The Voting Rights Act of 1965 has long been considered a critical piece of federal legislation in the Civil Rights Movement. Enacted to prohibit racial discrimination in voting, specifically, it has protected racial minorities from unfair and predatory voting regulations like literacy tests, poll taxes, character tests, and property-ownership requirements, to name a few. In 2013, the Supreme Court decided on a case that struck down key provisions of the act, stating that they were based on old circumstances that had no logical connection to present day.

Since that decision, there have been numerous disputes occurring in states that were once subject to the old provisions of the Voting Rights Act. Lawmakers in several states–many southern–have started passing legislation with more stringent requirements to vote. It begs the question, is the Voting Rights Act still relevant and effective today?

History of the Voting Rights Act of 1965

The Voting Rights Act was signed into law in 1965 under President Lyndon B. Johnson during the height of the Civil Rights Movement. It was signed in the wake of “Bloody Sunday,” the infamous voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery where 600 people, including current Congressman John Lewis, were brutally beaten by Alabama state troopers. The Voting Rights Act was meant to eliminate discriminatory election practices, as states were still resistant to enforcing the Fifteenth Amendment, which declared that the “right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

Section 2 of the act mimicked the language of the Fifteenth Amendment by applying a nationwide prohibition on literacy tests to deny citizens of the right to vote. Moreover, the act also contained other special provisions that only applied to particular jurisdictions. Under Section 5, the act required that specific jurisdictions which attempted to pass new voting practices or procedures needed to receive “preclearance” from the Attorney General or the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Section 4(b) of the act defines eligible districts as those which had a voting test in place as of November 1, 1964 and less than a fifty percent turnout for the 1964 presidential election.

For years, the Supreme Court continually upheld the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act, including Section 5. This included thwarting racial vote dilution through discriminatory annexations, redistricting plans, election method changes, and changes in voter registration standards and procedures. The section was originally enacted for five years, but has been renewed continually since its enactment.

Shelby County v. Holder

In 2013, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Shelby County v. Holder. The case, which was out of Shelby County, Alabama, concerned both Sections 4(b) and 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Shelby County sued Eric Holder, the Attorney General at the time, arguing that Section 4(b) and Section 5 were facially unconstitutional, and sought a permanent injunction against their enforcement.

After making its way through the lower courts, it finally reached the Supreme Court. The justices had to decide whether the renewal of Section 5 under Section 4(b) restrictions exceeded Congress’ authority under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, in turn violating the Tenth Amendment and Article Four of the Constitution.

The Supreme Court held, in a 5-4 opinion, that Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional. Essentially, the Court stated that the current formula conflicted with equal sovereignty of the states, as the disparate treatment of states was based on forty-year-old facts, which had no relationship to present day. As Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, “Our country has changed and while any discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation is passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions.”

In Justice Clarence Thomas’ concurring opinion he argued that Section 5 was also unconstitutional, contending that the blatant discrimination against certain voters that Section 5 was intended to protect against no longer existed. According to Justice Thomas, Congress cannot justify the burden of Section 5 without blatant discrimination.

Current Voting Rights Disputes

Since the court’s decision in 2013, many former preclearance states in the South are now embroiled in legal challenges surrounding voting laws. In Texas, the federal district court recently ruled that Senate Bill 14, which required voters to show a form of photo ID before casting a vote, had a discriminatory effect. Senate Bill 14 was passed in 2011, but was blocked by the preclearance requirement of the Voting Rights Act. After Shelby County v. Holder, Texas officials said they planned to enforce the law.

Lawmakers in North Carolina passed a photo ID requirement, and curbed early-voting hours, same-day voter registration, and limited other registration and voting options. This was eventually struck down by the Fourth Circuit, which noted that the provisions targeted African-Americans with “almost surgical provision.” The Supreme Court declined to stay the ruling in a 4-4 split after Justice Antonin Scalia passed away last year. North Carolina has asked the court to hear the case fully, and now that the court has added Justice Neil Gorsuch it’s possible that it could grant the petition for review.

Just recently, a lawsuit has been brought by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law on behalf of five organizations regarding the special election slated to take place in June 2017 in Georgia to replace Republican representative Tom Price. Since the Democrat, Jon Ossoff, failed to achieve the fifty percent threshold needed to win outright, a special election will decide his fate, against Republican Karen Handel. The suit alleges that the Georgia law disenfranchises citizens by requiring voters to have registered for the first round to vote in the runoff. Consequently, since the law means that voters would have had to register in March 2017 to vote in the runoff (before the first election even occurred), a large number of Georgians may be completely stopped from voting in the June 2017 election.

