June, 29 2009, 01:46pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Drew Courtney or Josh Glasstetter,Phone: 202-467-4999,Email:,media@pfaw.org
Supreme Court Rules Against Diversity in Ricci
The Supreme Court today ruled 5-4 to overturn the Second
Circuit's decision in Ricci v. Stefano.
The Court's ruling severely limits the ability of governments and private
corporations to create a diverse workforce.
People For the American Way Executive Vice President Marge Baker issued the following statement:
WASHINGTON
The Supreme Court today ruled 5-4 to overturn the Second
Circuit's decision in Ricci v. Stefano.
The Court's ruling severely limits the ability of governments and private
corporations to create a diverse workforce.
People For the American Way Executive Vice President Marge Baker issued the following statement:
"Anyone looking for more evidence of how conservative the Supreme
Court has become will be well served by today's decision. The Court
today seriously undermined Title VII's protections against acts that may
appear harmless on their face but that, in fact, have a discriminatory
effect.
"Title VII dramatically improved the diversity of police and fire
departments that previously had few, if any, minorities or women. Under
the restrictions put in place today, it will be much more difficult for these
departments to continue to build a diverse workforce.
"The Court today set a new standard for how states and cities
across the country can operate--and in the process exposed conservative
cries for 'judicial restraint' as utterly hypocritical. It
seems conservative legal activists are perfectly happy to have judges rewrite
the law as long as they get the result they want. In Ricci, the far right wing of the Court defied
Congress's well thought out design for encouraging diversity and preventing
discrimination in favor of its own preferred policy. If the ruling
has any upside, it's that we'll no longer have to listen to the
Right's cries of 'judicial activism' with a straight
face."
People For the American Way works to build a democratic society that implements the ideals of freedom, equality, opportunity and justice for all. We encourage civic participation, defend fundamental rights, and fight to dismantle systemic barriers to equitable opportunity. We fight against right-wing extremism and the injustice it fosters.
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Amid Spying Fight, House Passes Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act
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While applauding the U.S. House of Representatives' bipartisan passage of a bill to ensure that "law enforcement and intelligence agencies can't do an end-run around the Constitution by buying information from data brokers" on Wednesday, privacy advocates highlighted that Congress is trying to extend and expand a long-abused government spying program.
The House voted 219-199 for Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act (FANFSA), which won support from 96 Democrats and 123 Republicans, including the lead sponsor, Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio). Named for the constitutional amendment that protects against unreasonable searches and seizures, H.R. 4639 would close what campaigners call the data broker loophole.
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Wednesday's vote followed the House sending the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act to the Senate. H.R. 7888 would reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows for warrantless spying on noncitizens abroad but also sweeps up Americans' data.
The House notably included an amendment forcing a wide range of individuals and businesses to cooperate with government spying operations but rejected an amendment that would have added a warrant requirement to the bill, which the Senate could vote on as soon as Thursday.
Noting those decisions on the FISA reauthorization legislation, Ruddock stressed that "today's vote is a victory but follows a recent loss and ongoing threat as that Section 702 bill moves to the Senate this week too."
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Jeramie Scott, senior counsel and director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center's Project on Surveillance Oversight, also praised the House's FANFSA passage on Wednesday.
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Kia Hamadanchy, senior policy counsel at ACLU, similarly said Wednesday that "the bipartisan passage of this bill is a flashing warning sign to the government that if it wants our data, it must get a warrant."
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While claiming that President Joe Biden backs "Palestinian aspirations for statehood," one of the cables asserts that "it remains the U.S. view that the most expeditious path toward a political horizon for the Palestinian people is in the context of a normalization agreement between Israel and its neighbors."
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The renewed push for Palestine's U.N. membership comes as Israel wages a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Authority, which hasn't controlled Gaza for nearly two decades, rejected the Biden administration's requests to hold off on seeking full membership.
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As The Intercept's Ken Klippenstein and Daniel Boguslaw noted:
Since 2011, the U.N. Security Council has rejected the Palestinian Authority's request for full member status. On April 2, the Palestinian Observer Mission to the U.N. requested that the council once again take up consideration of its membership application. According to the first State Department cable, U.N. meetings since the beginning of April suggest that Algeria, China, Guyana, Mozambique, Russia, Slovenia, Sierra Leone, and Malta support granting Palestine full membership to the U.N. It also says that France, Japan, and Korea are undecided, while the United Kingdom will likely abstain from a vote.
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Belgium—which is seeking economic sanctions against Israel in response to its genocidal war on Gaza—is expected to join Spain's push for Palestinian statehood after the country's European Union presidency expires in June.
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