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Through A Lens of Genocide: A Different Approach for Hate Crimes Legislation
No full textHate crimes perpetrators select their victims based on the victims’ identity groups. Policies underlying legislation against hate crimes recognize that such crimes inflict greater harm on society than do the same actions committed for non-biased motives. Genocide may be conceptualized as hate crimes writ large; conversely, a new model of hate crimes legislation might be patterned on legal concepts of genocide scaled down to state or local levels. This new recognition could successfully address criticisms from both liberal and conservative factions along the political spectrum, offering a model that state and local governments could invoke for dealing with bias-motivated incidents that feature the perpetrators’ systemic intent, without focusing on more marginal occurrences. Thus, the hybrid model of hate crime as genocide could appeal to the remaining legislatures that have refused to adopt hate crime statutes, as well as to prosecutors who have had reservations about charging suspects under existing hate crimes statutes. The conceptualization of hate crime as genocide on a state or local level could also encourage local authorities to take action when federal law enforcement is either unable or unwilling to do so
Adding Wage Theft As A Qualifying Crime in the U Visa Certification
No full textJose Lopez1 migrated to the United States without proper documentation. After he arrived, Mr. Lopez had several consecutive jobs as a line cook in various restaurants in Reno, Nevada. He started working at Casino restaurant. One day, Mr. Lopez noticed that his paychecks had not been reflecting the overtime hours he worked. Mr. Lopez approached his employer about his pay discrepancy. His employer told Mr. Lopez that he would pay for overtime the following week. The following week came, and the employer did not pay Mr. Lopez for his overtime hours. This continued for several weeks. Mr. Lopez confronted his employer again. This time, his employer threatened to call the police and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Mr. Lopez. Because of the stressful situation, Mr. Lopez quit and found another job, then sought immigration help. Mr. Lopez sought the help of an immigration attorney. Mr. Lopez explained to the attorney that his employer was not paying him his wages. The attorney told Mr. Lopez that he might qualify for a U Nonimmigrant Status (U Visa) because he was a victim of wage theft. Wage theft is characterized as the “failure to pay workers the full wages to which they are legally entitled.”2 To be eligible for the U Visa, Mr. Lopez had to be a victim of a qualifying crime, have substantial mental and physical harm, and cooperate with law enforcement or a designated agency, such as the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), to certify the U Visa. 3 However, wage theft is not a qualifying crime on the U Visa certification form.4 The attorney emailed a DOL investigator to explain Mr. Lopez’s situation and how the agency may help certify Mr. Lopez’s U Visa. After four weeks, the DOL investigator responded to the email and stated that Mr. Lopez had not suffered a qualifying crime. The only labor-related qualifying crimes in the U Visa are fraud in foreign labor contracting, involuntary servitude, trafficking, slave trade, and peonage.5In the United States, many noncitizens have experienced wage theft.6 Noncitizen workers are abused in their workplace through wage theft and retaliation by their employers.7 In 2009, a study found that 37.1% of noncitizen workers surveyed were victims of minimum wage violations. 8 But few noncitizens report wage theft. 9 Crimes that noncitizen workers report typically do not qualify for a certification for a U Visa.10
Understanding Bias in Civil Procedure: Towards An Empirical Analysis of Procedural Rule-Making\u27s Role in Continuing Inequality
No full textThis Article uses the history of procedural rules governing “freedom suits” to elucidate the collection of rights that constitute the Western idea of “individual liberty,” and to make a prima facie case that our current Rules of Civil Procedure are biased against the enforcement of those rights by American minorities. This history reveals a systemic inequality in procedural rights that both pre-dates race and favors the consolidation of economic and political power over the enjoyment of the rights that supply the foundation for classical liberalism. I argue that collecting demographic data on litigants’ interaction with our Rules of Civil Procedure will yield not only a deeper understanding of this bias, but also potentially transformative insights for our judicial system in a time of needed reform
The Equal Rights Amendment and the Equality Act: Closing Gaps Post-Bostock for Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Minorities
