Top Stories Wichita

Archive for the ‘Civil Rights’ Category

The 2009 Year End report for the Wichita Branch NAACP, detailing branch activities in the areas of Education, Civil Rights Enforcement, Legislative Advocacy, Youth Development, Legal Redress, Health, Branch Administration, and Advocacy Training, is now available to the public.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

NAACP LDF Director of Litigation, Debo Adegbile, testified before the House Committee on the Judiciary’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties. While John Payton, the President and Director Counsel of the NAACP LDF testified before the Senate Judiciary committee. In each presentation, the NAACP LDF called attention to the fact that the recent 5-4 Supreme Court decision in Ashcroft v. Iqbal will dramatically limit citizens access to the courts in Civil Rights cases. The Court ruled that a plaintiff must come to the court with ‘plausible evidence’ of a defendant’s liability to prevent their case from being thrown out with a summary judgement.

This is a new legal standard…

Typically in a Civil Rights case; particularly one alleging an act of bias or discrimination, much of the evidence needed to prove culpability is with the defendant. The bulk of this evidence is only obtainable through the discovery process. However, this NEW legal standard articulated by the court says that unless the plaintiff can produce this evidence upon filing, their case may be thrown out and they may not make to the discovery phase.

CLICK HERE to read Debo Adegbile’s testimony to the House Committee on the Judiciary’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties

CLICK HERE to read John Payton’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee “Has the Supreme Court Limited American’s access to the Courts?”

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Civil ‘Rights’ are the rights and privileges guaranteed by law to all citizens of the United States. The Civil Rights movement was an organized and protracted effort to ensure that the rights guaranteed by law were equally extended to all Americans. Civil Rights Organizations were those groups who worked to ensure the fair and equal application of the laws, foremost among them being the 14th amendment to the Constitution which reads in part,

“No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

In its truest sense, the struggle over civil rights has never really abated. Because Civil ‘Rights’ are, in essence, matters of law; and the laws from which they derive are dynamic.  Their meanings and applications are subject to change with each interpretation. By Stare Decisis - as courts render new decisions, their precedent becomes the new practice, so a law that you wrote or read yesterday, could be interpreted to mean something completely different next year. When you factor in the role of politics and how federal appointments to District Courts are often made along political and ideological lines, you come to realize that our Civil ‘Rights’ are extremely fragile. We as activists must not only concern ourselves with securing Civil Rights for all Americans, but we must be equally focused upon protecting those Civil Rights that now exist. Because on any given Monday a court decision, a ballot initiative, or a legal appeal could change the law or its application and strip away a right you had previously taken for granted.

Which brings me to Gross vs FBL Financial Services Inc

Jack Gross went to work at FBL Financial Services back in 1987. He worked his way through the ranks, and by 1999 he had been named the Claims Administration Vice President. A couple years later, Jack’s job title and duties began to change. He noticed that the duties and responsibilities that he once had, were being shifted to a younger employee. In 2003 Jack noted that his position as “Claims Project Coordinator” lacked a real job description or clearly defined duties, but his younger co-worker had all but assumed the functional equivalent of his old position.

In 2004 Jack Gross sued FBL Financial Services for Age Discrimination. The trial lasted a mere 5 days and Jack Gross prevailed. The jury found that Jack Gross proved, by a preponderance of the evidence, that he was demoted and his age was a motivating factor in the demotion decision. They awarded him $46,945.00 for lost compensation.

Not surprisingly, FBL appealed… They filed a Petition for Writ of Certiorari, informally referred to as a “Cert Petition” with the Supreme Court. A Cert Petition is a formal request for the Supreme Court to review the decision of a lower court. The Supreme Court granted the Writ of Certiorari and on June 18th, Justice Thomas rendered the 5-4 decision of the court which held that: A plaintiff bringing an Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) disparate-treatment claim must prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that age was the “but-for” cause of the challenged adverse employment action. The burden of persuasion does not shift to the employer to show that it would have taken the action regardless of age, even when a plaintiff has produced some evidence that age was one motivating factor in that decision.

