#Title VII of the Civil Rights Act

[kornymaggotboi]

I need to vent... Again... Again...

So, I recently got a job (yay! no more leeching off my parents and I can now help pay bills!) as a janitor, where, nobody accepts me for being transgender.

I'm a trans man, the reason nobody respects my gender is for a couple reasons:

1.) When my dad signed me up for this job (because he also works for the same company) he constantly dead-named and misgendered me, because he never uses my preferred name and pronouns because... Well, he's transphobic... And he told me I have to fill out my application using my legal name and legal pronouns (which is bullshit, but I'll touch on that later), and when I filled out the application, it had a section where you can put your preferred name and pronouns, so I put them in... But this is Pennsylvania, fuck those stupid people who think they can change their DNA, you will only be addressed by what you were born as, because trans is a mental disease and it's best not to humor those stupid trans people... So basically, nobody uses my preferred name or pronouns.

2.) I usually don't like correcting people when they misgender me, because people find it rude when you feel the need to interrupt them to insert your preferred name and pronouns, and it used to not really bother me... But obviously it does now...

3.) My coworkers are transphobic... Plain and simple. They constantly spew anti-trans rhetoric like "man, those trans people are good at blending in, I feel like i constantly have to check and make sure my wife doesn't have a penis" or "trans people don't like when we say it's a mental disorder, but they keep saying gender is what's in your head and sex is what's between your legs... so which is it!?" or "it's ridiculous that trans people can change their DNA... like, no matter how much surgery they get or hormones they take, they'll always be a (man, if they're talking about a trans woman, or woman if they're talking about a trans man)" or "did you hear about the tr*nny that shot all those people? this is why trans people should be refused treatments, because the hormones fuck with their mind"... So, I don't exactly feel safe coming out to anyone at my job.

In the beginning, it didn't bother me, because my gender isn't important, but I've been working there for a couple of weeks now, and constantly being dead-named and misgendered has been causing me mental distress, like, at times I have to go to a storage closet or lock myself in a private bathroom (I have keys to them) so I can have a mental breakdown in private.

It doesn't seem like something that should bother me, but it does... It surprisingly does quite a bit of mental damage to constantly be dead-named and misgendered.

I told my dad about this issue and he told me it's against the law to go by a name and pronoun that isn't legally yours at your job, which isn't true, I have trans and non-binary friends who go by their preferred names and pronouns at their job, there's literally no rules against going by your preferred name and pronouns.

I know some things I have to put my legal name and biological sex down, but that doesn't apply at a job.

And the thing that hurt me the most was when I told him about it, he said to me "you're always gonna be my little girl." and talked about how proud he was when he adopted me, trying to get me all emotional, so I'd maybe forget about the actual prejudice at work... But I didn't, it made it worse actually.

As I'm typing this I'm crying, because this shit legit triggers me.

I know I can't change people, I can correct them a million times and they don't have to correct themselves, and knowing that is really defeating, like, I will never be accepted because of my gender.

I also know there are laws in a lot of workplaces, Title VII of the Civil Right act, that say it's illegal to discriminate someone because of their race, gender, sexuality, age, disability, religion etc. and refusing to use someone's preferred pronouns and gender is considered discrimination, and you can get fines and stuff if you violate those laws, so maybe if I bring it up, they'll fix it.

But that still won't fix the fact nobody will accept me for being trans, because I know if I reported my coworkers for discrimination, they'll be bad blood, and I don't wanna make enemies over pronouns...

Thanks for reading my rant... If you actually read it...

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Erin Reed at Erin In The Morning:

On Monday, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that transgender health insurance exclusions violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The case was brought by a transgender employee of the Houston County Sheriff's Office in Georgia who was denied coverage for gender-affirming surgery. The employee sued in 2019, and after a protracted lawsuit, won at the district court level. Now, with this 11th Circuit Court ruling in favor of transgender employees, a significant precedent is building to protect transgender employees against health insurance restrictions that deny them the ability to get gender-affirming care.

The employee in question first transitioned in 2017. After informing Sheriff Cullen Talton at the Houston County Sheriff’s Office of her decision to transition, she was told that he “does not believe in” being transgender, but that she would be allowed to keep her job. However, when it came time to obtain gender-affirming surgery, significant controversy erupted: her claims were denied. When she filed a lawsuit to have her surgery covered, the sheriff's office and county fought against her right to equitable health care coverage. Since then, the county has spent incredible amounts of money denying the plaintiff her care. As of 2023, Houston County, Georgia, had spent $1,188,701 fighting against providing health care coverage for the transgender plaintiff. This is significant: ProPublica reports that it is over three times the county’s annual physical and mental health budget. Importantly, no other employee has requested coverage for gender-affirming surgery, so fighting against coverage has significantly cost the county far more than it would have gained by simply providing the employee with that coverage.

Ultimately, a lower court ruled in her favor, stating that such exclusions violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. In the decision, the judge stated, “the implication of Bostock is clear… discrimination on the basis of transgender status is discrimination on the basis of sex and is a violation of Title VII.” The judge then ruled that the exclusion was facially discriminatory and violates Title VII. In doing so, he ordered that the county must drop such exclusions. The plaintiff was also awarded $60,000 following the ruling.

[...]