No full textIn 2020, the Supreme Court held in Bostock v. Clayton County that the “because of sex” protection in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII) included an individual’s “homosexual and transgender status.”1 This landmark decision expanded employment protections under the law, for the first time providing broad federal protections to sexual orientation and gender identity minorities.2 It was a sweeping decision, granting protections to millions of people.3 Yet many worry the protections are incomplete, for several reasons. First, the Court explicitly used the language “homosexual and transgender,”4 potentially leaving unresolved if other minority sexual orientations and gender identities/expressions are covered. Second, the Court noted that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) might supersede Title VII’s protections in certain instances — but it neither identified any such instances nor directly addressed a religious liberty claim5 — leaving unresolved if such a claim would prevail over Title VII protections. Finally, Title VII’s language and coverage often serves as the model for protections in other areas, such as housing, public accommodations, medical care, and education, showing the need to ensure the protections are robust and solid. Because the antidiscrimination protections extended on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity are incomplete and potentially tenuous, Congress should act to strengthen and broaden them by certifying the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)6 or, in the alternative, passing the Equality Act.7
Housing Hipsters: Adapting The Spirit of Hipster Antitrust to Address Wealth Asymmetries Between Corporate Residential Properties and Cost-Burdened Residents
No full textSean Gotcher, a real estate agent for 11 years, went viral on TikTok with a real estate hypothetical.1 Gotcher asked how weird society would be if a billion-dollar company collected data on what people would be willing to pay for housing by zip code and then use that information to buy under the market-rate in order to sell above the market rate.2 He wondered how weird it would be if this company bought 31 homes in a two-mile radius to sell for a profit of 2.8 billion.”8 From a business perspective, companies like Zillow achieve their corporate purpose to make a profit through the residential property market. Yet this profit motive contrasts with the past four decades, where rent and home prices cost-burden the majority of Americans. Here, the term cost-burden will refer to lower income households that spend money on high housing costs, resulting in less money for other necessities like food, transportation, or health care.9 There is a significant imbalance in this game. One player is severely cost-burdened while the other has corporate resources to obtain residential property.10 The cost-burdened player pays to live in a home whereas home purchased as a corporate resource sometimes stand empty.1
The Scarlet Letter E : How Tenancy Screening Policies Exacerbate Housing Inequity for Evicted Black Women
No full textThe COVID-19 pandemic resulted in an unprecedented health and economic crisis in the United States. In addition to more than nine hundred thousand deaths in the United States and counting, another kind of crisis emerged from the pandemic: an eviction crisis. In August 2020, an estimated thirty to forty million people in America were at risk of facing eviction by the end of the year. Black women renters faced a higher risk of losing their homes than other groups. At the onset of the pandemic, the federal government implemented eviction moratoria to prevent the evictions of tenants who were unable to pay their rent. However, the temporary nature of the moratoriums had little to no impact on the persisting effects evictions have on Black women seeking future housing. Black women were the most affected by evictions before the pandemic but were devastatingly impacted throughout the pandemic and beyond. The pandemic brought this oft forgotten group’s plight to the forefront. Using an intersectional lens, this Article seeks to analyze the ongoing eviction crisis to highlight who is most burdened and why. Widespread concern has been expressed about the discriminatory effects, especially on Black and Brown people, of landlords’ use of criminal records in making rental decisions. This Article is the first to contextualize similar concerns about the use of eviction records and its disparate impact on Black women. Having an eviction record, much like having a criminal record, blacklists tenants from securing future housing. Renters with mere eviction filings—not final eviction orders—on their records face the harsh collateral consequences of eviction. As others have, I refer to this stigma that follows a person with a record of an eviction proceeding on their public record as the “Scarlet Letter E.” Landlords regularly displace or blacklist Black women who have prior eviction records, thereby preventing them from accessing future available housing units. To assist with tenant screenings, landlords typically hire tenant screening companies to conduct background reports, which typically compile information related to a tenant’s criminal history, residential history, credit score, and eviction history. Landlords’ use of these reports disproportionately impacts Black women who have an eviction filing on their record and prevents them from securing public and private housing. This Article is the first to analyze the disparate impact of the use of eviction filings in rental housing decisions under the Fair Housing Act (“FHA”). It argues that blanket tenant screening policies are arbitrary, artificial, and unnecessary barriers that operate to invidiously discriminate against Black women and, therefore, violate the FHA. It then recommends areas for reform, such as eviction record expungement, sealing laws, and “ban the box” initiatives, all of which draw heavily on work related to the use of criminal records in tenant screening. In addition, this Article suggests a novel interpretation of the FHA by both the Department of Housing and Urban Development (“HUD”) and the courts that would hold landlords and the tenant screening companies that produce these tenant screening reports liable under the FHA for the disparate impact that these policies and practices have on Black women