone.  So did my friend’s—so my speaking up could get him in trouble as well.  So I stayed quiet, and I chose to pursue different opportunities the following summer.

For most American women, pay discrimination is far more insidious.  American women make, on average, 77 cents for every dollar men make.  That wage gap means that the average American woman had to keep working until today—April 8, 2014—just to earn what a man made in 2013.  And it means that women—often the sole or primary breadwinners—have less ability to provide for themselves and their families.

Yet just as they could half my lifetime ago, employers today can and do prevent their employees from, and penalize their employees for, discussing their pay with coworkers.  As a result, it is often virtually impossible for women to learn that they’re being discriminated against.  And, on the off chance women do learn such information, it’s even harder for them to fight back.

Today, President Obama is signing an Executive Order that would prohibit government contractors from retaliating against their employees for simply discussing their pay with one another.  And the Senate this week will vote on the Paycheck Fairness Act, which, among other things, would extend that anti-retaliation rule to all employers.  Those are both important steps that Alliance for Justice strongly supports.

But as long as employers are permitted to opt out of federal laws through forced arbitration, the promise of equal pay will never be fully realized.

Increasingly, employment and consumer contracts include fine print that forces Americans to sign away their right to go to court—and instead directs them into arbitration, a system of privatized dispute resolution that is rigged to benefit corporations.

A series of bad Supreme Court decisions has upheld forced arbitration even where it means that workers, consumers, and even small businesses have no way of vindicating rights enshrined in landmark federal laws.  Laws put at risk include Title VII, the Equal Pay Act, and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

Recently, the Oakland Raiderettes fell down the forced arbitration rabbit hole when they brought a suit seeking fair pay.

 

As AFJ President Nan Aron wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle:

The Raiderette cheerleaders are trying to sue the Raiders because they’re paid only $125 per game and even that money is withheld until the end of the season. But the Raiders may be able to intercept the suit before it ever gets to court. The cheerleader contract has a forced arbitration clause requiring them to take their dispute to – seriously – the commissioner of the National Football League.

Fortunately, there is a way to protect the gains we’ve made—and any more that are yet to come.  It’s called the Arbitration Fairness Act, and it would ban forced arbitration in consumer, employment, and civil rights disputes.

On this Equal Pay Day, let’s celebrate the President’s executive action, fight for the Paycheck Fairness Act, and urge our representatives to pass the Arbitration Fairness Act without delay.

Read more about Equal Pay Day

A proposed FDA rule responds to the Supreme Court’s disturbing decision in Pliva v. Mensing

By Erika K. Duthely, AFJ Dorot Fellow

Imagine this: your doctor prescribes you a drug. You head to your local pharmacy to have your prescription filled and the pharmacist offers you the generic version at a much lower price. He assures you that the drug is identical, except in name. But thanks to a federal regulation and a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, in exchange for the lower price, you may be giving away your right to sue if the label didn’t warn you about potential hazards and something went terribly wrong.

Simply because the drug is a generic, the manufacturer could be shielded from liability for an inadequate warning on the label.

Here’s the problem.  If the manufacturer of a brand name drug discovers new side effects after it’s on the market, the manufacturer has the right, indeed the obligation, to change the label.  But generic drug manufacturers can’t change their labels until the brand name manufacturer acts.  And once a drug is manufactured generically, the brand name manufacturer often leaves the market – and so is not looking for potential new side effects.

The tragic consequences are illustrated in this portion of AFJ’s brief documentary, Unequal Justice:

We are deeply saddened to report that early in 2013, a few months after her ninth surgery, Camille Baruch, who is featured in this video, died. The cause of death is not yet known, but her mother notes that Camille’s immune system was compromised by the drugs she had to take as a result of the illnesses described in the video. Ms. Baruch was 19.

In order to address this problem, the Food and Drug Administration recently released a proposed rule that would allow manufacturers of generic drugs to update label information more quickly once new health and safety information becomes available.  Alliance for Justice joined with the Center for Justice and Democracy (CJD) and a number of other groups in submitting comments in support of the FDA’s proposed rule.

