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Japanese mayor: Wartime sex slaves were necessary

May 14th, 2013 by

Note: Just when you thought you heard it all. So many things wrong here.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/japanese-mayor-wartime-sex-slaves-were-necessary-042050746.html#

By MALCOLM FOSTER | Associated Press – 1 hr 3 mins ago

TOKYO (AP) — An outspoken nationalist mayor said the Japanese military’s forced prostitution of Asian women before and during World War II was necessary to “maintain discipline” in the ranks and provide rest for soldiers who risked their lives in battle.

The comments made Monday are already raising ire in neighboring countries that bore the brunt of Japan’s wartime aggression and that have long complained that Japan has failed to fully atone for wartime atrocities.

Toru Hashimoto, the young, brash mayor of Osaka who is also co-leader of an emerging conservative political party, also told reporters that there wasn’t clear evidence that the Japanese military coerced women to become what are euphemistically called “comfort women.”

“To maintain discipline in the military, it must have been necessary at that time,” said Hashimoto. “For soldiers who risked their lives in circumstances where bullets are flying around like rain and wind, if you want them to get some rest, a comfort women system was necessary. That’s clear to anyone.”

Full story here:
http://news.yahoo.com/japanese-mayor-wartime-sex-slaves-were-necessary-042050746.html

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How Far Has The Women’s Movement Moved In The Last 40 Years?

May 6th, 2013 by

How Far Has The Women’s Movement Moved In The Last 40 Years?

April 25, 2013

By Lenora M. Lapidus, Women’s Rights Project at 3:40pm

Forty years ago, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) board of directors determined that women’s rights should be the organization’s highest priority. Then-executive director Aryeh Neier, created the ACLU Women’s Rights Project and named Ruth Bader Ginsburg as the first director. Since then, Ginsburg has become a justice on the United States Supreme Court, and the Women’s Rights Project (WRP) has won many landmark court decisions, achieved significant legislative successes, and shifted public awareness and understanding of women’s equality.

Yet many of the struggles that Ginsburg and her colleagues at WRP fought in the 1970s, we continue to fight today. Indeed, the top priorities of WRP in its first decade remain our priorities four decades later: pregnancy discrimination, women’s role in the military and single-sex education based on gender stereotypes.

Ginsburg and her colleagues – like others in the “second wave” women’s movement of the 1970s – recognized that economic security was necessary for women’s autonomy and independence. They identified employment discrimination as a primary source of women’s inequality. Accordingly, an initial target of both litigation and legislative advocacy was unequal employment opportunities.

In order to overcome this obstacle, Ginsburg and her colleagues knew they would have to dismantle the powerful stereotype that the world of work belonged to men while women’s place was in the home. Thus began the effort to unseparate the “separate spheres” of work and family life. Critical to bridging this divide was overcoming the vast gulf of pregnancy discrimination. Society at large in the 1970s viewed women’s primary roles as wife and mother. Barefoot and pregnant was where women belonged.

FIRED FOR BEING PREGNANT

Indeed, it was common practice for an employer to fire a woman as soon as the employer learned the employee was pregnant. For example, one of the early cases that WRP litigated was Cleveland Board of Education v. LaFleur, in which the Supreme Court struck down a policy requiring pregnant teachers to go on mandatory leave midway through their pregnancies.

Eradicating pregnancy discrimination, however, proved to be an uphill battle. In the 1970s, the ACLU participated in a pair of cases in which the Supreme Court held that pregnancy discrimination was not sex discrimination under the Constitution or under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, because the discrimination was against “pregnant persons”, and both women and men could be not pregnant.

In response to these Supreme Court decisions, the ACLU led a coalition of women’s groups that successfully lobbied Congress to amend Title VII by enacting the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 (PDA) to make clear that indeed Congress considered discrimination against pregnant women to be sex discrimination.

Unfortunately, today many employers and courts still seem not to understand that pregnancy discrimination is sex discrimination. A number of courts around the country have ruled in favor of employers who refuse to make minor modifications to jobs for pregnant women, even though they routinely provide such accommodations to other employees who are similarly temporarily unable to perform all aspects of their jobs.