In a nutshell, the Supreme Court reversed the lower courts decision in favor of Jack Gross, and also put forward a new legal standard for ruling in Age Discrimination cases. The conservative majority on the court (Thomas, Scalia, Alito, Roberts, and Kennedy) ruled that a plaintiff in an age discrimination case must not only prove that age was “A“ motivating factor in an adverse employment action or decision; they must prove that age was “THE“ motivating factor. And unless or until the plaintiff can present direct evidence of the employer’s primary personal motivations, the employer should not be required to prove anything.

The case was remanded back to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals for retrial. And earlier today, the 8th Circuit Court issued a new ruling in favor of FBL Financial Services… The preponderance of the evidence still shows that FBL Services was considering Jack Gross’ age when deciding to demote him, but as of this morning, that no longer meets the legal standard of an Age Discrimination Claim. You see, protection from discrimination or adverse employment actions on the basis of ones age is still a ‘Civil Right’, but is is now a right guaranteed in a law that is virtually impossible to assert.

I said all of that to say this… Civil Rights are fragile. Like the picture above, these Rights are like a candle in the wind. If we are not vigilant, if we do not safeguard and protect them, they will be lost…The courts have been busy chipping away at them, bit by bit, for a number of years. We must remember that the protections and safeguards that we fought so hard to secure in the 50’s and 60’s are not promised to our children. Whether or not they are passed on to the next generation will depend on what we do today. Because on any given Monday, things can change… just like this morning.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Long time readers of the blog will note that we’ve been talking about the ideological shift and politicization of the US Commission on Civil Rights for the last couple years. (See HERE, and HERE, and HERE, and HERE). Through a series of Bush-era politically motivated appointments, the 8-member Commission is now composed of 4 staunch conservatives who are absolutely ideologically opposed to the goals and precepts of the American Civil Rights movement and 2 right-leaning ‘quasi-independents’.

But at long last, the call for reform is now picking up steam. On November 18th, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and the ACLU went to the Congress to call for dramatic reform within the agency.

The groups called for reforms that would broaden the commission’s mandate so that it can better investigate and address civil rights issues and work to strengthen U.S. commitments on human rights. In particular, they are seeking a change in the way that members are appointed to the commission to ensure that commissioners remain independent. Currently, members are appointed by Congress and the president and are not required to undergo a confirmation process.

The commission was created with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 as an independent fact-finding body charged with investigating and reporting on civil rights and making recommendations to the federal government on how to fix the problems it uncovered. Through its fact-finding work, it helped lay the foundation for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Over the past few years, however, the commission has taken positions hostile to civil rights issues, such as opposing the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act in 2006, urging the Senate to vote against the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes bill, encouraging the elimination of school desegregation programs, and opposing the Employee Free Choice Act.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

With unemployment among blacks at more than 15 percent, and in light of new unemployment data released for October 2009, the NAACP joined with several other groups this week to call on President Obama to do more to create jobs.

The organizations, including the Leadership Council on Civil Rights, the AFL-CIO, the Center for Community Change, the National Council of La Raza, and the Economic Policy Institute, stated that they believe the president’s $787 billion stimulus program has not gone far enough to fight unemployment. In response to the crisis, the groups held a panel discussion this week to raise awareness and suggest potential solutions for policymakers. They also issued a joint statement advocating for strong congressional action to address the crisis, starting with extending unemployment benefits, food stamps, and COBRA to meet the needs of the significant number of unemployed people facing a long road to recovery.

“It’s time for us to really stoke this issue up,” said Hilary O. Shelton; NAACP Senior VP for Advocacy and Policy. “We’re not so much trying to convince him to do something he doesn’t want to do, but urging him to move forward on an issue we have agreement on.”