As the comments we submitted state, as things stand now:

a generic drug manufacturer [can] maintain a label even if it knows that label to be inaccurate and out-of-date. In addition to raising serious safety concerns, the current regulations have had severe legal consequences for patients harmed as a result of unsafe generic drug labels.

Those severe legal consequences stem from the Supreme Court’s 2011 decision in PLIVA, Inc. v. Mensing (the case discussed in our video) where, as our comments state,

[T]he U.S. Supreme Court immunized the generic drug industry for marketing drugs with labels they know to be inaccurate and out-of-date because current regulations prevent generic companies from independently changing drug labels.

As Alliance for Justice has previously noted, the dissenters in PLIVA “identified three ‘absurd consequences’ that will result from the Court’s decision.”

First, generic drug consumers will have no access to compensation when they are injured by inadequate warnings.  This creates an “arbitrary distinction” between brand-name and generic-drug consumers that Congress did not intend to create.  As a result of this decision and the 2009 Wyeth decision, the majority concedes that a consumer’s ability to seek compensation for injuries depends on whether a pharmacist fills a prescription with the brand-name or generic version of a drug.  Many states allow pharmacists to unilaterally make such substitutions.  Second, generic-drug manufacturers will no longer have the same state-law incentives to monitor and disclose safety risks that brand-name manufacturers have.  As the dissent observed, “brand-name manufacturers often leave the market once generic versions are available, meaning that there will be no manufacturers subject to failure-to-warn liability.”  Third, the decision undercuts the goals of the Hatch-Waxman Amendments to increase the consumption of less expensive generic drugs.  Doctors will be more hesitant to prescribe generic drugs and patients will be less likely to take them because generic-drug manufacturers will now face weaker safety incentives.

According to the FDA, PLIVA “alters the incentives for generic drug manufacturers to comply with current requirements to conduct robust postmarketing surveillance, evaluation, and reporting, and to ensure that the labeling for their drugs is accurate and up-to-date.”

As our comments state, this proposed rule is necessary because it “would ‘create parity’ between brand name and generic drug companies to independently ensure safe product labels. American patients and prescribing physicians deserve no less.”

We urge the  the FDA to implement this rule—and restore justice for generic drug consumers—without delay.

Find out more about  PLIVA v. Mensing here.

 

By Michelle D. Schwartz
AFJ Director of Justice Programs

» The AFJ report discussed in this post is available here.

>>Analyisis of oral arguments using excerpts from Court audio is available here. 

Yesterday morning, I was privileged to attend Supreme Court oral arguments in Halliburton Co. v. Erica P. John Fund, Inc.

This is the case where Halliburton is asking the Supreme Court to overturn a 26-year old precedent in order to make it infinitely more difficult for shareholders to stand up for their rights  in court against corporations that have defrauded them out of their hard-earned money.  Halliburton itself is accused by plaintiffs, led by an organization supporting the charitable work of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, of making material misrepresentations to its investors on such issues as its asbestos liability, causing losses to those investors.

As Alliance for Justice noted in our new report, “Halliburton at the Supreme Court:  What’s at Stake in Halliburton, Inc. v. Erica P. John Fund,” if the Supreme Court rules the way Halliburton is asking it to, “In many instances, it would essentially be giving businesses like Halliburton a ‘get out of jail free’ card to defraud their own shareholders without consequence.” Read more

By Abby Bar-Lev, AFJ Dorot Fellow

As Thanksgiving approaches, we here at AFJ know that it can sometimes be a struggle to spark interesting conversation with the extended family and family friends who  gather around the dinner table.  But what is the one sure crowd-pleasing conversation topic?  The Supreme Court, of course! (What else would you talk about?) So, to make the conversation a bit easier (if not a bit lighter), consider this post to be a “tip sheet” on what has been happening at the Supreme Court since the last big family gathering.  Go ahead, we dare you to not be the life of the party with these snippets in your conversational pocket!  No need to thank us; we can feel the gratitude.

