[ Issues ]

Civil and Human Rights

Reversing the GOP Court Packing

Recognizing the importance of federal court judges, the radical right set out 20 years ago on a relentless political effort to pack the courts with conservative ideologues. This began during the Reagan and first Bush administrations. During the Clinton administration, Senate Republicans blocked votes on numerous qualified, moderate judges in order to keep those seats open in the hopes that a Republican president would later fill them with conservative ideologues. During the past eight years, President Bush moved to complete the right wing court-packing plan. Because federal judges are appointed for life, these right-wing judges could have the power to change the nation for decades to come.

As a result of this right-wing court-packing campaign, in recent years the federal courts have increasingly narrowed or struck down laws that protect the rights of minorities, women, and working men and women. Much of this happened outside of public view. While most people know about the role of the Supreme Court and the importance of a Supreme Court nomination, far fewer pay attention to the lower federal courts. Yet these courts can have an even greater effect on the law than the Supreme Court. While the Supreme Court typically hears fewer than 100 cases a year, the federal courts of appeal, which are the courts that are immediately below the Supreme Court, decide almost 30,000 cases a year. Thus, the courts of appeal are the courts of last resort for most people.

During the coming years, the UAW and our allies look forward to working with the Obama administration to reverse the court- packing campaign that has been carried out by the right wing. We will be encouraging the Obama administration to make sure that judicial appointments are not politicized, but rather are based on a commitment to fair and equal treatment of all individuals, and to maintaining rights for workers, minorities and women.

Affirmative Action

In 2008, the leader of anti-affirmative action ballot initiatives, Ward Connerly, continued his campaign to pass anti-equal opportunity initiatives in more states including Colorado, Nebraska, Missouri, Arizona and Oklahoma. Working with our allies in the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, Colorado’s anti-equal opportunity ballot initiative was defeated, marking the first time that a Ward Connerly ballot initiative has been voted down in a statewide election. However, Connerly did succeed in passing an anti-equal opportunity initiative in Nebraska. In Oklahoma, he withdrew his anti-affirmative action initiative because he failed to collect the needed signatures required to qualify the initiative for the ballot. In Arizona, the resolution to refer Connerly's initiative to the ballot was defeated. These defeats signaled a shift in the momentum that Connerly and his allies have enjoyed over the past 12 years.

During the coming year the UAW will continue our outreach efforts throughout the nation on the importance of affirmative action and steps to end discrimination. We are committed to preventing the recurrence of discrimination and to creating equal opportunities for qualified minorities and women.

Action

Hate Crimes Prevention Legislation

Hate crimes are an affront to American ideals. When people are targeted for violence because of who they are, entire communities suffer. When local government cannot or will not prosecute the perpetrators of hate crimes, the federal government must be able to take a stand on the side of justice.

In the first 100 days of the Obama administration, the UAW and our allies in the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights will be pushing for the passage of the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act. This legislation would strengthen the federal hate crimes law by removing unnecessary obstacles to federal prosecutions and by providing authority for federal involvement in a wider category of bias-motivated crimes.

Current law leaves federal prosecutors powerless to intervene in bias-motivated crimes when they cannot establish that the crime was committed because of the victim's involvement in a "federally protected activity," such as attending a public school or voting. Federal prosecutors also lack standing to get involved in the prosecution of bias-motivated crimes based on the victim's gender, sexual orientation or disability. The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act would fix those problems by allowing federal involvement in the prosecution of violent crimes based on race, color, religion and national origin, as well as gender, sexual orientation and disability.

In 2007, the House passed this hate crimes prevention legislation. The Senate subsequently approved this measure as an amendment to the defense authorization bill. However, the Bush administration and GOP congressional leaders blocked this measure from becoming law.

President Obama and Democratic congressional leaders strongly support enactment of this anti-hate crimes legislation. Thus, the UAW is optimistic that it can be enacted promptly in 2009. President Obama also has indicated that his Justice Department will make enforcement of anti-hate crimes laws a priority.

Action

Racial Profiling

Is racial profiling real? Most Americans think so. This year, the Department of Justice released a survey that found that African-Americans and Hispanics are more than twice as likely as whites to be searched, arrested, threatened, or subdued with force when stopped by police. A Gallup poll reported that 55 percent of whites and 83 percent of blacks believe racial profiling is widespread. Reports of thousands of racial and ethnic group members across the country add credibility to the perception that racial profiling is real.