It is Still Relevant?

Just four short years ago, the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder was not hesitant to point out how key sections of the Voting Rights Act were not relevant to modern times. The majority opinion concluded that since the act had worked so well in preventing racial discrimination, it was no longer needed. However, given the numerous laws that have sprung up since the court’s decision, it seems that the act is just as necessary today.

After the act’s initial enactment, it had an instant effect on decreasing racial discrimination in voting. Not only did the number of registered African-American voters increase substantially, but the number of African-Americans elected to office also grew. Moreover, economic growth occurred because of the act. A study of 40 North Carolina counties covered by the act found that those counties experienced larger growth in African-American incomes, occupational status, and attracted more revenue from county and other government sources.

Now, without Section 4(b) in effect to determine which jurisdictions must receive approval of any voting law changes, Section 5 has now become relatively inoperative. Thus, this has allowed states to change laws and policies without any federal oversight.

Conclusion

After Shelby County v. Holder, many former preclearance states jumped at the opportunity to pass more restrictive voting requirements. While lower courts have found subsequent legislation to contain discriminatory intent or effect, the Supreme Court has yet to weigh in on them. Thus, with a full court now in place after Justice Gorsuch’s swearing-in, the legacy of the Voting Rights Act is still up for debate.

Nicole Zub

Nicole is a third-year law student at the University of Kentucky College of Law. She graduated in 2011 from Northeastern University with Bachelor’s in Environmental Science. When she isn’t imbibing copious amounts of caffeine, you can find her with her nose in a book or experimenting in the kitchen. Contact Nicole at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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You might have thought that Bill O’Reilly’s exchange with Maxine Waters was the most racist thing to come out of Fox News yesterday. But, details from a new lawsuit filed by two of the network’s black female employees may have overshadowed O’Reilly’s horrific moment.

According to a report from the New York Times, the two employees–Tichaona Brown and Tabrese Wright, both of whom worked at the network’s payroll department–filed a lawsuit in the New York State Supreme Court, citing that they were subjected to “top-down racial harassment,” from Judith Slater, the Fox comptroller who had worked for the network for almost two decades. Slater was fired after an internal investigation, according to a story first reported by The Wrap. The timeline of Slater’s firing is unclear, but a statement from the network obtained by the Times claims that Slater was fired at the end of February.

Brown and Wright’s lawsuit targets Slater, Fox News, and 21st Century Fox, which owns Fox News. The lawsuit claims that Slater repeatedly made racist and disparaging comments about black people that played into egregious stereotypes, and that the network did not do much to address Slater’s behavior, which made for a hostile work environment. Here are some of the lawsuit’s details as reported by the New York Times:

The women . . .  accused Ms. Slater of making numerous racially charged comments, including suggestions that black men were “women beaters” and that black people wanted to physically harm white people.

They also said that Ms. Slater claimed that black employees mispronounced words, such as ‘mother,’ ‘father,’ ‘month’ and ‘ask,’ and that she urged Ms. Brown to say those words aloud in a meeting. Ms. Wright said Ms. Slater once asked if her three children were all ‘fathered by the same man.’

[…]

The suit also includes allegations that Ms. Slater made disparaging comments about Ms. Wright’s hair and credit score. She and Ms. Brown said Ms. Slater had mocked the Black Lives Matter movement and referred to their majority-black department as the ‘urban’ or ‘Southern’ payroll department.

According to the New York Daily News, the suit also alleges further details of Slater’s racist behavior, including, but not limited to responding to Brown’s goodbyes at the end of the day by raising her hands up in the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” movement, referring to her commuter train to New Jersey as the “Bombay Express, expressing her belief that Chinese men have small penises, and asking Brown and Wright to teach her how to beat box.

In a statement reported by the Times, the company said that “there is no place of inappropriate verbal remarks like this at Fox News,” but were disappointed that Wright and Brown filed the lawsuit because the company believes it already took swift and appropriate action to remedy the situation.

Austin Elias-De Jesus

Austin is an editorial intern at Law Street Media. He is a junior at The George Washington University majoring in Political Communication. You can usually find him reading somewhere. If you can’t find him reading, he’s probably taking a walk. Contact Austin at Staff@Lawstreetmedia.com.