In making its decision, the court referenced two recent developments that may change the legal landscape for transgender people. In one footnote, the court mentioned Kadel v. Folwell, a case just decided in the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, with the court ruling that discrimination against transgender health care violates the Equal Protection Clause. Though it does not reference the case elsewhere, the 11th Circuit used similar legal arguments: that you cannot circumvent discrimination cases by discriminating by proxy. In this case, like in the Kadel case, the judge ruled that discriminating against transgender health care is also discriminating against transgender status. The judge ruled that the defendant’s “sex is inextricably tied to the denial of coverage for gender-affirming surgery,” and thus, one cannot circumvent discrimination statutes by claiming they are only discriminating against a procedure and not a category of people.

The court also referenced new Title VII guidance from the Biden administration in a footnote when making its decision that exclusions violate those regulations. On April 29, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued updated guidance stating that Title VII protections include protections on gender identity. 

[...] The ruling is significant and will likely be one of the many rulings referenced whenever such cases eventually reach the Supreme Court. Multiple courts have ruled in favor of transgender people and their health care, but some significant courts, including in a recent decision by the 11th Circuit Court on health care for transgender youth, have ruled against such legal protections. It is likely that this decision will be cited favorably in many other court cases in the coming months.

The 11th Circuit Court ruled in Lange v. Houston County that trans health care exclusions violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: River Page

Published: Feb 2, 2024

"Companies also cannot take race-motivated actions to maintain a demographically 'balanced' workforce." — Commissioner at Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Andrea R. Lucas in Reuters, June 29, 2023

"An unlawful employment practice is established when the complaining party demonstrates that race, color, religion, sex, or national origin was a motivating factor for any employment practice, even though other factors also motivated the practice." — 42 USC § 2000e–2(m) of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

---

In the wake of the George Floyd protests, tech companies promised to hire more minorities. One company that claims to help them do it is��Gem, and although you might not have heard of it, you’ve probably heard of some of its 1,200-plus clients: Reddit, Dropbox, Robinhood, Discord, Zillow, Stripe, Affirm, and Grammarly, just to name a few. Although Gem’s software is primarily used for things like non-race- and gender-based recruiting, payroll, and benefits management, John, (not his real name) — who worked for Gem as a sales development representative through a B2B outsourcing firm from March to July of 2021, told us that the prospective corporate clients he talked to were most interested in Gem’s “diversity enhancing” capabilities. Essentially, they had race- and gender-based hiring quotas and wanted to use Gem’s software to meet them. He said one prospective client, an executive at the Bay Area-based AI and robotics research arm of one of the world’s leading car manufacturers, told him explicitly: “I need more black candidates this month.”

According to its website, Gem’s software allows recruiters to track “gender and race/ethnicity throughout the entire hiring funnel.” Essentially, it appears to include a comprehensive race and gender tracking system designed to help companies fill race- and gender-based quotas with precision. For example, in a 2021 diversity webinar posted on YouTube, a Gem employee seemed to explain how the software could show how many candidates a company would need to reach out to if it had three engineering positions open, but didn’t want to hire men for them (in her words: “wanted to give women a chance”). In the same video, she demonstrated how to break down each stage in the hiring funnel by race, and explained (but did not show, probably for privacy reasons) how companies could further track how their recruiters’ own efforts break down along the lines of the company’s race- and gender-based hiring quotas, so that the company may “hold them accountable.”

[ Screen capture from Gem’s diversity webinar ]

All this requires a lot of data. According to a recent LinkedIn post by Gem founder Steve Bartel, this data can come from three sources:

Self-ID: the demographic data collection on job applications

Manual override: the recruiter reports your race and gender based on visual cues such as your LinkedIn profile picture

Predicted: Gem’s proprietary AI determines a candidate's race and gender based on machine learning (Bartel notes this is only for aggregate/anonymized use, meaning that the UI doesn’t allow recruiters to see which race was assigned to individual candidates)

John told me that, of Gem’s features, its race- and gender-identifying AI was the biggest selling point. “A key part of the pitch was to tell clients that Gem uses AI and machine learning to determine race and gender.” (This is especially ironic, given the panic about “racist AI” that has consumed every discussion about artificial intelligence for years.)

“One thing that cracked me up was that recruiting/DEI buyers at companies would ask, ‘Is this legal?’” John told me. “Not because they were offended by how obviously racist the software was — they loved what they saw. The concern was pushback from their legal team.” He said this question was asked so frequently that Gem’s Chief Legal Counsel had a prewritten response to the question that would be passed along to clients who asked.

[ Source: Gem’s website, February 1, 2024 ]

The "Diversity Recruiting" section of Gem’s website offers a slate of what it calls “Case Studies” — essentially customer testimonials — where companies explain how they used Gem to hire based on race and gender.

In a case study for payroll firm Gusto, Gem seems to indicate the company used its “Candidate Rediscovery” tool to hire based on candidates’ race and gender. In Gem’s language, Gusto used the tool to “unearth talent who is vetted — and diverse — ultimately reducing time-to-hire.” In other words, companies could use Gem’s software to find people with specific racial and gender-based characteristics that meet the position’s requirements and hire them quickly, while weeding out similarly qualified candidates who are, presumably, white or male or both.