Racial profiling is any police or private security practice in which a person is treated as a suspect because of his or her race, ethnicity, nationality or religion. This occurs when police investigate, stop, frisk, search or use force against a person based on such characteristics, instead of evidence of a person's criminal behavior. Racial profiling often involves the stopping and searching of people of color for traffic violations. Although normally associated with African-Americans and Latinos, racial profiling also affects Asians, American Indians and, increasingly after 9/11, Arabs, Muslims and South Asians.

Although the Bush administration's Department of Justice issued guidelines on the use of race in law enforcement, its directive has a huge national security exception and lacks any enforcement mechanism. Thus, stronger federal legislation is needed to combat racial profiling in America.

Federal legislation should define racial profiling, make it illegal and require data collection on all law enforcement encounters. This legislation should provide individuals harmed by racial profiling with the power to stop law enforcement agencies from continuing to profile based on race, religion or nation origin.

Racial profiling violates the 14th Amendment of the Constitution and detracts law enforcement resources from the detection of real threats. It also builds a wall of distrust between minority communities and law enforcement. Passage of legislation forbidding racial profiling would send a strong message to minority communities that the federal government is committed to eliminating racial profiling and improving the relationship between police departments and the people they serve.

The Obama administration supports legislation to ban racial profiling by federal law enforcement agencies and to provide funding to state and local police departments if they adopt policies to prohibit this practice. The UAW and our civil rights allies look forward to working with the Obama administration and the 111th Congress to enact such legislation.

Action

Violence Against Women

For decades, the UAW has advocated ending violence against women and is proud of our role in helping to secure the initial passage of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) in 1994. VAWA not only increased funding for programs and services addressing violence against women, it also improved the response of law enforcement agencies to the victims of such violence.

However, more needs to be done to address this important issue. Additional programs are needed to help provide economic support for victims escaping violence. This includes assistance with housing, as well as allowing victims to receive unemployment insurance if they had to leave a job to escape violence.

Each year approximately 2 million women are physically or sexually assaulted by an intimate partner in the United States. Recent studies show that more than half the victims of intimate partner violence are foreign-born. Immigrant women face more barriers to receiving treatment for domestic and sexual violence than women who are citizens. Often the abuser will use a woman’s immigration status to blackmail her into staying in the relationship and facing the battering.

The Obama administration supports expanding programs to combat domestic violence to protect women and children. The UAW and our civil rights allies will be working during the coming year to enact legislation that will achieve this objective.

Action

Equal Pay

In May 2007, the Supreme Court held in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber that the statute of limitations for bringing pay discrimination claims under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 begins to run from the day a pay decision is originally made, rather than from when the employee is subject to the decision or injured by it. This decision was a sharp departure from precedent, and would greatly limit the ability of workers to seek redress for unlawful pay discrimination.

As a result of the public outcry over this terrible decision, legislation was quickly introduced in Congress to overturn the Ledbetter decision. On July 31, 2007, the House passed this legislation, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, by a vote of 225-199.

A similar bill, the Fair Pay Restoration Act, was introduced in the Senate. The UAW and our civil rights allies urged senators to pass this important measure to restore the ability of workers who have been injured by pay discrimination to pursue their claims in court. In April 2008, supporters of the bill narrowly fell short of the 60 votes needed to proceed. The final vote was 57-42.

In light of the Democratic gains in the Senate in the 2008 elections, and the election of Barack Obama as president, the UAW is optimistic that this legislation can be enacted early in the 111th Congress. Enactment of this measure will be a priority for the UAW and our civil rights allies.

President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act on June 10, 1963. Yet more than four decades after its passage, equal pay is not a fact of life for American women and minorities. According to 2006 Census Bureau data, women still earn only 77 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts. The same data shows that women of color experience even greater disparities: African-American women make 72 cents for every dollar compared to men, while Hispanic women make only 56 cents. Even though women's wages and educational attainment have been rising, there is still a sizable gender wage gap that cannot be explained by factors other than discrimination.

Over the past three decades, we have made some progress in closing the wage gap between women and men. But we must not stop now. Despite remarkable changes in women's labor force participation and educational attainment, women continue to earn lower wages than their male counterparts.

In 2008, the UAW supported legislation to strengthen the Equal Pay Act by closing loopholes that have undermined the effectiveness of this law. This included provisions increasing penalties for equal pay violations, and prohibiting retaliation against workers who inquire about or disclose information about employer wage practices. During the coming year we will work with our allies in the civil rights community to pass equal pay legislation that will ensure that individuals subjected to unlawful pay discrimination are able to effectively assert their rights under federal anti-discrimination laws.