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On Thursday, Airbnb announced a major overhaul of its racial discrimination policies in response to several reports of hosts exhibiting racial bias against renters on the home-sharing app.

Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky (pictured above) released a statement on the company website revealing its investigative partnership with Laura Murphy, the former head of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington D.C. Legislative Office. After looking into every aspect of Airbnb’s platform, Murphy detailed her findings in a report titled Airbnb’s Work to Fight Discrimination and Build Inclusion.

The report lists nine policy changes that would “greatly reduce the opportunity for hosts and guests to engage in conscious or unconscious discriminatory conduct.” The changes include:

1. Beginning November 1, 2016, all app users are required to agree to The Airbnb Community Commitment, which pledges to “treat all fellow members, regardless of race, religion, national origin, disability, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation or age, with respect, and without judgment or bias.”
2. Users must also agree to Airbnb’s “strengthened and more detailed” nondiscrimination policy, the rules of which Airbnb claims are stronger than what are required by law.
3. Airbnb has put in place a full-time product team to fight bias and promote diversity.
4. It will encourage and grow instant book listings.
5. The company will experiment with reducing the prominence of guest photos in the booking process and enhancing other parts of host and guests profiles with objective information.
6. Airbnb will also improve its response to discrimination complaints and better enforce its policies.
7. It will also implement an open door policy for discrimination complaints.
8. Airbnb will offer new training for to help people learning how to fight bias.
9. The company will implement the Diversity Rule, a new policy that will mandate that all candidate pools for senior-level positions include women and candidates from underrepresented backgrounds. Airbnb will also expand efforts to bring economic opportunities to minority-owned business and encourage more people from underrepresented populations to use Airbnb.

The changes come after several Airbnb guests adopted the hashtag #AirbnbWhileBlack to vent their frustrations of being rejected from bookings–only to see the same rental be re-listed later.

#AirbnbWhileBlack #Airbnb pic.twitter.com/3pIGzQsP57

— Q. (@TinaLaBang) July 16, 2015

Black guests’ suppositions were later confirmed by a study conducted by Harvard Business School students Benjamin Edelman, Michael Luca, and Dan Svirsky that found that requests from guests with distinctively African-American names are roughly 16 percent less likely to be accepted than identical guests with distinctively White names. The same also goes for hosts that are black, regardless of whether the property is cheap or expensive

The announcement of new policy changes designed to combat these types of biases is definitely a step in the right direction for the company. Unfortunately there will always be opportunities for people to still discriminate against others. At least now, both guests and users will hopefully be held more accountable.

Alexis Evans

Alexis Evans is an Assistant Editor at Law Street and a Buckeye State native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business from Ohio University. Contact Alexis at aevans@LawStreetMedia.com.

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The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a North Carolina voting law on Friday, concluding that it was passed with clear “discriminatory intent.”

The ruling forcefully reversed a district court finding that did not acknowledge the law’s intent to discriminate. In the ruling, Circuit Court Judge Diana Gibbon Motz writes,

In holding that the legislature did not enact the challenged provisions with discriminatory intent, the court seems to have missed the forest in carefully surveying the many trees. This failure of perspective led the court to ignore critical facts bearing on legislative intent, including the inextricable link between race and politics in North Carolina.

Motz, also writing for judges James Wynn and Henry Floyd, goes on to note that the sequence of events that led to the law provides sufficient evidence to conclude that the law intentionally sought to restrict voting rights of African American voters in clear violation of the Voting Rights Act.

While many argue that voting laws like the one in North Carolina are passed for partisan reasons–by focusing on minority communities that traditionally vote for Democrats, Republican legislators may be seeking an electoral edge–the way this law in particular targeted race amounts to racial discrimination. And yes, challenges to these laws could also be considered partisan efforts on behalf of the Democrats as well, but the racial focus here appears to take it a step further.

A Quick Look at the Voting Rights Act

To understand this case in North Carolina, it’s important to understand the Voting Rights Act. Congress passed the VRA in 1965 to ensure that African Americans and all minority voters would not be discriminated against at the polls.

The law took a particularly active approach to dealing with an enormous challenge. It created a formula to identify states and locales where voting was polarized by race and then added additional safeguards to changing voting laws there. Section 4 of the law created that so-called “coverage formula,” and coupled it with a preclearance requirement in Section 5. That requirement mandated that state and local governments falling within the coverage formula get explicit approval from the Department of Justice before changing voting laws.