In a case study about the telecommunications company Twilio, Gem seems to describe how one of its senior recruiters was able to avoid hiring men with their tool:

Gem’s metrics have also helped [the recruiter] zero in on stages in the interview process where the team is falling short on equitable gender hiring. “For one division, we intuited that we were hiring more women than the average team—and we were! We were prepared to roll off our passive sourcing efforts for that division, but I don’t like to make a move without looking at all the data first. That’s where Gem came through.” [The recruiter] dug through the data in more detail and discovered that the proportion of male candidates was actually increasing quarter over quarter—so much so that, by Q3, they would have made significantly more male than female hires. “If we hadn’t had access to that data, we wouldn’t have been able to identify that trend and strategize on how to allocate our resources properly.”

This is easily interpretable as: We thought everything was fine until Gem showed us that by Q3 we might hire a disproportionate number of men in a division that a disproportionate number of men applied to work in. It's worth noting that when announcing massive job cuts in 2022, Twilio’s CEO bragged that the layoffs had been carried out through an “Anti-Racist/Anti-Oppression lens.”

In another testimonial from Chili Piper, an inbound conversion platform for B2B revenue teams, the company’s Talent Ops Manager says she used Gem to discover that URG (under-represented group) candidates were dropping off after the company stopped including a video submission in the application (itself seeming to indicate that a significant proportion “URGs” were being advanced through the hiring pipeline because of their race or gender). She successfully lobbied to bring the video submission back and modified the assignment. “Now it’s like, sell us a new smartphone: something that really levels the playing field and lets us see candidates’ creativity, communication, and approach in action. It’s not necessarily entrenched in experience in tech and SaaS sales.” Since then, the company has “seen a decisive shift in the demographics of candidates who make it to the interview stage of our process. We have seen a 54% increase in URG candidates and a 31% increase in female-identified candidates making it to the first round of interviews. Offers extended to, and offers accepted by URGs have increased.”

In other words, Chili Piper's testimonial seems to indicate that Gem showed the company that when it stopped asking applicants to submit a video that allowed them to see their race and gender, they stopped hiring more minorities. So they brought video back, and seemed to effectively lower their standards by changing the assignment to one in which industry experience was deprioritized.

Gem’s own hiring practices also raise red flags. An internal jobs board from June 2021 provided to Pirate Wires shows that under a field titled “Diversity Search,” positions are either listed as “Open,” “Women,” “URM,” or “Women & URM,” suggesting that certain positions were closed off to straight white males, or perhaps that women and minorities were being sought after in those positions. We sent the screenshot of the internal job board — with company name and other identifying information redacted — to a tech industry employment lawyer, who said:

Without knowing more about the company or getting clarification on what some of the designations mean on the chart, it looks a bit problematic. The law allows companies to set “targets” and “goals” as they relate to the hiring, retention, and promotion of women, veterans, and underrepresented minorities (those targets/goals must be temporary). But the law does not currently allow private companies to set aside or otherwise designate specific positions for such group members. There are some grey areas for certain types of federal contractors, but it’s the exception to the rule.

As a non-lawyer, I’ll not comment on the legality of Gem’s hiring practices. However, I will say the company seems to use unorthodox recruiting methods. In Gem’s diversity webinar I referred to earlier, one of the hosts said, “Here at Gem, each time we open a new req [position], we actually focus solely on sourcing URGs, and in conjunction [with that] we don’t post the job on the career site until other levers need to be pulled…”

The host then explained how she found candidates of specific races and genders at Gem, telling the audience: “Sourcing for URGs may require you to shift some fundamental ideas you have about what a quote-unquote good candidate looks like.” Next, she described how she would go through LinkedIn, searching for candidates with stereotypically minority names, who use neo-pronouns, or who went to minority-majority schools, among other tactics.

[ Slide from Gem’s diversity webinar]

When asked for comment, a representative from GEM told us “Our product provides interested customers with insights that help them build a diverse talent pipeline. We work closely with legal counsel to ensure our platform complies with all applicable laws and welcome potential customers looking to learn more to reach out to us."

Gem: a company that apparently doesn’t post some job announcements publicly without searching for specific races and genders on LinkedIn first. A company whose value proposition is to help companies hold their recruiters “accountable” for hiring too many of the wrong race and gender. A company that created an AI that predicts your race and gender. A company whose AI tracks race throughout the hiring pipeline so efficiently that, allegedly, even woke companies question its legality during sales calls. Gem is the company that vast swaths of the tech industry are using to hire.

So if you���re in the business, and you’re a Derrick O’Donnell or a John Chau, good luck out there. I think you’re gonna need it.

[ Via: https://archive.md/gxFMK ]

==

DEI is discrimination.

[daisiesonafield-blog]

Link to original

[trusswork]

on race and employment law

The prohibition against discrimination in hiring, the very law that prevents pre-civil rights racial disparities in this realm from getting worse, also formally prevents them from getting better.

This is the critical legal (actual CRT) understanding: hiring law prevents black persons, for example, from being denied jobs on the basis of their race. (Where race may correlate with educational opportunity, background and so on, of course, other problems arise.) But given a historically determined status quo of black persons underrepresented in given fields, the same law makes it impossible to correct through hiring -- just as one cannot deny a job based on blackness, neither can one hire based on it (and affirmative action laws, which raise other problems, are formally confined to school admissions, and not employment). So the balance must correct in other ways.