Currently, nearly 16 million Americans are unable to find employment and another nine million are only able to find part-time employment, according to the EPI. And finding jobs is increasingly difficult – there are over six job seekers for each available job opening. The situation is even more difficult for workers of color. The unemployment rate for blacks has jumped to 15.7 percent, from 8.9 percent when the recession started 23 months ago. That compares with 13.1 percent for Hispanics and 9.5 percent for whites. The black unemployment rate has climbed above 20 percent in several states, reaching 23.9 percent in Michigan and 20.4 percent in South Carolina.

“Make no mistake – this is the civil rights issue of the moment,” said LCCR President and CEO Wade Henderson. “Unless we resolve our national job crisis, all of our other priorities – from reforming health care and fixing our broken immigration system, to stemming home foreclosures and expanding economic opportunity for all Americans – are in real jeopardy.”

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Several members of the Kansas State Conference of the NAACP and regional activists attended a meeting with Tom Perez; Assistant Attorney General of the United States and head of DOJ Civil Rights Division, to discuss the strengthening of the agency’s Civil Rights enforcement efforts. In attendance were Kevin Myles; President of the Kansas State Conference, Henry Lyons; President of the Olathe Branch, Katrina Robertson; President of the Johnson County Branch, Loris Jones; State Conference Education Committee Chair, Former State Conference President Charles Jean-Baptiste, and Mary Ann Flounder. Also in attendance Nimrod Chapel; Political Affairs Chairman for the Missouri State Conference, Marvin Szneler of  the Jewish Community Relations Bureau, Gwen Grant of the Urban League of Greater Kansas City, Mona Lee Perry of the American Indian Council, Alvin Sykes of the Emmett Till Justice Campaign, Jessica Piedra of the Coalition of Hispanic Organizations,  and several representatives of the US Attorney’s Office and the Kansas City Human Relations Department.

The Kansas Delegation called for the agency to focus additional attention on:

• Child Welfare disparities in removal and reunification rates
• Non-Compliance of States with the National Voter Registration Act of 94
• Unitary Status/Re-segregation and the inequitable distribution of talent and teaching experience in recently desegregated districts
• Ricci Vs DeStephano and its impact on Title VII enforcement
• Wren Vs the United States and why we believe statistical Racial Profiling data rises to the level of a 14th amendment claim
• The underfunding of Public Defender’s offices and the resulting effect on poor and low income peoples ability to obtain adequate representation
• And Employment Discrimination; namely how shifting interpretations of the term “similarly situated” creates a practically insurmountable standard that makes racial discrimination cases almost impossible to win.

We were also given direct contact numbers for the registering of complaints and in the coming days, we will be re-filing complaints that were overlooked or dismissed by the previous administration; foremost among these – the case of Rowana Riggs…

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

The U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights has proposed significant changes to the Civil Rights Data Collection. The Department’s proposal includes a biennial survey of roughly half the nation’s schools (over 7,000 districts), with new requests for data on:

• Bullying/harassment of students in violation of civil rights laws
• Use of seclusion and restraint
• School-related arrests and referrals to law enforcement
• Expulsions under zero-tolerance school disciplinary policies
• Student retention
• College-preparatory courses, International Baccalaureate programs, and SAT and ACT test participation
• Pre-kindergarten programs
• School counselors
• School finance
• Teaching experience

The proposed changes provide that the data collected be disaggregated by race and ethnicity, gender, special education status (pursuant to IDEA and Section 504), and LEP status.

The Department of Education will accept comments on the Civil Rights Data Collection submitted on or before Tuesday, November 10, 2009. We urge you to submit recommendations and comments; your input is essential to securing collection of this critical data. The DOE has already received comments in opposition to the breadth of the proposed changes.

Materials on the proposed modifications can be found on the web at: http://edicsweb.ed.gov. Click “browse pending collections” and choose #4127. The most relevant documents are labeled “B-4″ and “B-5.”