The law also maintains provisions to ensure that race-based discrimination does not happen and places redistricting requirements on states to ensure minority representation, among other protections. But the preclearance requirement and coverage formula took the center of attention in an infamous Supreme Court ruling in 2013. That case, Shelby County v. Holder, struck down the coverage formula and ended the preclearance system as it existed at the time. Justice Roberts, who wrote the 5-4 opinion, concluded that the law employed “extraordinary measures to address an extraordinary problem,” but that those measures are no longer needed. He went on to argue that the coverage formula used to determine which areas require preclearance now violates states’ rights and equal sovereignty as laid out in the 10th Amendment.

Since that ruling, governments have been free to change their voting laws as they see fit without the need for preclearance from the Justice Department. And that brings us to the recent challenge in North Carolina.

The North Carolina Ruling

Judge Motz notes in the ruling that between 2000 and 2012–a period when preclearance was needed for to all statewide and many local voting law changes in North Carolina–registration and participation surged among black voters. By 2012, black voter registration had increased by about 50 percent and turnout nearly reached parity with that of white voters, at about 70 percent. But shortly after the Supreme Court issued its Shelby County ruling, the state assembly began the process to overhaul its voting laws. According to the ruling, the new law would have several effects on black voters in the coming November election:

In this one statute, the North Carolina legislature imposed a number of voting restrictions. The law required in-person voters to show certain photo IDs, beginning in 2016, which African Americans disproportionately lacked, and eliminated or reduced registration and voting access tools that African Americans disproportionately used.

In cases like this, it is particularly difficult to prove that a legislature acted with discriminatory intent, but the court concluded that there was enough evidence to indicate that race was central to the new law. That holds true, according to Motz, even if it was done for partisan reasons and not outright racial hatred or racism. The ruling notes that almost immediately after the Shelby County opinion came down in June 2013, the North Carolina legislature began drafting new voting restrictions. It also notes:

Before enacting that law, the legislature requested data on the use, by race, of a number of voting practices. Upon receipt of the race data, the General Assembly enacted legislation that restricted voting and registration in five different ways, all of which disproportionately affected African Americans.

This indicates that shortly after the state did not need preclearance to pass a new voting law, it looked into how certain voting practices related to race, and then passed a new law limiting certain practices. Based on that sequence of events, the court ruled there was clear intent to discriminate based on race.

Going Forward

While the ruling effectively struck down the law, the court declined to use another section of the Voting Rights Act to impose a preclearance requirement on North Carolina after finding discriminatory intent. Essentially, it chose not to reinstate the preclearance requirement on the state using a different part of the VRA. As Rick Hasen–a law professor at University of California, Irvine–notes in a blog post, the state can still appeal the ruling to the Fourth Circuit en banc, which means that all of the judges, not just the original panel of three judges, would review the case. It could also appeal to the Supreme Court, but as Hasen notes, the court may not decide to hear the case given its current eight justice makeup and the Circuit Court’s decision not to implement a preclearance requirement.

Kevin Rizzo

Kevin Rizzo is the Crime in America Editor at Law Street Media. An Ohio Native, the George Washington University graduate is a founding member of the company. Contact Kevin at krizzo@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Racial discrimination by law enforcement has been a long standing issue in the United States. However, in the last couple of years, beginning with the dire situation in Ferguson, Missouri and the mirror images in Maryland, Illinois, New York, and a number of other locations across the country, the public at large has become increasingly aware of the systemic abuse against minorities.

A small piece of victory was served for individuals experiencing systemic abuses by law enforcement as Daniel Holtzclaw, an Oklahoma City police officer, was sentenced to 263 years in prison on January 22, 2015. His trial commenced on November 2, 2015 and was highly criticized for having an all white jury. However, approximately one month before being sentenced, Holtzclaw was convicted by that jury for 18 out of the 36 counts for which he was charged. The sentence, which is to be served consecutively as opposed to concurrently, seeks to rectify the wrongs done to Holtzclaw’s 13 victims (ranging from a 17-year-old teenager to a 57-year-old grandmother), including four counts of first-degree rape and four counts of forced oral sodomy.

The frightening part–Holtzclaw had a strategy to his clearly calculated rapes and sexual assaults. He targeted black women in one of Oklahoma City’s poorest neighborhoods who he knew had criminal histories, predominantly drug and prostitution records, which he could leverage against them should they threaten to approach authorities for his abusive behavior. Which worked…until it didn’t.

