House, Senate Introduce Civil Rights Act of 2008
House and Senate Democrats recently introduced the Civil Rights Act of 2008, which Workplace Prof blog reports will do the following: "eliminate the 1991 Civil Rights Act damage caps under Title VII and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA); amend the Equal Pay Act (EPA) to allow the 'bona fide factor other than sex' defense only if an employer shows that the factor was job-related was actually used and further legitimate business purposes; add compensatory and punitive damages to the Fair Labor Standards Act's (FLSA) remedial framework (which includes the EPA); amend the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) to prohibit clauses requiring arbitration of federal constitution or statutory claims, unless parties knowingly and voluntarily consented after the dispute arises, or as part of a collective bargaining agreement; allow winning plaintiffs to recover expert fees and expand the definition of prevailing party; give the NLRB authority to award backpay to undocumented workers; provide individuals the right to sue federally funded programs under Title VI, Title IX, the Rehabilitation Act, and the ADA; require that ADEA disparate impact claims be analyzed the same as Title VII claims; condition states' receipts of federal funds on states' waiver of sovereign immunity against individual claims for monetary damages under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), the FLSA, and Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA)."
Get more legal news from DiversityInc. Read about the rewrite of the ADA and the history of race-based government decisions.
Why Did Army Tell VA to Stop Helping Soldiers?
Soldiers at Fort Drum are asking why the Army has stopped them from getting help with their disability paperwork and why the VA, which is charged with helping veterans, is siding with the Army, reports National Public Radio (NPR). One answer might be that when the VA helped Fort Drum soldiers with the paperwork, they apparently got higher disability ratings than soldiers from other bases. The Army told the VA to stop helping soldiers describe their army injuries, and the VA did as it was told, an unnamed soldier told NPR. Read how you can help veterans with disabilities.
Supreme Court Overturns Desegregation Plan; School Comes Up With New One
Race, income and education level--all three would be considered equally in assigning students and keeping Kentucky's Jefferson County public schools integrated despite a Supreme Court ruling that threw out the district's desegregation policy because it weighed individual students' race too heavily in assigning them to schools, reports The Courier-Journal. The school superintendent said the district's new plan was vetted by lawyers and meets the Supreme Court's ruling. "Our objective is to maintain schools that are racially, ethnically and economically diverse," Berman said to The Courier-Journal. "It's a model based on geography, not race." Under the new desegregation plan, all schools would have to enroll at least 15 percent but no more than 50 percent of its students from economically and educationally depressed neighborhoods and neighborhoods that have higher-than-average numbers of Latinos and Blacks. Read why race still counts in school desegregation and why many called the Supreme Court decisions against voluntary school-integration policies the "end of an era."
Gay CEOs Ponder Coming Out
While coming out for a CEO can stall or derail a career by sparking backlash from clients, shareholders or boards of directors and trigger consumer boycotts or alumni mutinies, more CEOs who are gay or lesbian are choosing to reveal their orientation, reports Philly.com. The fear of revealing a gay or lesbian orientation is self-generated, says Kirk Snyder, author of The G Quotient: Why Gay Executives Are Excelling as Leaders. "That closet has become very familiar," Snyder, 47, who came out 15 years ago, told Philly.com. "You're not fooling anybody. Employees take their cues from you. Everybody knows, but nobody talks about it. We can't live that way anymore."
Bob Witeck, the openly gay CEO of Witeck-Combs Communications in Washington, D.C., and author of Business Inside Out, told Philly.com that gay CEOs might not reveal their orientation because "It's more important to represent the company than yourself. You don't want to go off script. You don't want to be perceived by a conservative board of directors as pushing an agenda." Read personal stories about coming out at work.
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