Category Archive

Gov. Scott Walker’s victory in the Wisconsin recall election this week was no surprise to anyone but Big Labor. Unions were furious when Walker and the Republican-controlled legislature cut back their right to bargain on anything beyond wages. Democratic legislators fled the state for several weeks in 2011 in order to try to prevent a final vote from taking place. Demonstrators took over the state capitol, and when that didn’t work, unions and left-leaning groups gathered signatures to force a recall vote. Related posts: TESTIMONY OF ROGER CLEGG, PRESIDENT AND GENERAL COUNSEL, CENTER FOR EQUAL OPPORTUNITY BEFORE THE U.S. COMMISSION …

While much of the world’s attention is focused on the Assad regime’s appalling assaults against Syrian citizens, with more than a hundred dead in this week’s massacre in Houla alone, another human rights atrocity occurring on a much larger scale garners far less attention. Related posts: The Immigration Impasse Destroying Records to Hide Race Discrimination Roger Clegg testifies regarding H.R. 40 TESTIMONY OF ROGER CLEGG, PRESIDENT AND GENERAL COUNSEL, CENTER FOR EQUAL OPPORTUNITY BEFORE THE U.S. COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS REGARDING THE PROPOSED EMPLOYMENT NON-DISCRIMINATION ACT

“Minority Babies Are Now Majority in United States,” read the headline in the Washington Post a couple of weeks ago. And one thing that an increasingly multiracial and multiethnic United States cannot have is a system in which its institutions treat people differently according to skin color and what country someone’s ancestors came from—where, for example, public universities, government employers, and public contracting officials give preferential treatment to some and discriminate against others on the basis of race and ethnicity. Such division was never a good idea and is now simply untenable. E pluribus unum—now more than ever. Related posts: 50th …

The Wisconsin recall election of Republican Gov. Scott Walker is not going quite like the unions and the Democratic Party expected. Back in 2011, many pundits thought that the governor had overreached when he took on public employee unions, restricting — though not eliminating — collective bargaining rights. But he did so because he inherited a state in dire financial shape with a deficit of $3.6 billion and public employee pensions and benefits that threatened to bankrupt the state. Related posts: TESTIMONY OF ROGER CLEGG, PRESIDENT AND GENERAL COUNSEL, CENTER FOR EQUAL OPPORTUNITY BEFORE THE U.S. COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS …

Like many Americans, genealogy has been a keen interest of mine. I’ve had a good sense of where my family came from — Spain on my father’s side and the British Isles on my mother’s. But what I knew was only part of the story. And this Sunday, May 20th, what I subsequently learned will be aired on the PBS series “Finding Your Roots.” Related posts: TESTIMONY OF ROGER CLEGG, PRESIDENT AND GENERAL COUNSEL, CENTER FOR EQUAL OPPORTUNITY BEFORE THE U.S. COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS REGARDING THE PROPOSED EMPLOYMENT NON-DISCRIMINATION ACT Suggested Reading on Civil Rights Issues Five Mistakes Some …

Last week, I noted that the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has issued new “Enforcement Guidance” designed to make it much riskier for employers to consider arrest and conviction records in hiring decisions, on the grounds that such considerations can have a “disparate impact” on the basis of race.  But later last week, with some help from the Center for Equal Opportunity, the House of Representatives passed by voice vote an appropriations amendment that will forbid the EEOC from using any of its funds “to implement, administer, or enforce” this guidance. Kudos to Representative Ben Quayle (R., Ariz.), who introduced …

The U.S. dodged another terrorist bullet when a would-be “underwear bomber” turned out to be a double agent. The news became public this week after rumors had circulated in April that Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), a Yemini-based group that is now the chief terrorist threat against the U.S., had been planning a spectacular attack to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the American raid that killed Osama bin Laden last May 2. Related posts: TESTIMONY OF ROGER CLEGG, PRESIDENT AND GENERAL COUNSEL, CENTER FOR EQUAL OPPORTUNITY BEFORE THE U.S. COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS REGARDING THE PROPOSED EMPLOYMENT NON-DISCRIMINATION …

Our friend Jennifer Gratz—of Gratz v. Bollinger, the Supreme Court case that struck down racially preferential undergrad admissions at the University of Michigan in 2003—passed along to usthis interesting news story from Detroit.  It’s about one Jerome Morgan, who is being asked by the city to prove he is black and, therefore, truly eligible for a contract preference that allegedly the mayor would rather give to someone else for political reasons. Related posts: TESTIMONY OF ROGER CLEGG, PRESIDENT AND GENERAL COUNSEL, CENTER FOR EQUAL OPPORTUNITY BEFORE THE U.S. COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS REGARDING THE PROPOSED EMPLOYMENT NON-DISCRIMINATION ACT Politicized external …

The Obama administration’s record on human rights, never strong, just got a whole lot worse. This week’s dramatic saga of Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng’s escape from house arrest in Shandong province to safety inside the U.S. Embassy to the embassy’s role in handing him over to Chinese authorities is a disgraceful tale. Once again, the Obama administration has chosen to put human rights violations on the back burner, as it has nearly every time it has been asked for help, whether from Iranian protesters in 2009 or Syrian freedom fighters today. Related posts: TESTIMONY OF ROGER CLEGG, PRESIDENT AND GENERAL …