Jannie Ligons, a 57-year-old grandmother of 12, was stopped at approximately 2 AM on June 18, 2015 driving through the poor neighborhood in which many of his other victims had been confronted. Holtzclaw made a huge mistake in assuming that Ligons was a resident of the neighborhood, had a low social status, and had reasons to fear the authorities. Quite the costly “mistake” if you ask me. Her testimony recounted the graphic and horrifying details following Holtzclaw’s stop. I do have to issue a warning, as it is graphic.

Returning home from a game of dominoes with a friend, Ligons was stopped by Holtzclaw who was ending his shift. Due to a broken driver-side window, Ligons was directed to the rear passenger side seat of the vehicle and was asked if she had been drinking or if there was anything in her vehicle that she was hiding. She denied possessing anything illegal or to have been drinking. Holtzclaw did not believe her. He demanded that she get out of her vehicle so that he could check her. Holtzclaw demanded that she lift her shirt, which she did, to reveal her stomach. After telling her that was not good enough as something could be hiding in her bra, he forced her to lift her shirt and bra and shone a light on her exposed breasts.

As she noticed Holtzclaw playing with his penis at this time, she heard him instruct her to stand up and pull her pants down. Leaving her underwear on, Holtzclaw shone the light in her private area and demanded she sit back down. She obliged, distressed, only to look up and see his penis in her face. “Please don’t do this…you’re not supposed to do this,” she begged as he forced himself into her mouth. Ligons thought he was going to kill her. He threatened to follow her home, but as she pulled into a driveway to do a U-turn, Holtzclaw took off unexpectedly.

Ligons called the police when she got home. When no one at the police station answered, she and her daughter drove to the station to file the assault. Ligons was taken to the hospital with Kim Davis, an officer of the Oklahoma City Police Sex Crimes Unit, and underwent a sexual assault medical forensic exam. The report filed by Ligons led the Sex Crimes Unit to an unsolved report, and ultimately, to the discovery of a number of victims subjected to Holtzclaw’s sexual abuses, assaults, and rapes.

Other women have recollected their experiences with Holtzclaw, depicting the clear fear for their lives while in his custody. A woman identified as “T.M.,” a known drug user and prostitute, was forced to perform oral sex in order to avoid jail and ended up screaming for her life when Holtzclaw drove her to an open park area, fearing rape and potentially, death. The GPS recorder on Holtzclaw’s police car matched T.M’s testimony.

Further, Holtzclaw violated police protocol for searches of females and even went so far as to touch the bare breasts of victims while conducting searches, stating that they needed to “just play by my rules,” in order to avoid further charges or jail time. Holtzclaw even proceeded to go to the home of one of the victims and harass her at home, while with her family, which ultimately led to the stalking charges against him. Several other victims reported that Holtzclaw entered their homes and raped them while inside. He even raped 24-year-old Sade Hill in her hospital bed as she was detoxing from a spout of intoxication.

As if the killing of innocent and unarmed young black men has not been a frightening and infuriating display of racial discrimination by police, the case against Holtzclaw uncovers an even more troubling layer of abuse–vulnerable black women of low socioeconomic status unable to defend themselves, particularly due to their criminal histories and fear of authorities. Minorities of low socioeconomic status appear to be dispensable scapegoats to law enforcement at this day in age and frankly, it is an unacceptable and outrageous display of power by those trained to protect and serve. While the citizens of the United States continue to protest, demand change, and incite much needed action, a little solace can be taken in the fact that individuals like Holtzclaw and those who abuse their authority and prey on people incapable of fighting sometimes get the cosmic dose of karma their actions deserve.

Ajla Glavasevic

Ajla Glavasevic is a first-generation Bosnian full of spunk, sass, and humor. She graduated from SUNY Buffalo with a Bachelor of Science in Finance and received her J.D. from the University of Cincinnati College of Law. Ajla is currently a licensed attorney in Pennsylvania and when she isn’t lawyering and writing, the former Team USA Women’s Bobsled athlete (2014-2015 National Team) likes to stay active and travel. Contact Ajla at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Reverend Al Sharpton is having a rough week. The controversial civil rights activist, along with Comcast and Time Warner Cable, has just been hit with a huge $20 billion racial discrimination lawsuit. This news came among amidst rumors he’s next on the MSNBC show canceling chopping block.