Beginning with a Blockbuster:  In the Supreme Court’s very first week, it heard oral arguments in one of the year’s most divisive cases, McCutcheon v. FEC, a campaign finance reform case that challenges the constitutionality of aggregate individual campaign contributions.  Some are worried that McCutcheon represents a “sequel” to Citizens United, in which the Supreme Court decided that corporations have a First Amendment right to free speech in giving unlimited funds for independent spending in candidate elections.  Others draw a distinction between the two cases, arguing that there is a significant difference between the issue in Citizens United about limitations on independent campaign spending by corporations, and McCutcheon, which deals with direct individual aggregate contributions to campaigns and political committees.  The Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the case and probably will not do so until early summer, so all we can do now is guess.

Rights of the Accused:  The Supreme Court has already heard several cases this term involving defendants’ rights in criminal trials:

• In one of them, Burt v. Titlow, the Court has handed down a decision.  The issue in Titlow revolved around a defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel.  In this case, the defendant had negotiated a plea deal with her attorney, then hired a new attorney.  That new attorney advised the defendant to withdraw her plea before investigating the case at all.  Consequently, the defendant received the longer prison sentence for murder rather than what would have been a shorter sentence with the originally-negotiated plea deal.  The Sixth Circuit found that the second attorney violated the defendant’s constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel.  The Supreme Court unanimously overruled the Sixth Circuit’s decision,  finding that the Sixth Circuit applied the wrong standard of review and improperly “assum[ed]” ineffectiveness from a fact record that did not support that claim.
• Earlier this month the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Burrage v. United States, a case asking whether a defendant drug dealer can be sentenced to a mandatory minimum of 20 years for “causing” a customer’s death when it is inconclusive that the drug sold by the dealer was the “but-for” cause of the customer’s death.  In a guest blog post for AFJ, criminal defense attorney Steven Nolder argued that merely showing a drug contributed to an individual’s death—rather than proving that the drug sold to the customer actually caused the individual’s death beyond a reasonable doubt— should not be enough to sentence a defendant to a mandatory minimum 20 years in prison.  The Supreme Court has not yet reached a result in Burrage.
• The Supreme Court recently heard arguments in a Fourth Amendment warrantless search and seizure case.  That case, Fernandez v. California, tests the boundaries of law enforcement’s  ability to conduct warrantless searches of an individual’s home after that individual expressly objected.  Currently, if police ask to search someone’s home without a warrant, that individual may refuse to allow the police through the door.  However, a roommate may consent to the search if the individual (whom the police’s actions are targeting) is not at home at the time of the police’s request.  In Fernandez, the defendant did object to a police’s request to conduct a warrantless search of his home.  However, after Fernandez was later arrested, the police returned to his apartment asking to conduct a warrantless search, and Fernandez’s girlfriend allowed the police in to search the apartment.  Was Fernandez’s previous objection enough to ward off a future attempt by the police to search his home in his absence?  Or can police officers return to a home as many “reasonable” times as they want in hopes of finding the individual absent and a consenting roommate present?  If the Supreme Court decides the latter, it would create a powerful loophole for police to conduct warrantless searches of individuals’ homes.

Read more

Our full report on the current term is available here.

Much of the government still may be shut down on Monday, but the Supreme Court will be open for business.  Every year, the first Monday in October ushers in a new Supreme Court term, during which the nine justices of the Supreme Court will decide critical constitutional and statutory questions that will shape the future of our rights and our everyday lives.

Last term, the Roberts Court continued its trend of favoring corporate and other powerful interests over those of everyday Americans.  The conservative bloc of five justices shielded generic-drug manufacturers from liability for harm caused by their drugs, curbed  access to justice for consumers by making it more difficult to litigate against big business, and greatly restricted the ability of individuals facing workplace discrimination to bring  claims against their employers.

This term the Court will be deciding issues affecting corporate accountability, abortion rights, racial discrimination, affirmative action, rights of criminal defendants, human rights, separation of powers, separation of church and state, and more.  They will be answering questions like:

• How easily may the police search our homes or our cars?
• What are the rights of the indigent when it comes to effective counsel and fair sentencing?
• What recourse do consumers have when they are harmed by corporations?
• When can people who have been discriminated against seek redress in the courts?

Read more