Employment law is prospective only, it cannot rebalance retrospectively (it is a face of Popper's incrementalism, versus utopian overhaul) -- it is equality of opportunity, not of resources or of outcomes. Thus, when a job ad says "minorities, BIPOC, etc. encouraged to apply," it is the most that can legally be done toward correcting existing accretions of inequity (to adapt Unger's phrase): in other words, employers must say to nonwhite applicants, present yourselves to us in population-proportionate numbers, so that illegal bias would need not be exercised in order to produce a fairly proportioned workforce.

[runawaymarbles]

The 30 chapters are a daunting read. Project 2025 proposes, among a host of things, eliminating the Department of Education, eliminating the Department of Commerce, deploying the U.S. military whenever protests erupt, dismantling the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, removing protections against sexual and gender discrimination, and terminating diversity, equity, inclusion and affirmative action.

Additional mandates include: siphoning off billions of public school funding, funding private school choice vouchers, phasing out public education’s Title 1 program, gutting the nation’s free school meals program, eliminating the Head Start program, banning books and suppressing any curriculum that discusses the evils of slavery.

Project 2025 also calls for banning abortion (which makes women second-class citizens), restricting access to contraception, forcing would-be immigrants to be detained in concentration camps, eliminating Title VII and Title IX of the Civil Rights Act, recruiting 54,000 loyal MAGA Republicans to replace existing federal civil servants, and ending America’s bedrock principle that separates church from state.

Anyway anyone telling you that Biden is the same as Trump is either so deep in the sauce they don't know how to find a toilet, or actively lying to you because this is the outcome they want.

Project 2025 isn't going to kickstart the glorious revolution. It's going to make people exhausted, and scared, and dead.

[beardedmrbean]

September 12, 2024, Elk Grove, Ca.—California teacher Isaac Newman has won a judgment just three months after he alleged in a federal civil rights lawsuit that his teachers’ union discriminated against him on the basis of race. Newman, who is white, was unable to run for a union executive board position because the union required candidates to “self-identify” as a racial minority.

Following Newman’s lawsuit, the union quickly folded by ending the segregated board seat and committing to non-discriminatory practices in other union positions. A judge also entered an order requiring the union, the Elk Grove Education Association (EGEA), to pay Newman $12,000 and to pay his attorneys’ fees.

“I’m delighted that my lawsuit forced union officials to admit something every high school student knows: Racial segregation is wrong,” said Newman, who teaches history at Elk Grove Unified School District in suburban Sacramento. “I hope this victory returns union officials’ focus to representing all teachers, rather than dividing us based on race. I plan to donate every penny I receive from the union to a local scholarship fund for Elk Grove students.”

Newman’s lawsuit cited Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act, both of which prohibit unions from racial discrimination.

“Based on union officials’ immediate capitulation to Isaac’s demands, it’s clear that they thought they didn’t have a legal leg to stand on to defend their segregated board seat,” said Nathan McGrath, president and general counsel for the Fairness Center. “Isaac’s win affirms that unions don’t get a pass on anti-discrimination law.”

The EGEA has created a new board seat open to all members to replace the one for which only non-whites were eligible.

“After this major victory, I will continue my fight to hold the union accountable to the letter and the spirit of the law by running for the union’s new board seat on a platform of true fairness and equal representation for all members, regardless of race,” responded Newman.

Background

In 2023, EGEA officials created a “BIPOC At-Large” seat on its executive board with the approval of its statewide affiliate union, the California Teachers Association. Newman, a decade-long union member, resolved to run for the board seat, but the union’s nomination form required him to check a box confirming that he identified as a member of one of several racial minority groups. Newman could not in good conscience check the box and was, therefore, unable to run for the board position.

[samueldays]

I don’t know if you’ve seen the news about the federal lawsuit against the Sheetz convenience store chain charging them with hiring discrimination. Apparently refusing to hire people who fail a criminal background check is racist. Do you think there’s any chance of this rolling back some disparate impact hiring rules?

Almost no chance, good luck with that! Most of the reporting I can find seems to agree on this example of tone:

Federal officials said they do not allege Sheetz was motivated by racial animus, but take issue with the way the chain uses criminal background checks to screen job seekers. The company was sued under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion and national origin.

“Federal law mandates that employment practices causing a disparate impact because of race or other protected classifications must be shown by the employer to be necessary to ensure the safe and efficient performance of the particular jobs at issue,” EEOC attorney Debra M. Lawrence said in a statement.

Finding evidence of wrongdoing is too hard work for the EEOC, so they find evidence of Bad Percentage and prosecute people for that instead!

Disparate impact is a totalitarian insanity of American law, for which the EEOC should be prosecuted by the successor regime.

And it's also well established in precedent of the current regime that disparate impact law gets to micromanage hiring, reverse the burden of proof, invent a Numbercrime, create contradictory obligations on employers to fill racial quotas and also not do that, and contribute to even more problems as side effects such as university diploma mills and inflaming racial taboos.

