{"id":4940,"date":"2011-10-29T16:43:50","date_gmt":"2011-10-29T20:43:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sidebarforplaintiffs.naomifein.net\/?p=4940"},"modified":"2012-02-18T11:27:49","modified_gmt":"2012-02-18T16:27:49","slug":"new-bias-case-v-walmart-but-kids-lets-not-sue-anybody-anymore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sidebarforplaintiffs.naomifein.net\/?p=4940","title":{"rendered":"New bias case v. Walmart…but kids, let’s not sue anybody anymore!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday’s New York Times<\/em> had one piece of excellent lawsuit news and a weird opinion piece that sneered condescendingly, seemingly at the excellent news.<\/p>\n

Here’s the news, nicely encapsulated in the link: Women File New Class-Action Bias Case Against Wal-Mart – NYTimes.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A speedy four months after the usual five Supremes downed a women’s class action suit against Wal-Mart (“Scalia said the case involved ‘literally millions of employment decisions,’ [and that the plaintiffs] were required to point to ‘some glue holding the alleged reasons for all those decisions together'”), the plaintiffs’ lawyers came back with the glue.<\/p>\n

Good. Yet in the same NYT a law professor at Stanford (didn’t I warn you about Stanford’s swing to the right?), Richard Thompson Ford, offered a smug, condescending opinion on such lawsuits, in “Moving Beyond Civil Rights.”<\/a><\/p>\n

Ford’s contention is, in essence: all these wonderful civil rights movements and lawsuits have so succeeded in eliminating “social injustices”… WE DON’T NEED TO SUE ANYMORE!<\/p>\n

What do we need? Well, “comprehensive solutions.” And what are these comprehensive solutions? Hm. I’m not too sure. General rules about being fair, being nice to each other. I think that’s what he’s proposing.<\/p>\n

He’s vague and almost conscientiously pleasant and sort of stupid, as if he thinks he’ll soothe us into nodding off. But then he wakes you up with a know-it-all statement about our “federal bench that has grown increasingly hostile to civil rights over the past three decades, [and] that’s unlikely to change.” And “The progressive jurisprudence of the 1960s was an aberration; a reactionary judiciary was the historical norm in American history from Reconstruction through the New Deal.”<\/p>\n

So I guess civil rights lawyers should give up, accept Ford’s notion that what he labels as the “norm” is immutable, and take up another specialty, like, I dunno. Corporate law? Teaching at Stanford?<\/p>\n

And the rest of us depressed plaintiffs should bow our heads in submission: nothing progressive will come off the Great Court Bench in our lifetimes.<\/p>\n

I think this guy is a sneak, a 21st century Lord Haw Haw<\/a> attempting to demoralize us. What he’s laying out in NYT print is the right-wing’s idea of an “intellectual” underpinning for their war to re-install a pre-20th century patriarchic oligarchy in the United States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday’s New York Times had one piece of excellent lawsuit news and a weird opinion piece that sneered condescendingly, seemingly at the excellent news. Here’s the news, nicely encapsulated in the link: Women File New Class-Action Bias Case Against Wal-Mart … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[337],"tags":[161,42,60,4,9,41,34,3],"class_list":["post-4940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-news","tag-civil-rights-lawsuits","tag-class-action-lawsuits","tag-employment-lawsuits","tag-interpreting-lawyers","tag-law-and-government-agencies","tag-legal-causes-of-action","tag-situations-demanding-lawsuits","tag-understanding-lawsuits"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t