The University of Iowa announced on Friday it would pay $6.5 million to settle sexual discrimination lawsuits brought against it by two former employees. Iowa’s longtime senior associate athletic director, Jane Meyer, and her partner, women’s field hockey coach Tracey Griesbaum, filed the suits following Griesbaum’s firing in 2014. Both women cited Griesbaum’s controversial termination
A federal judge approved a $7.5 million class-action settlement against retail giant Wal-Mart, after finding that the company had violated gender discrimination laws by denying spousal benefits to same-sex couples. According to The Boston Globe, the suit was filed on behalf of a New Bedford, MA, woman by the advocacy group GLAD. The Globe notes
Trump’s Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, announced a striking change of policy last Friday concerning how alleged criminals are to be charged with crimes going forward. In a memo Sessions sent to over five thousand federal prosecutors across the country, he instructed them to seek the toughest, longest penalties possible for the most easily proven allegations against each defendant. Critics claim that this is a move aimed at packing jails with nonviolent, low-level drug offenders.
News reporting always seems to concentrate on the things going wrong, doesn’t it? Especially since the 2016 election, there’s been a widespread feeling among Progressives that all we can do is buckle down and resist the worst of the Trump agenda. It’s easy to be discouraged into hopelessness by seeing the scale of the battles ahead of us. However, in communities across the country, individuals and organizations are actively making the world a better place to live. We don’t have to wait until government changes hands again to come up with local solutions that might just work.
A civil rights watchdog filed a lawsuit against controversial Massachusetts Sheriff Thomas Hodgson last Thursday. The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice filed the lawsuit after submitting several requests for information pertaining to the sheriff’s department’s participation in a program with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The program would teach law enforcement officers
Former Los Angeles Sheriff’s Deputy Jan Adams was awarded a $1.275 million in a lawsuit which claims the department had retaliated against her following testimony against colleagues. The LA Times reports the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved the settlement on Tuesday “without comment.” Adams had blown the whistle on colleagues she claimed were
Meyer Wins Equal Rights Whistleblower Lawsuit Against University of Iowa
In certain corners of the Internet, it’s hard to escape the marketing blitz for Hulu’s new miniseries, an adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale. While production of the series began before the 2016 Presidential election, the story of a not-too-distant future where women have lost so many rights, including the right to bodily autonomy, has taken on new relevance in the age of Trump. Speaking in 2012, Atwood described her novel’s reception in the United States as “How long have we got?” Drawing comparisons between Trump’s America and the handmaid’s Gilead may draw a few eyerolls and accusations of pathetic melodrama, but like Neo in the Matrix, take the red pill and follow me.
New York City settled a lawsuit brought against its infamous Rikers Island facility on Monday, just over a month after Mayor Bill de Blaisio vowed to close the notorious jail. The settlement awarded an undisclosed amount of money to two women who claim they were repeatedly raped by a guard. The duo, both of whom
A Delaware school district changed its search and seizure policy in response to a parent’s lawsuit. In 2015, Brandywine High School junior Joe Wahl suffered from an unfortunate case of mistaken identity. Mixed up with another student, the boy was told to hand over his backpack for inspection. When administrators dug through the bag, apparently