[artsninspo]

👋🏽 always commenting anon, present and ready to give you comments you didn’t ask for 🤭

damn. this chapter had me down BAD. rio rio rio. whew. the attention to detail, the anticipation, the gifts, the possessiveness (in a positive way) my man my man my mannnnn. i loved how you created marisol as a nice balance to nick and his ickiness. her banter with rio 🥹 - i feel like deep down they might be besties 😂 and i love it! fucking james…. i know he bout to find a way to piss me off! i am SO excited to see what’s next - loved this chapter!

you always EAT with rio’s mannerisms and dialogue so i had to drop a few of my favorite lines here:

“That was before I knew you, doesn't count” he shrugs casually rolling your bags to a truck. OOP. GAGGED HER AND BASICALLY SAID HE LOVES HER. STAN!

“Friends?” Rio raises a brow and you shrug not knowing what other title to give him. You’re not allowed no other friends then” he comments and you laugh. THIS MAN RIGHT HERE! I AM FOLDING RIGHT HERE AND NOW.

“You were sad and I know women like presents so I picked you up bags to match mine” he says casually. LIKE, OH, SO THIS WHAT WE DOING?! YES PLEASE, THANK YOU PAPI!

“You're not allowed to have other friends either” you mutter and he laughs, his heart warming at you taking possession of him too. I AM GLAD SHE AFFIRMED HER FEELINGS BECAUSE SHE GOT MY MAN RIO SWEATING IN ANTICIPATION ABOUT THE DEPTH HER FEELINGS FOR HIM.

“I don’t need any,” he says to affirm your feelings before smothering you in quick kisses. BECAUSE HE READY TO GIVE YOU A RING AND BABY! SIGN THEM PAPERS!!

“Sorry we’re late” you apologise knowing RIo isn't going to….. She’s busy Marisol, shrink someone else” I LOVE SEEING RIO WITH HIS FAMILY AND HOW EVERYONE LOVES HIM AND YET HE’S STILL A GROWN BABY THAT HIS GRANDMA NEEDS TO TELL TO PLAY NICE 😂

RE: FORGIVELESS VII

Ooooh girl! Lets get into IT!

I always love your mini reviews! Rio was eating his words. Imagine, this man declared he's not boyfriend material ... tuh! 🙄 😒 Everyone in Rio's family loves him, I think that's why Nick is so aggy. Its jealousy. I mean how could you not love Rio?

These quotes:

I love how everyone is screaming HE LOVES HER 🤣, whether or not that's true Rio'd better say it first!

He said slow your roll big mama, I ain't one of your little friends! (black mom proverb)

We love a man that knows when we're sad and acts accordingly. Don't ignore us, buy us presents or whatever we want!

Mama, said no friends and not more hoeing sir. I only want you up under me! I mean look at the view and the treatment! Of course she loves it there 😉

Yup, Rio is wide open. She's gonna have our man singing in the shower 😆

Family man Rio is a treat I wish we got more of it on the show. It was fun to write here. IKDR he's such a grown baby. He only listens to his granny and is bad as hell. Mama taking up for him and being civil melted his iron heart.

Thank you so much for reading and commenting 💕 💝 ❤️

RIO MASTERLIST

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Trudy Ring at The Advocate:

If you’re looking for yet another reason that Donald Trump shouldn’t be elected president again, we have two words for you: Project 2025. You’ve probably been hearing these words, but you may be sketchy on what they mean. We’re here to fill you in on the details thanks to a report by Accountable.US.

What is Project 2025?

Basically, Project 2025 is a blueprint of what far-right activists want from the next conservative president — and Trump is the conservative who’s running. It includes plans to fire as many as 50,000 career federal employees and replace them with people who have unquestionable loyalty to the president; restrict access to contraception; possibly implement a national abortion ban; cut federal health care programs; and much more, designed to make the U.S. an authoritarian nation. And LGBTQ+ people are directly in its crosshairs. “Project 2025 couldn’t make its anti-LGBTQ+ agenda any more clear. With far-right extremists at the helm, the project is a power grab by conservatives attempting to turn back the clock on hard-fought progress and fundamental rights,” Accountable.US President Caroline Ciccone said in a statement to The Advocate. “Project 2025 doesn’t just pose an existential threat to our democracy but seriously threatens the rights and freedoms of LGBTQ+ communities across the country.”

[...]

How will it affect LGBTQ+ Americans?

Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership” is a document taking up 900 pages, but Accountable.US has put together a succinct summary of what Project 2025 would mean to LGBTQ+ Americans, and The Advocate has a first look. Here are the key points. The project urges the next conservative president to basically ignore the 2020 Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, in which the court found that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, in banning sex discrimination in the workplace, also bans discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. President Joe Biden, in contrast, had directed all federal agencies to implement the provisions of Bostock not just in the workplace but in health care, education, and other aspects of life. It calls for barring transgender people from the military and to stop what it considers the “toxic normalization of transgenderism” across the government and American society. It seeks to abolish the president’s Gender Policy Council, “which it views as promoting abortion and the ‘new woke gender ideology,’” Accountable.US notes.