Comments should be submitted by e-mail to ICDocketMgr@ed.gov.

By way of example, the Dignity in Schools Campaign has drafted comments addressing the disciplinary changes in the proposed Civil Rights Data Collection; a Word version of the comments is available at http://dignityinschools.org.

Thank you for your input, and your continued work and leadership in providing high quality, inclusive schools for all the nation’s schoolchildren.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

As early as 2007, I began writing about the US Commission on Civil Rights and their tragic decline from a once powerful fact-finding and investigative agency into an ironic caricature of its former self. ( See HERE, HERE and see HERE) Through a series of Bush-era politically motivated appointments, the 8-member Commission is now composed of 4 staunch conservatives who are absolutely ideologically opposed to the goals and precepts of the American Civil Rights movement and 2 right-leaning ‘quasi-independents’.

They have been particularly busy as of late; urging the Senate to vote against the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes bill, and inviting windbags like Ward Connerly to brief the commission on why he feels Racial classifications should be eliminated from the 2010 census.

Sidebar: Ward Connerly was asked by Commissioner Melendez how we would measure discrimination if the collection of Race data was eliminated. To which Ward Connerly responded by saying that ‘Racial Discrimination was a low priority’. 

But the Commission’s new report on the origins of the Mortgage crisis is a classic, even by their standards. The Commission reports that there were NO issues with Predatory Lending, NO issues with steering people into sub-prime loans, and NO failures in enforcing discrimination laws. They Also stated that there was NO evidence that programs designed to encourage homeownership among minorities (such as the CRA or HUD goals for GSE’s) even contributed to the mortgage meltdown YET the Vice-Chair went on to recommend that any future Federal Assistance utilize more conservative underwriting standards. The report was passed out of commission with a 4-0 vote with both Democrats and both Independents abstaining. Of the report and the Vice-Chair’s recommendations, Commissioner Melendez stated:

The Commission did not try to evaluate whether federal regulators were adequately enforcing lending discrimination laws (it just describes their jurisdiction and some of the few cases initiated in recent years). The Commission did not try to independently verify the conclusions of the 2007 Federal Reserve study about credit scoring (it just repeats its findings). Finally, the Commission did not try to collect evidence or evaluate whether minority groups were targeted by predatory lending schemes(although it describes some instances of fraud and lending discrimination that federal enforcement authorities investigated). Consequently, I disagree with the Vice-Chair’s characterization that the Commission “did not find” problems with enforcement, credit scoring, or discriminatory predatory lending. In truth, the Commission never seriously looked into these questions at all.

Commissioner Melendez was joined in his dissent by Commissioner Yaki, who wrote of the report and the commission:

It is our mission to explore, understand, find facts and make recommendations where disparities in our society on the basis of race and ethnicity may persist. It does not mean, as some of the Commission majority doubtless fear, that it will necessarily result in more programs, regulations, or laws that would benefit a specific racial or ethnic group. But it may, but if so, that is for Congress and the Executive to debate and decide whether to enact a new law. Nevertheless, it does not serve our charter, does not benefit any group, nor does it contribute to our nation to ignore a potential issue and pretend it does not exist. Yet, sadly, the current Commission would rather direct its resources to destroy extant programs such as affirmative action, rather than to research current and persistent problems that affect our nation’s commitment to equality and prosperity for all.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Sudanese Journalist Lubna Hussein, pictured in the left sidebar, was sentenced on Monday for the alleged “Crime” of wearing pants. The formal charge was ‘dressing contrary to public sense’. She was ordered to pay a fine of roughly $200.00 usd.

Hussain refused, making clear that she did not view this trial as a personal issue, but rather a national issue of Women’s rights. Hussain, dressed in the same pants that she had been convicted for wearing, was then sentenced to one months imprisonment for her refusal to pay. However, shortly after her being taken to prison, the Sudanese Union of journalists paid her fine and Lubna Hussain was released after only one day of confinement.

