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Different Countries, Same Homophobia and Transphobia: A Cross-Cultural Survey of So-Called Conversion Therapy Practices and the Move Toward Legislative Protections for the United States LGBTQ+ Community
Get PDFSo-called “conversion therapy” consists of dangerous practices that inflict detrimental, long-lasting effects on its victims. As a form of sexual orientation or gender identity or gender expression change efforts, conversion therapy is fostered by global homophobia and transphobia. Despite formal public rejection and scientific discreditation, conversion therapy providers across the world continue to target LGBTQ+ individuals, predominately under the guise of offering health care services or obeying religious practices. The following piece compares conversion therapy in three countries with recently introduced LGBTQ+ legislation––(1) Ghana; (2) Canada; and (3) the United States (U.S.)–––in order to identify factors furthering conversion therapy and analyze how these factors contribute to, or hinder, national conversion therapy bans. This Note argues that conversion therapy is a pervasive global problem that must be banned through national law, and the proposed U.S. federal legislation banning conversion therapy must be amended to include all forms of conversion therapy practices and exclude religious exemptions
Domestic Terrorism Classification in the United States v. Canada and the United Kingdom
Get PDFFor the past two decades, discourse on terrorism (both global and domestic) has been commonplace throughout the international sphere. Following the attacks on September 11, 2001, many nations have followed suit in launching counterterrorism operations to identify and prevent attacks by both radical groups and lone actors. While the common narrative has focused on “why” terrorist actors commit heinous acts and “how” to best prevent future incidents from emerging, it is important to analyze the legal nuances between prosecuting domestic versus international terrorists. With the rise on “homegrown” domestic lone actors, nations have had to reevaluate and adapt counterterrorism statutes and legal systems to apply to actors who are often unaffiliated with previously identified terrorist organizations. Some nations have been more successful than others. This Note seeks to explore the nuances of the counterterrorism strategies and legal frameworks used to prosecute domestic terrorism of three nations—the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom—and the estimated success rates of these systems
The Development of the American “Security Interest” and its Effect on the International Harmonization of Security Rights
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A Lineage of Family Separation
Get PDFFamily separation is a practice rooted in US history. In order to comprehensively examine the most recent execution of separating children from their parents under the Trump Administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, we need to follow and understand this history. That is what this Article does. Examining the separation histories of enslaved, Indigenous, and immigrant families, it offers critical context of a reoccurring practice that has had devastating effects largely on communities of color, and across generations. By contextualizing the separation of migrant families crossing the US-Mexico border under zero tolerance, this Article identifies narratives that consistently rely on xenophobia and racism to justify a practice that otherwise is extreme in its inhumanity. These justification narratives are juxtaposed with counterstories that resist and challenge the separation of families, including by humanizing those impacted and articulating the profound harm it causes to children, parents, and communities. These stories have been told through first-hand narratives, Congressional testimonies, statistical studies, media reports, and facts and allegations in lawsuits. Systemic change, however, has been elusive. In the case of Indigenous family separation, legislation enacted to cease the practice failed to bring about substantial change and has been diluted by persistent legal challenges. Historical family separation practices against enslaved and immigrant families have been replaced with systems that separate families for prolonged times or permanently. These include the present-day US criminal legal and immigration systems, where the government separates children from their parents on a substantial scale as a collateral consequence of mass incarceration and widespread detention and deportation, with little to no scrutiny. The zero tolerance policy combined deliberate with collateral family separation, as its overall objective was to deter migration but by deliberately separating migrant families to accomplish this goal. The advocacy to put an end to the policy was impressive in its rapid response, historical breadth, and numerical scope. The outrage that ended zero tolerance, however, has not extended to the persisting and pervasive separation of families in the US immigration system generally, and in the US criminal legal system. In an effort to understand why, this Article details the histories of family separation in the United States, identifying the justifications and counternarratives that contributed to their execution, and to their end. In doing so, it highlights reoccurring themes in the justifications for separating children from their parents and, often, communities. It posits that narratives describing the harm caused by separating families are a powerful element of putting the practices to an end. These narratives, however, have emerged successfully in specific socio-political contexts that rendered them compelling enough to overcome the justifications for specific family separation policies throughout US history. The opportunity for narratives to challenge in any significant way how the US immigration and criminal legal systems carry on a practice that constitutes modern family separation has yet to transpire. History shows us that the counterstories urging the valuation of family integrity need to be aligned with a societal will to challenge systems that, through racialized justifications, separate mostly marginalized children from their parents
How the National Labor Relations Board Is Still Failing Marginalized Employees
Get PDFThe protection of employee labor rights to organize unions, collectively bargain with employers, and engage in protected concerted activity is the cornerstone of the National Labor Relations Act. And yet the National Labor Relations Board, which enforces it, often falls short. For decades, the NLRB has at times reinstated employees with backpay despite bigoted abusive conduct they engaged in during labor disputes with their employers. For example, the NLRB has reinstated with backpay employees on a picket line who have targeted marginalized coworkers with racial epithets because the employer hired the latter to end a strike. Historically, the NLRB sometimes reinstated employees who engaged in such bigotry because of how contentious labor disputes often became. Over time, to balance the rights of employees and employers, the NLRB developed setting-specific standards to determine whether an employee’s abusive conduct in different locations, such in the workplace, on social media, or along a picket line, warranted protection under the NLRA. Under that old regime, abusive employee conduct was afforded more protection in certain settings than others to supposedly reflect the heightened contentiousness, for example, on a picket line as opposed to in the workplace. However, in 2020, the NLRB abandoned its multiple setting-specific standards for a single, uniform test to determine if abusive employee conduct lost NLRA protection. Specifically, the NLRB adopted a burden-shifting causation test that effectively removed NLRA protection from bigoted employees if their former employer could persuasively show that it fired them not because of antiunion bias during a labor dispute, but rather for a legitimate business reason. This note argues that, while the NLRB’s recent adoption of a single, uniform test is more protective of marginalized employees in the face of bigoted abusive employee conduct than the old, setting-specific standards, it still falls short by leaving open the possibility that bigoted employees could be reinstated with backpay. Specifically, this note claims that the NLRB is wrong to focus on an employer’s motivation behind adverse action against a bigoted employee when determining if that employee should be reinstated with backpay. Rather, this note posits that the NLRB should hold that bigoted conduct is a per se violation of the NLRA that categorically bars employees who engage in it during labor disputes from reinstatement with backpay. Ultimately, this note argues that the NLRB should center employee harm—not employer motivation—because marginalized employees should never be forced to share the same workplace with coworkers who expose their bigotry during labor disputes, no matter how contentious they may become
The Worst Law in Technology : How the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act Allows Big Businesses to Collect and Sell Your Personal Information
Get PDFFor years, big businesses have been collecting and selling users’ personal information without permission. In attempts at preventing this practice, users have brought civil actions under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), alleging a loss of personal privacy. As currently enacted, “personal privacy” is not included in the statutory definition of loss. Further, courts have been reluctant to interpret the CFAA broadly to cover loss of personal privacy claims. This note proposes that an amendment to the CFAA is necessary to close this gap in the statute’s coverage and better protect users’ right to privacy