In the case of Peggy Young v. UPS in the 4^th Circuit, we filed a friend of the court brief on behalf of numerous women’s rights organizations, arguing that the law required UPS to offer temporary accommodations for a pregnant package driver, in light of its policy of offering such accommodations for workers injured on the job, workers who lost their driving licenses, and workers covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The Court of Appeals ruled in favor of UPS and held that requiring employers to provide similar accommodations for pregnant workers would elevate pregnant employees to “most favored nation” status. Court decisions like Young have prompted women’s rights organizations to go back to Congress, which introduced a bill called the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act to make clear that employers may not refuse to accommodate pregnant workers.

Advocates are also responding to bad court decisions by trying to fix the problem of pregnancy push-out at the state level. The ACLU of Maryland and others, including Peggy Young, successfully pushed for enactment of a law that will help ensure that pregnant workers in Maryland can no longer be forced off the job. Similar bills have been introduced in New York, Iowa, Illinois, and Maine. Other states, including Michigan, Connecticut and California already have such protections.

To continue reading Lenora’s insights into women’s rights and the work the ACLU Women’s Rights Project has done to advance equality visit Trustlaw.

For a more in-depth examination of the accomplishments of the Women’s Rights Project under Ginsburg’s leadership and all that remains to be done to combat gender stereotypes, download a copy of Fighting Sex Stereotypes in the Law: Reflections on 40 Years of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project.

Learn more about women’s rights and other civil liberty issues: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.

Published on American Civil Liberties Union (http://www.aclu.org)

Source URL: http://www.aclu.org/blog/womens-rights-lgbt-rights-religion-belief/how-far-has-womens-movement-moved-last-40-years

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Kentucky Supreme Court rules student was entitled to Miranda warnings before questioning by assistant principal in the presence of school resource officer

May 2nd, 2013 by

Kentucky Supreme Court rules student was entitled to Miranda warnings before questioning by assistant principal in the presence of school resource officer

N.C. v. Kentucky, No. 2011-SC-000271 (Ky. Apr. 25, 2013)

Abstract: The Kentucky Supreme Court, in a 4-3 split, rules that a high school student, who was detained in the school office for questioning by an assistant principal regarding giving prescription drugs to a classmate in the presence of a school resource officer, was entitled to Miranda warnings before the school official began the questioning. The court’s majority held “that any incriminating statements elicited under the circumstances of this case, with a school official working with the police on a case involving a criminal offense, the police failing to give Miranda warnings, and the juvenile being in custody, are subject to suppression under the Unified Juvenile Code and the Fifth Amendment.” It concluded that the student was in custody at the time of questioning and any statements made must be suppressed.

Facts: Issues: A teacher at Nelson County High School (NCHS) found an empty prescription pill bottle for hydrocodone with student N.C.’s name on it on the floor in the boy’s bathroom. An investigation was conducted before N.C. was questioned. Assistant Principal Michael Glass, having ascertained that N.C. had given some pills to a classmate, went with Steven D. Campbell, a Nelson County deputy sheriff assigned to NCHS as the School Resource Officer (SRO), to remove N.C. from class for questioning.

CHRO News, February, 2013

An Open Letter to School Superintendents, Principals and Presidents of the PTA/PTO

Discrimination based on gender identity or expression is illegal under

Public Act 11-55

Read the letter at – http://www.ct.gov/chro/lib/chro/School_Letter_re_Bullying__Gender_Identity.pdf

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YEAR IN REVIEW: Anoka-Hennepin School District seeks to make progress after challenging times

Jan 4th, 2013 by

Source: Press & News

By Mindy Mateuszczyk on January 3, 2013 at 12:03 am

Anoka-Hennepin School District made national headlines for its sexual orientation policy in 2011, which led to breaking more news in 2012 with a consent decree resulting from a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by six students in 2011. Here’s a look at some of the top news stories in the school district for 2012.

Anoka-Hennepin School District reaches

lawsuit settlement/Tinglestad resigns

Anoka-Hennepin School Board members approved a consent decree, achieving settlement in two federal investigations and a harassment lawsuit. After more than a dozen mediation sessions and months of research, review and rough drafts, Anoka-Hennepin School District administration announced March 5, that they reached a proposed agreement that involved monetary compensation and specific follow-up measures to be enacted and overseen by the Department of Justice for the next five years.