The next Health and Human Services secretary, Project 2025 recommends, should reverse what it calls a focus on “‘LGBTQ+ equity,’ subsidizing single-motherhood, disincentivizing work, and penalizing marriage, replacing such policies with those encouraging marriage, work, motherhood, fatherhood, and nuclear families.” “The Project 2025 playbook laments the fact that family policies and programs under President Biden’s HHS are ‘fraught with agenda items focusing on “LGBTQ+ equity,”’ making it clear that they intend to roll those agenda items back,” Accountable.US explains. It further calls for the Department of Justice “to defend the First Amendment right of those who would discriminate against LGBTQ+ people. It also objects to the DOJ notifying states that their bans on abortion and medical services to transgender persons may violate federal law,” Accountable.US reports. On foreign policy, Project 2025 says a new conservative president should dismantle and U.S. Agency for International Development programs that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion, such as what it dubs “the bullying LGBTQ+ agenda.”

Project 2025’s harmful anti-LGBTQ+ agenda is just one piece of the radical right-wing Heritage Foundation document. Project 2025’s goals are to make life harder for LGBTQ+ Americans.

[shalom-iamcominghome]

Hi, me again with an ask response to an ask, this time re asking for Shabbat accommodations before converting. If anon lives in the US, these FAQs, these guidance materials, and this text of the law, all from EEOC, should help. I pulled this from the first link (bolding for emphasis is mine):

"Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination based on religion. This includes refusing to accommodate an employee's sincerely held religious beliefs or practices unless the accommodation would impose an undue hardship (more than a minimal burden on operation of the business). A religious practice may be sincerely held by an individual even if newly adopted, not consistently observed, or different from the commonly followed tenets of the individual's religion."

If anon is not from the US, I recommend researching all relevant laws before they approach their employer.

Best of luck, anon!

Exactly!! This is great information to have in general, and I hope this will prove helpful to everyone!

This is absolutely true; in my answer, I focused mostly on the idea that you don't have to tell them why you need the time off. I am selective about what my employers know about me, and I encourage everyone to have the discernment between professional and personal life and boundaries. You don't have to justify your life to your employer, and they (in the U.S.) are not entitled to religious discrimination regardless of your status. This is a great reminder, and I want to thank you for reminding me of what is in that title, and for taking the time to send this! It's most certainly appreciated 🩵

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

The Christian Employers Alliance (CEA) won an important victory when a North Dakota federal court ruled that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Department of Health and Human Services cannot force religious employers to pay for or perform “transgender” medical interventions.

The case stemmed from an EEOC decision to redefine and reinterpret “sex discrimination” in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include “sexual orientation” and...

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Joseph (Jake) Klein

Published: Apr 13, 2023

Segregation has a new brand name: racial “affinity groups.” Race-based “affinity groups” have exploded in prevalence across the United States over the last few years, moving from workplaces into schools, religious congregations, and other organizations all across the country. Affinity groups can also be organized around other identity categories such as gender, sexuality, disability, and religion, but affinity groups were first created around racial identity.

In 1969, Xerox employees based in San Francisco launched the Bay Area Black Employees (BABE) caucus, the first known workplace affinity group ("caucus," "employee resource group," and "affinity group," are all terms that have been used to describe the same idea).  Overall, Xerox's chairman at the time, Joseph C. Wilson, was an important leader in driving workplace integration. He reacted to race riots in the 1960's with a mission to increase integration and hire African-Americans who had previously been denied employment opportunities, and took numerous concrete actions to do so.

However, as has happened on numerous occasions to other well-intentioned leaders (including in response to other 1960’s race-riots), Wilson chose to take advice not just from integration-oriented civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr., but from the Black Power activists responsible for the riots. Wilson enlisted the counsel of a group called “F.I.G.H.T.” While much of F.I.G.H.T.’s activism was productive and aimed at pushing back on genuine and oppressive racism, it was also a “decidedly militant” organization that “alienated much of the black middle class” and worked closely with the explicitly anti-integrationist founder of the Black Power movement, Stokely Carmichael.

Today, more than 50 years later, affinity groups have spread to 90% of Fortune 500 companies. These companies sometimes claim that racial affinity groups help foster communication and help bring new ideas to leadership. Corporations also point out that membership in racial affinity groups is usually voluntary, and therefore it cannot be a form of racial discrimination as banned under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 

However, despite these claimed positives, many corporations have also found that affinity groups polarize employees, and many people of color are reluctant to join such groups for “fear of being reduced to their racial identity.” Even when they are organized and advertised as voluntary, the social pressures on individuals to join racial affinity groups are substantial. And although some data supports companies’ intuitions that affinity groups are helpful idea generators, these positive results may be better explained by the existence of a group creating increased discussion time, rather than the racial makeup of that group.

With affinity groups’ recent spread throughout K-12 schools, higher education, religious groups, and many other key institutions throughout our society, we face an even worse danger. While businesses are beholden to the profit motive, schools and other non-profit institutions are not. This creates more opportunities for affinity groups in non-profit institutions to advance a fanatical ideology, since organizational leadership doesn't need to worry, as businesses do, about the possibility that a Marxist ideological agenda would compromise their ability to operate in a financially viable manner.

Advocates of racial affinity groups claim they are not racist or segregationist, but do so while practicing racial segregation and making explicitly racist claims. For example, Truss Leadership, a so-called “racial equity” consulting group that works with numerous school districts, declares that “Racial Affinity Groups are NOT … Racist or segregationist,” but also says they are a place where white people can “reckon with their Whiteness” and non-white people can “take care of themselves and one another…in the absence of Whiteness.”