Click HERE for a BBC news account of her release…

Since her release, Lubna Hussein held a press conference with the Ajrass Alhurria newspaper and stated that she is upset about the outcome of her trial and that the Sudanese Journalist Union freed her from prison against her will. She plans to appeal the judges decision on her case to a higher court with the ultimate goal of changing the law.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

As early as 2007, I began writing about the US Commission on Civil Rights and their tragic decline from a once powerful fact-finding and investigative agency into an ironic caricature of its former self. ( See HERE and see HERE) Through a series of Bush-era politically motivated appointments, the 8-member Commission is now composed of 6 conservatives who are ideologically opposed to the goals and precepts of the American Civil Rights movement.

The Agency that once challenged the Federal Government and Law Enforcement to constructively deal with issues of Voter disenfranchisement, Domestic Violence, and the excesses and abuses of the Criminal Justice System, has been turned on its head. It has spent most of the last few years investigating the effectiveness of HBCU’s, developing guidance for school districts to achieve ‘Unitary Status’ and end their deseg programs, attacking affirmative action, and most recently formally opposing the employee free choice act.

In 2007, the conservative majority on the Commission released a Briefing Report on school segregation which essentially stated that the DOJ should continue in their efforts to assist districts in achieving ‘unitary status’ wherein they’d be free from the strictures of Brown vs Board or previous court orders brought about through civil rights or discrimination lawsuits. The two dissenting Commissioners, Yaki and Melendez, released a statement in which they wrote, “The quality of the agency’s reports has declined because it has tried to do too much with too little. Hour-and-a-half long monthly (or sometimes bimonthly) briefings with a few guest speakers can at best do nothing more than recycle commonly known truths about civil rights problems. At worst, such briefings serve as thinly-veiled political cover for the Commission majority to issue ideological policy statements to influence pending legislation, administrative decisions or reviews, and judicial cases. It is shameful to trade on the Commission’s past reputation for quality work in this way.”

Well, now it seems they’re at it again. This time, the US Commission on Civil Rights is releasing a new Briefing report in which they attack the proposed Health Care Reform efforts as ‘racially discriminatory’ because several of the draft bills being floated around Congress have provisions to specifically address Health Disparities. The conservative majority on the US Commission on Civil Rights views any effort to address issues within a specific racial or ethnic group as a “race-based” remedy and therefore deems said efforts as preferential to those they seek to address.

African Americans have the shortest life expectancy of any racial or ethnic group in America. African Americans have statistically higher rates of hypertension, stroke, diabetes, HIV, perinatal diseases, pancreatic cancer, stomach cancer, prostate cancer, colon cancer, SIDS, low birth weight babies, etc… YET health care Access as a Civil Right has never come up on the Commission’s radar. But the fact that draft versions of a Health Care reform bill would seek to address these issues by promoting and encouraging ‘cultural competency’ among health care providers has managed to summon the Commission into action.

The provision that has raised their ire reads in part:

The secretary, “shall design and implement the payment mechanisms and policies under this section in a manner that — (1) seeks to reduce health disparities (including racial, ethnic and other disparities).” (House Bill Section 224)

The notion that targeted spending is inherently discriminatory is simply false. The GI bill is not ‘discriminatory’ against non-veterans. Social Security is not ‘discriminatory’ against the young. Breast Cancer research is not ‘discriminatory’ against men. Prostate Cancer research is not ‘discriminatory’ against women… We as a nation have often tended to issues that have some disparate impact on one or more segments of our society. And in a matter as sensitive as health care and health dispaities; one where the disparities are literally matters of life and death; we should expect no less…

Wade Henderson, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Leadership Council on Civil Rights described this recent effort by saying, ”The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is overstepping its bounds yet again with another slanted and incorrect interpretation of logical and constitutional standards,”. The group is “injecting themselves in the health care debate without any expertise and understanding of how the training in the House bill will work.”

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.