Represented by Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), six students filed the lawsuit stating the district failed to intervene when they were being bullied over their perceived gender identity or sexual orientation. While some of the students remain in the district, for others, the situation had gotten so bad they ended up leaving altogether for safety.

The settlement also addresses the federal inquiry into the way the district handled issues involving bullying and sexual orientation, which began in 2010. The Justice Department said the agreement was a collaborative effort among the parties to the suit.

The investigation by the departments of Justice and Education found that the school district violated Title IX and Title IV of the Education Code by permitting a hostile environment against students on the basis of sex, including the failure to conform to sex stereotypes. Federal investigators reviewed more than 7,000 district documents and included interviews with more than 60 individuals, including current and former students, parents, district staff, teachers and administrators.

Superintendent Dennis Carlson described the consent decree as “a positive statement of the continuing effort to ensure a welcoming environment for all students and families in our district.”

The 61-page decree describes several steps Anoka-Hennepin will take to enhance its current anti-harassment efforts.

As part of the settlement, the six students were paid a total of $270,000 by the district’s insurance carrier. Additionally, the school district was also required to achieve the following:

• Retain an equity consultant to provide a systemic review and recommend any needed revisions to district policies related to harassment, as well as district procedures relating to the investigation and response to incidents of harassment, parental notification, and tracking of harassment incidents.

• Hire a Title IX/equity coordinator who will implement district policies and procedures, monitor complaints, ensure that district administrators and staff adhere to sex and sexual orientation-based discrimination laws, and identify trends and common areas of concern.

• Work with the equity consultant and Title IX coordinator/equity coordinator to develop improved and effective trainings on harassment for all students and employees who interact with students.

• Ensure that a counselor or other qualified mental health professional will be available during school hours for students in need.

• Hire a mental health consultant to review and access current practices in the district relating to assisting students who are subject to harassment.

• Provide additional specificity to further strengthen its annual anti-bullying survey.

• Expand the district’s harassment-prevention task force formed the summer of 2011 to advise the district regarding how to best foster a positive educational climate for all students.

• Work with the equity consultant to further identify hot spots in district schools where harassment is or becomes problematic, including outdoor locations and on school buses, and work the with equity consultant to develop actions that better align with a safe, welcoming school environment.

• Implement a tracking system that tracks reports of incidents and requires the district to investigate in a timely fashion. Comprehensive data management will be required on every incident.

School Board Chairman Tom Heidemann said the $500,000 cost to implement those steps would come from a specific fund allocated for health and safety areas of the school district. The settlement money will be paid by the school’s insurance. Despite the findings of the Departments of Education and Justice, Heidemann was still unwilling to admit any mistakes on behalf of the district as he reiterated past commentary.

“The district determined through an exhaustive investigation that our administrators and teachers dealt with the harassment reports in a professional, timely and appropriate manner,” said Heidemann. “We are concerned that a monetary settlement negotiated by our insurer, Riverport, leaves the impression that our staff did not take appropriate action.”

The lawsuits were dismissed with the district denying fault or wrongdoing, the district stated in a press release.

As part of the agreement, a five-year partnership was established between the Anoka-Hennepin School District and the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Office for Civil Rights (OCR). The DOJ and the OCR will monitor and assist the district’s implementation of the consent decree through 2017. Should the district fail to implement the measures or if disputes arise, the issue would end up back in court.

“We approach the monitoring role of the DOJ and OCR in a spirit of collaboration, as it will provide an opportunity for continued communication on this important concern. Our efforts to further address harassment related to sexual orientation will result in positive change in our schools that will extend far beyond the five years of the consent decree,” said Superintendent Carlson.

As a result of the lawsuit, Dist. 6 representative Kathy Tinglestad resigned from her position on the board. She served a little more than three years on the board, first appointed in January 2009, then elected to a full term in November 2009, from which she resigned in April 2012.

Tinglestad cast the lone opposing vote against the consent decree. In a letter she read at the press conference, Tinglestad cited three reasons she voted against the settlement: costs, governance issues and precedent.

As part of the result of the consent decree, the school district also adopted a new policy to replace the sexual orientation policy that promoted neutrality. The new policy called the “respectful learning environment” policy can be read in its entirety here: http://www.anoka.k12.mn.us/education/components/docmgr/default.php?sectiondetailid=233661&fileitem=116008&catfilter=11704

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