FAIR ally Ye Zhang Pogue has written beautifully for this Substack on how affinity groups in schools can harm our society by needlessly pitting people against each other along racial lines. What advocates of affinity groups often ignore is how prejudice and discrimination is often caused by diminished contact between groups, and can be overcome by increasing that contact and having group members work cooperatively instead of separately (one of psychologist Gordon Allport’s four conditions for reducing racial prejudice). This insight into the power of contact is the same idea that has driven FAIR Senior Fellow Daryl Davis’s pioneering efforts to get Klan members and neo-Nazis to give up their lives of hate.

Even racial affinity groups' most extreme and vocal advocates have acknowledged that “Caucusing can generate anxiety even at a visceral level for some. For people of color, history has shown that real harm can come from spaces exclusively reserved for white people. … People of color may also experience racial anxiety and stereotype threat, the fear of being viewed through societal stereotype ‘lenses’ by white colleagues and supervisors.” These are not ungrounded fears. Corporations seeking to pursue effective anti-racist strategies would do well to remember the horrors of the interoffice segregation of America’s past.

Segregation in the form of racial affinity groups today is disturbingly similar in concept to the separate bathrooms, water fountains, bus sections, and other spaces in generations past. Then as now, we ought to remember the worldchanging verdict from Brown v. Board of Education, that “Separate [is] inherently unequal.” As Supreme Court Chief Justice Fred M. Vincent explained in the Court’s also unanimous decision for McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, which was cited in Brown v. Board of Education, “To separate [children] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their-hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.”

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The KKK must be beaming with pride at the outright enthusiasm of re-implementating segregation.

Were it discovered that they were shadow-funding this, I would be incapable of feigning any amount of surprise.

Wokeness divides and destroys.

EDIT:

That's so weird. We keep being told that "cRt iS nOt iN sChOoLs." And yet, here we find out that not only is it in schools, but it's a good thing, because "opposing" - as ominous, authoritarian, and nigh on DiAngelo-istic choice of words as I've ever heard - is wrong. Gee, when did that happen? They must have done that really quickly. /s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YM2JvQVXWQg

"DiAngelo's essay doesn't talk about disagreements or debates, but only about those who 'practice' social justice, and those who, quote, 'resist' it."

To actually tell people "[not to] entertain this blog or its opinions" or "don't read the post" has really strong religious blasphemy overtones. Like the priest telling the congregation not to read Harry Potter.

Still, the very first thing the kids do when they get home from church after being told not to read Harry Potter is to read Harry Potter. So sermonizing people on how to close their ears to maintain their moral purity usually doesn't work out that well for the clergy. So, thank you for dangling an irresistible temptation for them, like the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden..

P.S. Opposing gay conversion therapy and child mutilation is a hill I'm willing to die on. Line in the sand. Pretty comfortable there. The latter, at least, used to be a self-evident taboo: you don't tattoo kids, you don't cut children's testicles or breasts off, you don't drug girls by flooding their bodies with quantities of hormones their body is not equipped to handle so they're balding and infertile at 16. Despite pretence to the contrary, these positions aren't the slightest bit controversial.

[nationallawreview]

Supreme Court Ruling on Affirmative Action and Impact on Companies’ DEI Programs

In June 2023, the US Supreme Court voted 6-3 in a decision that significantly changed the way colleges and universities used affirmative action in their admissions. The targets of the lawsuit were Harvard University and University of North Carolina for alleged racial discrimination in admissions. The Ruling  The Court ruled that race conscious college admission policies aimed at maintaining…

[ausetkmt]

The U.S. Equal Employment Oppor­tunity Commission filed a lawsuit against Asphalt Paving Systems on Sept. 26, alleging the company created a hostile environment for Black employees in Zephyrhills, Florida.

The EEOC alleges that Asphalt Paving Systems violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and 1991 by subjecting 12 Black now-former employees — Michael Cheaves, Anthony Clemons, David Cooper, Freddrick Cooper, Broderick Curney, Olusoga Davis, Kendall Gadson, Joseph Haynes, Alvin Matooram, Willie Moore III, David Whipper, and Jack Cornell Youmans to racial harassment in the workplace.

The EEOC claim lays out a litany of allegations against APS, many of which are enumerated below.

According to the lawsuit, the employees were repeatedly called the “N-word” and “boy” by other employees and management. They were also subjected to demeaning working conditions, such as being forced to work in heavy rain while white employees watched. The Black employees were also forced to relieve themselves outside, while white employees were allowed to use the bathrooms indoors.

“Throughout the course of Charging Parties’ employment with APS, they were subjected to racial epithets and racially-charged verbal abuse from white supervisors and co-workers, threatening conduct by white supervisors and co-workers, and being forced to work in demeaning and humiliating working conditions,” the complaint says.

A white foreman named Anthony Buchholz was one of the supervisors who often used racial slurs to refer to Black employees, according to the EEOC.

“Buchholz would use the N-word frequently in front of Curney,” reads the lawsuit. “Curney objected to Buchholz’s use of the N-word directly, but Buchholz continued to use it. After Curney’s objections, Buchholz then came to a job site with a friend and yelled ‘I ain’t gonna ever run from a Black N—r’ at Curney.”

The lawsuit also noted that a foreman named Douglas Henry often called Black employees “boy” and that the company prevented a paving crew from finding other employment by calling a potential employer and telling them not to hire the men. The men were also called “Black boy,” “monkey,” and “Black motherf-cker” by Asphalt Paving System employees.