The lawsuit was filed last week in a U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. The plaintiffs are the National Association for African-American Owned Media (NAAAOM) and Entertainment Studios Network, which was founded by comedian Byron Allen. They argue that Comcast and Time Warner paid activists like Sharpton large amounts of money to “whitewash” their practices by making it appear like the companies were promoting diversity when in actuality they weren’t. According to the plaintiffs, Sharpton and his fellow defendants helped facilitate Comcast and Time Warner’s “racist practices” by refusing to contract with 100 percent African-American owned businesses. The two media giants are currently being reviewed by U.S. regulators for a $45 billion merger.

The lawsuit states:

Comcast and Time Warner Cable collectively spend approximately $25 billion annually for the licensing of pay-television channels and advertising of their products and services ($20 billion licensing and $5 billion advertising), yet 100% African American–owned media receives less than $3 million per year.

The plaintiff goes on to argue that the only fully black-owned channel picked up by Comcast is the Africa Channel, which is owned by Paula Madison, the former Executive Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer of Comcast/NBC-Universal. The lawsuit alleges Madison is part of the supposed scam stating:

[Madison] was directly involved in putting together the sham MOUs and obtaining government approval for the Comcast acquisition of NBC Universal, thus creating a serious conflict of interest. In other words, aside from a channel that is owned and operated by the former Comcast/NBC-Universal executive who authored the MOUs, Comcast has not launched a single 100% African American–owned channel—by way of the MOUs or otherwise.

NAAAOM also claims Comcast used other black channels with black celebrities as “fronts” to “window dress” the truth that those channels are majority owned and controlled by white-owned businesses. Sharpton wasn’t the only one accused of receiving “whitewash” money. The lawsuit also alleges that the NAACP, National Urban League, and National Action Network had a hand in the supposed scam, signing phony diversity agreements with Comcast in exchange for donations.

In an interview with Variety, Comcast rebutted NAAAOM’s claims calling them “frivolous” while Sharpton called the lawsuit a “bogus statement from a person [Allen] who has no credibility”.

This lawsuit couldn’t have come at a worse time for Sharpton, whose MSNBC show appears on the verge of cancellation. According to the Daily Beast, low ratings have forced MSNBC to give up on trying to be the Dr. Jekyll to FOX News’ Mr. Hyde, veering away from ultra liberal commentary in favor of a more traditional type of news. As a result they’re planning to nix left-wing programming and liberal commentators, possibly including the famed Reverend’s lackluster show “PoliticsNation with Al Sharpton.” Neither MSNBC nor Sharpton have confirmed these rumors but the Daily Beast credits “knowledgeable sources at the Comcast-owned cable network” with the information leak. These same sources according to the Daily Beast speculate:

[Sharpton] could eventually be moved from his weeknight 6 p.m. slot to a weekend time period, as MNSBC President Phil Griffin attempts to reverse significant viewership slides by accentuating straight news over left-leaning opinion.

As a whole, it’s not looking too good for Sharpton, even though the outspoken reverend has weathered several controversies in the past. It will be interesting to see what evidence NAAAOM has to support their claims. If found guilty of racial discrimination, Sharpton’s career as a civil rights activist may be unable to survive the irony.

Alexis Evans

Alexis Evans is an Assistant Editor at Law Street and a Buckeye State native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business from Ohio University. Contact Alexis at aevans@LawStreetMedia.com.

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There have been multiple claims recently of big retailers profiling and discriminating against customers of certain races. Law Street’s own Katherine Fabian did a great piece on the discrimination allegations surrounding the popular department store Barney’s. Most of these allegations involved retail workers being asked to follow certain customers–usually black–around stores, or police officers accusing them of using fake credit cards. But an entirely new racial profiling case is dominating the retail news this week, and it’s all about the makeup and cosmetics giant Sephora. There is a lawsuit in progress against Sephora that claims they discriminated against Asian customers by shutting down their accounts and not allowing them to access the same deals as other customers.

If you shop regularly at Sephora you can gain access to particular deals, as well as rack up points that eventually lead to discounted products. A few weeks ago, Sephora announced a huge sale–20 percent off of pretty much anything for their top-purchasing customers. Of course, those customers went nuts over the sale, because it offered serious discounts on products that almost never see slashed prices.