Action

Voting Rights for Citizens of Washington, D.C.

The nearly 600,000 residents in our nation's capital have no voting representation in the U.S. Congress. Although they pay federal taxes, serve on juries, and defend our country by serving in the armed services, they are represented only by a nonvoting delegate to the House of Representatives and have no representation at all in the Senate. The UAW and our allies in the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights strongly support full voting rights for the residents of the District of Columbia.

As a first step, during 2007 we supported the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act (DC VRA). This bill would add two voting members to the House of Representatives, one for the District of Columbia and one to represent Utah. D.C. is linked to Utah because Utah very narrowly missed getting an additional congressional seat following the 2000 U.S. Census. Officials in Utah believe that thousands of missionaries living abroad were unfairly excluded during that census count. The DC VRA addresses that concern and provides a "vote-neutral" solution by adding two seats to the House, most likely represented by a Democrat in D.C. and a Republican in Utah.

The DC VRA passed the House of Representatives in April 2007, but was blocked in the Senate by a Republican filibuster in September. During the coming year, the UAW will continue to work with our progressive allies to pass this legislation to bring long-overdue voting rights to the residents of the District of Columbia.

Action

Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA)

The UAW has a long and proud tradition of supporting the fundamental principle that employment decisions should be made on the basis on one's ability to perform a job, and not on extraneous characteristics or traits. Federal laws already outlaw job discrimination based on race, sex, religion, national origin, age or disability. Unfortunately, however, there is no prohibition against discrimination based on sexual orientation. As a result, thousands of Americans are denied employment opportunities each year because of their sexual orientation. This blatant discrimination takes many forms, including workers who are fired, denied promotions, not hired or subjected to harassment on the job simply because of their sexual orientation.

To correct this injustice, the UAW and our civil rights allies have supported the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). This legislation would expand Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to prohibit job discrimination against individuals based on their sexual orientation. ENDA recognizes that an individual's sexual orientation has no bearing on that person’s ability to perform their job. It says that employers should not be allowed to stigmatize an entire group of individuals based on this irrelevant criteria.

In November 2007 the House passed this important civil rights measure. But this legislation was never approved by the Senate. During the 111th Congress, the UAW will be urging Congress to approve this legislation. President Obama is committed to signing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act into law as soon as it reaches his desk.

Action

Legal Services Corporation

The Legal Services Corporation (LSC), created by Congress in 1974, helps provide low-income Americans with access to the civil justice system. LSC-funded programs assist poor people with a wide range of legal issues, including housing, domestic problems, and obtaining government benefits. A large majority of legal aid clients are women and a significant part of the lawyers’ case loads involve domestic abuse against women with children.

The National Organization of Legal Services Workers, UAW Local 2320, represents attorneys, paralegals, and support staff at many of the 138 LSC-funded programs across the country, as well as those at many other legal aid programs that do not receive funding from LSC. Congress appropriates money annually to LSC, which in turn distributes grants to independent legal services and legal aid programs in all 50 states. Each year, the UAW advocates in Congress for increased funding for LSC.

The Republican Contract with America included a goal of eliminating the Legal Services Corporation entirely. In 1995, the first year the Republicans controlled Congress, they slashed LSC’s budget by more than one third. As a consequence of this and subsequent cuts in LSC's funding, at least 80 percent of the legal needs of poor people are currently unmet.

In addition to slashing funding, Republican opponents of LSC added "strings" to the federal funds that severely restrict the activities of LSC-funded programs. Most egregiously, LSC-funded programs are not allowed to use money raised from private sources to perform prohibited services, such as aiding undocumented workers with wage claims against agribusiness employers. The UAW opposes this "private money restriction" and will continue to work with allies to have it lifted.

LSC supporters in Congress and outside, including the UAW, fought to save the program more than a decade ago and have been working since then to increase the federal funding level. When Democrats took control of Congress in January 2007, they gave an increase to LSC in the FY 2007 appropriations. Both the Senate and House Appropriations subcommittees with jurisdiction over LSC funding recommended another increase for FY 2009, but at the time this paper was written, it was still unclear how funding for the LSC would fare in the final appropriations measures for FY 2009. Even with a hike in funding for this fiscal year, however, the UAW continues to believe that funding for LSC still needs to be increased substantially. Thus, during the coming year we will continue to push for additional funding for LSC and to remove the private money restriction.

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