The Militant (logo)  
   Vol. 67/No. 26           August 4, 2003  
 
 
U.S. court rulings register
rulers’ foreboding of
effects of shift
to right in politics
(front page)
 
BY MARTÍN KOPPEL  
The U.S. Supreme Court has issued major rulings in the past two months that register deepgoing trends in social attitudes on fundamental rights. They reflect the judgment among some in ruling circles that the bourgeoisie has gone too far in its attacks on these rights.

The two most prominent cases were the landmark June 23 judgment upholding the constitutionality of affirmative action in university admissions and the June 26 decision establishing that gays and lesbians have a right to privacy and to freedom from discrimination and harassment. But several other rulings strengthened women’s rights in employment, due process in death penalty cases, and the right to privacy.

Advocates of civil and democratic rights “seemed almost stunned by the string of victories they had been handed by a group of justices who were put on the bench mostly by Republican presidents,” the Washington Post stated June 29.

In a July 28 editorial titled “Left Turn,” the right-wing magazine National Review lamented that “the Supreme Court first decided to write ‘diversity’ into the Constitution” and that “a few days later, it issued a ruling on sodomy laws that called into question its willingness to tolerate any state laws based on traditional understandings of sexual morality.” It added that “President Bush actually cheered the affirmative-action decision for recognizing the value of ‘diversity.’”  
 
Family leave for women and men
In addition to the gains for affirmative action and gay rights, the Supreme Court issued a decision that represents a victory for the rights of women and of all workers. The Supreme Court ruled May 27 that state employees have the right to sue their employers for violating their federally guaranteed right to take extended time off work for reasons such as the birth of a child or to care for a family member who is ill.

In a 6-3 ruling, the high court rejected a claim by the Nevada state government to immunity from being sued under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). The law, adopted in 1993, grants up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave a year to both women and men to care for a newborn baby or a family illness, or to recover from a personal illness. It applies to public and private companies with more than 50 employees and to workers with at least 12 months’ seniority. More than 24 million workers a year—nearly 18 percent—take family leave, mostly women.

The case involved William Hibbs, a Nevada state employee who took family leave to care for his wife, who was recovering from a car accident. Hibbs was fired after he failed to return to work when his bosses told him he had exhausted his time off.

Reporters for big-business dailies such as the New York Times expressed surprise that the author of the ruling was Chief Justice William Rehnquist, a Nixon appointee who has often issued conservative opinions.

In the majority opinion, Rehnquist wrote that “a long and extensive history of sex discrimination with respect to the administration of leave benefits by the States” justified removing the constitutional immunity from lawsuits that state governments normally have. Rehnquist added that “the history of many state laws limiting women’s employment opportunities is chronicled in—and, until relatively recently, was sanctioned by—this Court’s own opinion,” and cited rulings from previous decades that upheld legislation barring women from practicing law or tending bar, or limiting the hours women could work.

“Stereotypes about women’s domestic roles are reinforced by parallel stereotypes presuming a lack of domestic responsibilities by men,” Rehnquist wrote. “Because employers continued to regard the family as the woman’s domain, they often denied men similar accommodations or discouraged them from taking leave. These mutually reinforcing stereotypes created a self-fulfilling cycle of discrimination that forced women to continue to assume the role of primary family caregiver, and fostered employers’ stereotypical views about women’s commitment to work and their value as employees.”

The Court said the FMLA was needed “to ensure that family-care leave would no longer be stigmatized as an inordinate drain on the workplace caused by female employees, and that employers could not evade leave obligations simply by hiring men.” The White House, and dozens of members of Congress, urged the court to uphold the FMLA.

In a related development, last September California became the first state to pass a paid-leave law that allows workers to take up to six weeks’ family leave and receive 55 percent of their wages. The program will be funded by payments of about $26 a year by workers at private companies.

In a less-publicized case, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling June 9 that will make it easier for workers to win lawsuits against bosses for discrimination due to nationality, sex, religion, or national origin. The opinion, written by Clarence Thomas, states that it is not necessary for workers to provide “direct evidence” of discrimination—often difficult to prove—but rather “sufficient evidence for a reasonable jury to conclude” that discrimination was at least one factor involved. The case began as a sex discrimination and harassment suit by Catharina Costa, a truck driver and heavy equipment operator at Caesars Palace Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Costa, the only woman working in the hotel’s warehouse, had been fired after a fight with another employee that the bosses cited as a reason for dismissal. She won back pay and damages.  
 
Rights of defendants in capital cases
Working people won another victory in two death penalty rulings. In one case, the Supreme Court asserted the right, not only to counsel but to “effective counsel.” It overturned the death sentence against Kevin Wiggins, a Maryland man charged with murder, on the grounds that a federal appeals court should have granted him a writ of habeas corpus on the basis of ineffective representation by his court-appointed attorney.

Wiggins’s case is typical of those facing many working people, especially Blacks and others from oppressed nationalities, who are routinely denied the right to due process and lack the resources to hire a lawyer. Based on circumstantial evidence, Wiggins was accused of murdering a woman in the apartment complex where he worked as a handyman. No physical evidence linked him to the 1988 killing and he has always denied the charge.

The high court ruled 7-2 that the failure of Wiggins’s lawyers to investigate and inform the jury of the abuse Wiggins had suffered as a child—relevant mitigating evidence—“fell short of the minimum constitutional standards of competence.” The court-appointed public defenders, who had never tried a death penalty case, advised him to waive his right to a trial despite the shaky case against him. The defendant, a slightly retarded man, had no prior criminal record.

In the second case, the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in favor of Thomas Miller-El, a Texas death row prisoner who accused Dallas County prosecutors of engaging in racially biased jury selection for his trial in 1986. The court ruled that during his federal appeal he was denied the opportunity of presenting evidence that the prosecutors had systematically excluded Blacks from the jury—10 of the 11 potential Black jurors were removed. It ordered the federal appeals court to grant Miller-El a habeas corpus hearing.

The evidence “reveals that the culture of the district attorney’s office in the past was suffused with bias against African-Americans in jury selections,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote. One month after Miller-El was sentenced to death, the Supreme Court had ruled that it is unconstitutional to strike jurors solely on the basis of race.

In yet another decision, on June 26 the Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional a California law that retroactively lifted a three-year statute of limitations on child sex abuse cases and allowed prosecution years and even decades after the alleged crimes occurred. The law was part of efforts to undermine basic legal protections in the name of prosecuting “sexual predators.” Ruling 5-4, the court held that the 1993 law violated the Constitution’s Ex Post Facto Clause, which prohibits certain retroactive criminal laws. The clause protects individuals from arbitrary government action changing the legal status of actions that occurred in the past.

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office said it would review more than 200 cases since 1993 that might be affected by the ruling.  
 
Right-wing complaints about ‘left’ shift
Right-wing columnists have decried these decisions. Commentator Joseph Sobran complained in a July 3 syndicated column that “justices appointed by Republican presidents often issue the most liberal rulings,” a trend that has been true since the 1930s labor upsurge and the “New Deal” administration of Franklin Roosevelt. He noted that in 1973, for example, “Harry Blackmun, recently named to the Court by Richard Nixon, wrote the majority opinion striking down the abortion laws of all 50 states.” Today, he said, Justices Kennedy and O’Connor, both Reagan appointees, ruled “that sodomy laws ‘discriminate’ against homosexuals as a ‘class’ or ‘group.’” Such reasoning, he warned, “could lead anywhere.”
 
 
Related articles:
Supreme Court ruling advances gay rights  
 
 
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