They went so nuts, in fact, that they crashed Sephora’s website. Sephora blamed the crash on people trying to buy huge quantities of the discounted products in bulk, so that they could turn around and sell them in order to make a small profit. There is a known market for this kind of behavior. While the site was coming back online, multiple customers saw their accounts either deactivated or locked out.

There was one thing that a bunch of these locked out or deactivated customers found they had in common though. They were of Asian descent, particularly of Chinese descent. This was discovered when various annoyed customers complained on social media, and quickly began to see a theme.

Four of these customers–Xiao Xiao, Man Xu, Jiali Chen, and Tiantian Zou–have filed a class action suit against Sephora alleging racial discrimination. The suit claims that Sephora discriminated against anyone “of perceived Chinese/Asian descent based on the ill-founded and discriminatory belief that all Chinese/Asian customers abuse discount sales to engage in bulk purchase for re-sale.” Sephora patently denies that any sort of discrimination ever took place. A statement from their company reads:

This lawsuit significantly distorts the facts in this matter. We look forward to defending our actions in court. Among other points, we intend to make very clear that clients from a number of countries around the world have been impacted by a temporary block we needed to place on accounts in order to restore the functionality of our site during a surge of activity by resellers during a promotional event two weeks ago.

The lawsuit has officially been filed by the four women, who live in the United States and were formerly devoted Sephora customers, in the Southern District of New York U.S. District Court. While time will tell, I have a feeling that Sephora will have a hard time arguing that this was all just some horrible coincidence. We may soon see the makeup giant on the same shameful list as Barney’s and other stores that have gotten flagged for racial discrimination.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

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“Gay really is the new black,” proclaimed Daily News columnist John McWhorter in a recent article. John McWhorter is über insightful and I always enjoy watching him on Melissa Harris-Perry, but as Rosa Parks so eloquently said, “No.” No, gay is not the new black.

Courtesy of the Daily Californian

America’s legacy of racism is vastly different from its history of sexual-orientation discrimination and homophobia. The struggle for racial equality is also inapposite to the gay rights movement. The twenty-first century world in which the gay rights movement has so rapidly progressed has itself become a rapid place. Instant gratification is no longer instant enough. “Attention span” has become a sort of a misnomer, suggesting that our attention lasts long enough to actually span. Once upon a time, the adult attention span was somewhere around twelve minutes; that is, the average adult could stay focused on a task for twelve minutes without becoming distracted. Today, however, it’s dropped to five minutes. Some reports even claim that the average attention span on the Internet is two and a half seconds.

Courtesy of David Goehring via Flickr

That’s just ridic. Alas, these are the times in which we’re living. This wasn’t always the case.

Change used to happen at a snail’s pace and the civil rights movement reflects as much. Understanding then that “the arc of the moral universe is long but bends toward justice,” as Martin Luther King, Jr. put it, civil rights lawyers like Thurgood Marshall employed a strategy of chipping away at Plessy v. Ferguson’s wall of segregation. They slowly and methodically attacked the system piece by piece. After more than fifty years, the chipping-away strategy culminated with the Brown v. Board of Education cases in 1954 and 1955, reducing the wall of segregation to a pile of rubble. The gay rights movement on the other hand has bulldozed its way toward some semblance of equality. It was just the mid-1980s when the Supreme Court gave us Bowers v. Hardwick — when it upheld the constitutionality of a state sodomy law that criminalized private, consensual oral and anal sex between two gay men.

In Lawrence v. Texas in 2003 the Court overruled its decision in Bowers. And in the ten or so short years since Lawrence, discriminatory laws across the country have fallen at a neck-breaking pace. Now, I’d probably be hard-pressed to find many people who’ve even heard of Bowers v. Hardwick.

I’ll concede, the reasons the LGBTQ community has accomplished so much so fast are far more complex than I’ve intimated. Somewhere in the mix of reasons is necessarily that the world itself is a faster place today. But who the hell has the time or attention span to delve into all those complexities? Maybe I do? After all, I did spend oodles of time before and during law school thinking about all this stuff. So, after much thought and deliberation about this topic, I’ve come to the conclusion t–

What were we talking about again?

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Chris Copeland (@ChrisRCopeland) is a staff attorney at a non-profit organization in the Bronx, a blogger, and a California ex-pat living in Brooklyn. When he’s not reading, writing, or watching horror, he explores the intersection of race and LGBT issues with Law Street.

