![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Oct. 23rd, 2009
This whole story
Oct. 23rd, 2009 06:21 amgets me so upset every time I think about it that I have to just step back and do something else.
Except you know what? He's right. Defense contractors shouldn't have to police the contracts of their subcontractors. Instead of having a law that forbids the Defense Department from doing business with companies that require mandatory arbitration for Title VII claims, we should have a law that forbids mandatory arbitration for Title VII claims. Problem fucking solved.
And there are a zillion reasons that such a law would be a wonderful thing, including the obviously superior bargaining power that employers have, the fact that their bargaining power will be particularly severe when it comes to the very groups that Title VII is meant to protect, the fact that arbitration is notoriously business/employer friendly, the fact that employees are not repeat players in the system the way that employers are and thus have less information when they sign these contracts, and the fact that if it's arbitrated, it's not public, and you don't get a public judicial decision, and thus the law cannot "learn" and develop.
But no, we don't have such a law. We can't even get the goddamn Franken amendment.
Except you know what? He's right. Defense contractors shouldn't have to police the contracts of their subcontractors. Instead of having a law that forbids the Defense Department from doing business with companies that require mandatory arbitration for Title VII claims, we should have a law that forbids mandatory arbitration for Title VII claims. Problem fucking solved.
And there are a zillion reasons that such a law would be a wonderful thing, including the obviously superior bargaining power that employers have, the fact that their bargaining power will be particularly severe when it comes to the very groups that Title VII is meant to protect, the fact that arbitration is notoriously business/employer friendly, the fact that employees are not repeat players in the system the way that employers are and thus have less information when they sign these contracts, and the fact that if it's arbitrated, it's not public, and you don't get a public judicial decision, and thus the law cannot "learn" and develop.
But no, we don't have such a law. We can't even get the goddamn Franken amendment.
Ninth Circuit allows Washington State to release the names of people who signed a petition to put a repeal of same-sex partnership rights on the ballot (.pdf)
It's pretty damn obvious that the only reason anyone wants these names is so that they can harass or shun people for their political views. And in that respect, it feels uncomfortably like the days when the southern states tried to get all members of the NAACP to register publicly and thus identify themselves. For that reason alone we should be wary, even if the legal analysis is different.
And the Ninth Circuit is right that these names are, in a sense, public already - people sign the petitions in public, the process of petition gathering is observed, the state gets the names and reviews them - so it's not like these names are a "secret" in the strict sense of the word. But the Ninth Circuit, like a lot of courts, is just not acknowledging the different levels of "public." "Public" in the sense of being somewhere in a records office or happening on a street corner is just not the same thing as "public" in the sense of mass distribution. In the computer age, courts have to come up with a better understanding of the distinction between different levels of public. See, e.g., What Fordham Knows About Justice Scalia.
It's pretty damn obvious that the only reason anyone wants these names is so that they can harass or shun people for their political views. And in that respect, it feels uncomfortably like the days when the southern states tried to get all members of the NAACP to register publicly and thus identify themselves. For that reason alone we should be wary, even if the legal analysis is different.
And the Ninth Circuit is right that these names are, in a sense, public already - people sign the petitions in public, the process of petition gathering is observed, the state gets the names and reviews them - so it's not like these names are a "secret" in the strict sense of the word. But the Ninth Circuit, like a lot of courts, is just not acknowledging the different levels of "public." "Public" in the sense of being somewhere in a records office or happening on a street corner is just not the same thing as "public" in the sense of mass distribution. In the computer age, courts have to come up with a better understanding of the distinction between different levels of public. See, e.g., What Fordham Knows About Justice Scalia.