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Critical Race Theory and the Low-Wage Workplace: The Story of Janitorial Services in California
Get PDFCritical race and racial capitalism theories posit that systems and structures in the workplace reinforce each other to create oppressive conditions for groups of workers based on race, national origin, and/or sex. Some of these structures are reproduced from other areas of work and have roots in exploitative labor conditions. Civil rights lawyers attempting to use existing laws or develop new laws to root out these structures face obstacles within and outside the judicial system. This Essay focuses on two laws recently passed in California to protect vulnerable workers: the California Property Service Workers Protection Act, which seeks to protect janitorial services workers from highly exploitative practices of their employers, and the Stand Against Non Disclosures Act and its amendment, the Silenced No More Act, which seek to ensure that harassment in the workplace is no longer hidden in settlement or severance agreements. Reading these statutes through a critical race lens demonstrates both their importance to changes in the workplace and their limitations in the face of intractable employer and societal attitudes.
The interaction of these two laws further demonstrates several tenets of Critical Race Theory (“CRT”). This Essay applies these tenets to the janitorial services industry and evaluates the effectiveness of laws meant to protect janitors through a critical race lens. Legislation such as these laws focuses on practices that should be eliminated in the workplace. The legislation does not end systems such as contracting, and it does not end conditions that allow hostile work environments to proliferate. These laws do, however, provide starting points for janitors seeking to improve their workplaces. CRT helps continue interrogation of such legislation and pushes for more systemic change by focusing on the ways in which race informs the treatment of janitors
Making Rights Meaningful: Advocating for Simple Changes in Federal Agency Practice to Promote Health Equity
Get PDFDespite federal protections afforded by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, Americans still experience prohibited discrimination in health care on the basis of race, color, and national origin. The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (“HHS OCR”) investigates complaints and enforces protections when alleged discrimination occurs in health care covered entities receiving federal funding. The legal analyses produced in these investigations can be valuable tools for covered entities to utilize in their efforts to remain in compliance with civil rights laws, yet few are ever made public despite HHS OCR’s legal authority to publish them. Failing to publish these analyses minimizes HHS OCR’s commitment to protecting civil rights and wastes the high potential of its work to provide guidance to covered entities. HHS OCR can and should publish the results of its investigations to promote covered entities’ compliance with civil rights laws, and to meaningfully enforce the right of Americans to be free from health care discrimination based on race, color, or national origin
ABA Model Rule 8.4(g): National Adoption is Long Overdue
Get PDFIn 2016, the American Bar Association amended the Model Rules of Professional Conduct to include Rule 8.4(g) in an attempt to include a prohibition against discrimination and harassment with conduct related to the practice of law. While discrimination and harassment remain commonplace in the legal profession, many states refused to adopt Rule 8.4(g) which resulted in an unprecedented response to the ABA amendment. In this article, Sara Rakowiecki emphasizes the necessity for the legal profession to adopt and apply Rule 8.4(g) to cultivate a legal community where lawyers are consistently ethical and professional in the practice of law.https://scholarship.law.slu.edu/lawjournalonline/1094/thumbnail.jp
2022 (Virtual) Day 2--Health Inequities and Employment: The Continued Struggle for Justice
No full textEmployment and health inequities are inextricably linked, which has been illustrated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Essential workers, who are predominately racial and ethnic minorities, have disproportionately been infected, hospitalized, and died from Covid-19. Low-wage women workers have lost jobs and health insurance coverage at higher rates than men during the pandemic, while elderly, disabled, and pregnant workers have often been denied accommodations that would protect them from the workplace exposure of Covid-19. Although federal, state, and local government and public health officials have acknowledged that social conditions, such as housing and education, limit an individual’s ability to be healthy, they have failed to make the connection between employment and health inequities. This two day symposium entitled, Health Inequities and Employment: The Continued Struggle for Justice, will convene workers, scholars, lawyers, and community advocates to not only highlight the connection between employment and health inequities, but also to create a plan for utilizing public health, civil rights, and employment laws to address health inequities. This event is co-sponsored by the Saint Louis University Law Journal, the Wefel Center for Employment Law, and the Institute for Healing Justice and Equity. The proceedings will be published in the Saint Louis University Law Journal.https://scholarship.law.slu.edu/lj_wefel_symposia/1001/thumbnail.jp
Teaching Environmental Law After Trump
Get PDFThis Article addresses some of the challenges in teaching environmental law after the administration of President Donald Trump. The Trump Administration mounted a relentless, aggressive, and largely deregulatory overhaul of the nation’s major environmental regulatory efforts, particularly the efforts of the prior Obama Administration. Many of these efforts by the Trump Administration have been challenged in court, some successfully, while others have been reversed or are in the process of reversal by the administration of President Joseph Biden. For teachers of environmental law, these actions present opportunities to demonstrate how regulatory agencies (under the direction of presidents), rather than Congress, have become the driving force of change in environmental regulation and the limits of that approach to addressing the nation’s environmental issues. The Article surveys recent administrative action under the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Clean Air Act and how these matters were addressed in a basic environmental law survey course