SCOTUS expands state power over tribes, large U.S. firms extend abortion benefits and HR workers are entitled to retaliation protections too ??
Reuters Legal
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???Good morning.?Large U.S. law firms are offering abortion travel benefits after the Dobbs ruling, Pennsylvania Law is removing a controversial SCOTUS justice's name from its campus, the 11th Circuit said retaliation protections extend to HR workers too and the U.S. Supreme Court today widened the power of states over Native American tribes.?We break it all down in today's Legal File ??
Several large U.S. law firms have now promised to cover travel costs for employees seeking abortions after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to the procedure.
Cozen O'Connor, Dorsey & Whitney, McDermott Will & Emery, Mayer Brown and Morgan Lewis & Bockius have told Reuters that since Monday they will foot travel costs for staff living in states where abortion is now?restricted or banned . Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and Proskauer Rose also said they would offer the same benefit.
The law firms join major U.S. corporations like Walt Disney and Meta, that since the ruling on June 24 have said they would offer travel policies for staff who may no longer have abortion access in their home states.
Some big U.S. law firms, including?O'Melveny?and?Jenner, are already involved in?litigation ?over states' abortion laws. And legal?experts are predicting ?companies covering abortion costs for their employees will face court challenges.
The University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School has said it will remove the name of 19th century U.S. Supreme Court Justice Roger Brooke Taney — who wrote the pro-slavery Dred Scott v. Sandford decision — from a limestone medallion on the exterior of one of its main buildings.
It's the latest in a series of moves by legal educators to rethink the historical figures they honor.?
The decision to remove Taney's name was approved by former university president Amy Gutmann in February, but was not made public until last week.
Law dean Theodore Ruger in July 2020 pledged to examine the medallion and other names on the campus as part of a?series of anti-racist initiatives ?the school unveiled following the murder of George Floyd and nationwide protests over racism.
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The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday rejected claims that human resources managers are exempt from the federal law banning retaliation against workers who report discrimination, and revived a lawsuit against Georgia Pacific LLC.
A unanimous three-judge panel of the court said ?an Alabama federal judge made two key errors in dismissing HR manager Marie Patterson's 2018 lawsuit, wherein she had accused Georgia Pacific of firing her days after learning that she gave testimony in a discrimination lawsuit against her former employer.
The panel said U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Beaverstock was wrong to find that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not shield HR managers who "oppose" discrimination in the course of performing their job duties, and also in holding that because Patterson had testified against her former employer, and not Georgia Pacific, her conduct was not protected by Title VII.
The 11th Circuit said on Tuesday that what matters under the law is employees' conduct and not their job titles. At least three other federal appeals courts have also rejected a so-called "manager exception."
Circuit Judge Ed Carnes:
"Opposition is opposition, whether the opposer is drawing a manager’s salary or not."
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday widened the power of states over Native American tribes and undercut its own 2020 ruling that had expanded Native American tribal authority in Oklahoma, handing a victory to Republican officials in that state.
In a 5-4 decision, the high court ruled in favor of Oklahoma over the state's attempt to prosecute Victor Castro-Huerta, a non-Native American convicted of child neglect in a crime committed against a Native American child - his 5-year-old stepdaughter - on the Cherokee Nation reservation.
The change of course only two years after the previous ruling in a case called McGirt v. Oklahoma was made possible by conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett's appointment to the court by Republican former President Donald Trump to replace the late liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.?
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