Supervisor Dennis Williams was overheard saying the Black paving crew “were looking like a bunch of monkeys,” and another employee, Mike Whitson, called Freddrick Cooper a monkey directly to his face “on a frequent basis.” Whitson also called the men “sissies” and “f—ggots” and referred to David Cooper as a “dumb N—r.”

The company’s mechanic, referred to in the lawsuit as “Jackie,” made comments to Black employees such as, “Black is beautiful, tan is grand, but white is the color of the big boss man” and that he was “Black from the waist down.”

By March 2022, every one of the Black employees had either resigned from APS or been fired.

EEOC Regional Attorney Robert E. Weisberg called the racial discrimination the employees faced “toxic.”

“The allegations in this case are deeply disturbing and illustrate the unfortunate reality that, 60 years after Title VII was enacted, toxic racial discrimination still plagues many workplaces in Florida,” said Weisberg. “The EEOC will continue to vigorously fight for the rights of Black employees and applicants to be free from workplace discrimination.”  

The lawsuit asks Asphalt Paving Systems to “institute and carry out” policies, practices, and programs that provide Black employees with equal employment opportunities that “eradicate” their unlawful employment practices as well as provide the plaintiffs with compensation “in amounts to be determined at trial.”

The lawsuit also requests the plaintiffs be compensated for “the unlawful employment practices described herein, including emotional pain, suffering, inconvenience, loss of enjoyment of life, and humiliation,” as well as their legal costs.

[youthincare]

Popular Court Cases that Improved Women's Rights

Roe v. Wade (1973)

One of the most significant cases in the history of women's rights is Roe v. Wade (1973), where the U.S. Supreme Court recognized a woman's constitutional right to choose to have an abortion (Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 1973). This landmark decision invalidated many state laws restricting abortion and established a legal precedent for reproductive autonomy. The case centered around "Jane Roe," a pseudonym for Norma McCorvey, who challenged Texas laws criminalizing most abortions. The Court held that these laws violated the right to privacy protected by the Fourteenth Amendment (Greenhouse, 2011). Roe v. Wade remains a cornerstone of reproductive rights jurisprudence, despite ongoing challenges and debates.

Griswold v. Connecticut (1965)

Before Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court's decision in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) laid the groundwork for reproductive rights by recognizing the right to privacy in marital relations (Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 1965). The Court struck down a Connecticut law that prohibited the use of contraceptives, even by married couples, ruling that it violated the "right to marital privacy" (Eisenstadt v. Baird, 1972). This case was instrumental in establishing privacy rights that later cases would expand to include broader reproductive freedoms.

Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972)

Following Griswold, Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972) extended the right to use contraceptives to unmarried individuals, emphasizing that the right of privacy must extend to individuals, not just married couples (Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438, 1972). This decision marked a significant step in recognizing women's autonomy over their reproductive choices, irrespective of marital status, thus broadening the scope of reproductive rights established in Griswold.

Brown v. Board of Education (1954)

While not exclusively a women's rights case, Brown v. Board of Education (1954) played a crucial role in the broader civil rights movement, which significantly impacted women's rights (Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 1954). The decision to desegregate schools provided a foundation for challenging discriminatory practices against women and other marginalized groups, thereby contributing to the legal and social environment that supported women's equality.

Reed v. Reed (1971)

Reed v. Reed (1971) was a landmark Supreme Court case that addressed gender discrimination directly (Reed v. Reed, 404 U.S. 71, 1971). The case involved a dispute over who should administer the estate of their deceased son, with Idaho law preferring men over women. The Supreme Court ruled that the law's preference for men over women was unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This decision was the first time the Court struck down a law for discriminating based on gender, setting a precedent for future gender discrimination cases (Babcock, 1975).

United States v. Virginia (1996)

In United States v. Virginia (1996), the Supreme Court ruled that the Virginia Military Institute's male-only admissions policy violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515, 1996). The Court held that gender-based classifications must demonstrate an "exceedingly persuasive justification" and that VMI's policy did not meet this standard. This decision reinforced the principle that gender discrimination requires rigorous judicial scrutiny and must serve important governmental objectives (Ginsburg, 1997).

Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson (1986)

Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson (1986) was a critical case in the development of workplace rights for women, specifically addressing sexual harassment (Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson, 477 U.S. 57, 1986). The Supreme Court recognized that sexual harassment constitutes a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination based on sex. This case established the legal framework for understanding and addressing sexual harassment in the workplace, significantly advancing women's rights in employment (MacKinnon, 1979).

Loving v. Virginia (1967)

While primarily known for ending bans on interracial marriage, Loving v. Virginia (1967) also had implications for women's rights by affirming the right to marry and choose one's partner, which is a fundamental aspect of personal autonomy (Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 1967). This case emphasized the importance of individual choice in intimate relationships, a principle that underlies many aspects of gender equality and women's rights (Koppleman, 2002).

Obergefell v. Hodges (2015)

Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) legalized same-sex marriage across the United States and, in doing so, reinforced the principles of equality and personal autonomy that underpin many women's rights cases (Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644, 2015). This decision highlighted the broader struggle for civil rights and the interconnectedness of various movements advocating for equality.