NYT: In Defense of Workers (US Supreme Court)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/29/opinion/29thu1.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

May 29, 2008
Editorial
In Defense of Workers

The Supreme Court handed down a pair of well-reasoned, fair-minded rulings this week upholding the rights of employees who charge age and race discrimination. The decisions, which forbid employers from retaliating against such workers, are a welcome break from some of the recent rulings by this court that have ignored precedent and common sense to throw out legitimate claims of unfair treatment.

In the age case, Myrna Gómez-Pérez, a United States Postal Service worker, alleged that she was subjected to retaliation, including having her supervisor make baseless accusations against her, after filing an age-discrimination complaint. Ms. Gómez-Pérez sued, but the Postal Service argued that the age-discrimination law covering federal workers did not prohibit retaliation.

The court ruled for Ms. Gómez-Pérez in a 6-to-3 vote. The majority opinion, by Justice Samuel Alito, concluded that Congress intended to protect workers in her position from retaliation. It relied in large part on the Supreme Court’s interpretation of other anti-discrimination laws with similar language. Regrettably, Chief Justice John Roberts was in dissent, writing an opinion that was too willing to break with respect for precedent to reach its anti-worker result.

In the race case, the court ruled 7 to 2 in favor of Hedrick Humphries, a black employee of a Cracker Barrel restaurant. Mr. Humphries charged that he was dismissed for complaining to managers when another black worker was fired, allegedly for race-based reasons. The issue was whether a post-Civil War-era law he sued under, widely known as Section 1981, bars retaliation. The majority relied on a previous decision holding that a similar statute covers retaliation claims.

A few years ago, these rulings would have been unremarkable. But the Roberts Court has been ignoring precedent and misreading Congress’s intent a lot lately to rule against victims of unfair treatment. The most notorious case was the court’s 5-to-4 ruling last year that Lilly Ledbetter, a manager in a Goodyear Tire and Rubber plant in Alabama, had missed the deadline to complain that the company paid her less than her male colleagues. A bill to overturn the ruling has passed in the House and is pending in the Senate.

It is not only workers who have been given a raw deal. In a shocking decision last year, the court ruled, 5 to 4, that a prisoner challenging his confinement had filed his case too late — even though it was within the deadline set by a federal judge. The majority ignored the court’s precedents to rule that because the judge was mistaken about the deadline, the prisoner was out of luck.

The court may have realized after its Ledbetter ruling — which has been criticized not only in Congress, but on the presidential campaign trail — that the American people want a Supreme Court that does not stack the deck in favor of the powerful. Or, it may simply be getting better at reading the will of Congress and respecting precedent. Whatever the explanation, we hope that this week’s decisions signal a new direction for the court.