Featured image courtesy of [Andy Smith via Flickr]

Chris Copeland

Chris Copeland is a staff attorney at a non-profit organization in the Bronx, a blogger, and a California ex-pat living in Brooklyn. When he’s not reading, writing, or watching horror, he explores the intersection of race and LGBT issues with Law Street. Contact Chris at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Gay is NOT the New Black appeared first on Law Street.

RANT WARNING: Be advised, this post may cause bouts of annoyance, defeatism, and pessimism.

Courtesy of Wifflegif

Initially, I planned to write an upbeat post about the recent celebrations of pride happening across the country: the Puerto Rican Day Parade, LGBT Pride, America’s success in the World Cup, and the Fourth of July, to name a few. I thought it would be interesting to extrapolate from these events a larger analysis of celebrating (or not) one’s identity. And then damn Hobby Lobby happened. Womp womp.

Last week, the Supreme Court held in two cases collectively referred to as Hobby Lobby that for-profit corporations are exempt from complying with the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate on the basis of religious beliefs. Specifically, the Court found that the ACA’s contraception mandate was not the “least restrictive” way for the government to implement this law and thus it created too substantial a burden on the religious freedoms of the companies at issue. In reaching this conclusion, the Court pointed to a less restrictive workaround in the ACA for nonprofits: If there are religious objections to a medical treatment, third parties will provide coverage to the employees.

More broadly, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg argued in her 35-page, no-I’m-not-retiring-yet-assholes, dissenting opinion, Hobby Lobby stands for the principle “that commercial enterprises, including corporations, along with partnerships and sole proprietorships, can opt out of any law (saving only tax laws) they judge incompatible with their sincerely held religious beliefs.”

That’s right: corporations are indeed people. Those legal entities (which, by the way, are created for the purpose of separating the individuals involved from the corporate entity so that those individuals may be shielded from legal liability) apparently eat, sleep, breath, love, and pray? They sound more human than Darth Vader Cheney.

And as persons, corporations can also speak freely (i.e., wholly bankroll political campaigns) and freely exercise their religion (i.e., infringe on a woman’s reproductive rights).

Hell, with the direction in which this Court is taking corporate personhood, businesses — like any actual individual person in this country — may be able to discriminate on a wider scale. What happens when a business owner’s religious beliefs clash with, say, Title VII’s ban on discrimination in employment? What happens when a business owner acts on his belief that being gay is a sin? In answering these questions, I keep seeing the Jim Crow days when business owners were free to discriminate on the basis of race; I keep seeing the 1980s when they were openly homophobic and sexist. That idea is indeed what makes this “a decision of startling breadth,” as Justice Ginsberg put it.

Sure, I understand that slippery-slope, parade-of-horribles arguments are necessarily illogical. But tell that to African Americans who lived through the aftermath of Plessy v. Ferguson’s separate-but-equal holding. Yes, Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority in Hobby Lobby, did promise that the ruling would not open the door to discrimination (exemptions to our anti-discrimination laws). Call me cynical, call me a blasphemer, but frankly I don’t have a whole lot of faith in this Court’s word — this Court that has been so adept at totally flouting precedent and stare decisis when it suits its political ends. Remember Citizens United? Bush v. Gore anyone?

Courtesy of DPMS via Flickr

In fact, we need look no further than last Thursday. Just days after the Court issued its Hobby Lobby ruling, it granted an unsigned emergency order in a new case involving Wheaton College, finding that the very workaround it had hailed as a less restrictive means by which the government could implement the ACA was also unconstitutional — that it substantially burdened the religious freedom of religious employers. What on Earth?! In the span of less than a week Hobby Lobby has already gone further than Hobby Lobby!

So now I sit here wondering what’s next. I wonder how far down this road the Supreme Court will take us. Debbie Downer over here, I know. But this is seriously like the worst season finale ever.

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Chris Copeland (@ChrisRCopeland) is a staff attorney at a non-profit organization in the Bronx, a blogger, and a California ex-pat living in Brooklyn. When he’s not reading, writing, or watching horror, he explores the intersection of race and LGBT issues with Law Street.

Featured image courtesy of [American Life League via Flickr]

Chris Copeland

Chris Copeland is a staff attorney at a non-profit organization in the Bronx, a blogger, and a California ex-pat living in Brooklyn. When he’s not reading, writing, or watching horror, he explores the intersection of race and LGBT issues with Law Street. Contact Chris at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Down the Hobby Lobby Rabbit Hole: Are Federal Anti-Discrimination Laws Next? appeared first on Law Street.