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Upholding Family Leave
EDITORIAL, NYTimes on the Web, May 28, 2003
The Supreme Court's decision yesterday holding that state employees can sue
for damages under the Family and Medical Leave Act struck an important blow
for women's rights and humane employment practices. It may also signal that
the court is beginning to moderate its destructive use of the doctrine it
calls "federalism" to invalidate or limit laws passed by Congress.
Yesterday's case involved an employee of the Nevada Department of Human
Resources whose wife was recovering from a car accident. When the employee
and the state disagreed about the amount of leave he was allowed under the
Family and Medical Leave Act and he was terminated from his job, he sued.
Nevada claimed immunity from such lawsuits under the 11th Amendment.
In recent years, the Supreme Court has used the 11th Amendment to carve out
broad immunity for states against lawsuits by their own employees. In a 2000
decision, the court held that states are immune from suits for damages brought by older workers under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. In
2001, it ruled that states have similar immunity in lawsuits by disabled
workers suing under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Yesterday's 6-to-3 decision, with a majority opinion by Chief Justice
William Rehnquist, broke with that line of cases. Millions of state workers
will now have full protection under the Family and Medical Leave Act, giving
them greater ability to balance their work lives against crises at home. The
decision also promotes sexual equality because family care has often fallen
on women.
But the Supreme Court is still wrongly discriminating among kinds of discrimination. Because it is sympathetic to gender-based claims, it has
held that states are not immune to suits like the one at issue yesterday.
But in the case of age and disability, about which the court has been more
skeptical, states can discriminate without fear of being sued for damages.
This makes no sense.
The larger problem is that a conservative majority on the court has been on
a campaign to extend states' rights by limiting Congress's power to legislate. It has justified this power grab for the states by creating a
nonsensical doctrine of state immunity - what Justice John Paul Stevens, in
a concurring opinion yesterday, called "the second 11th Amendment," based in
"judge-made" law, not "constitutional text."
In our constitutional system, Congress has the power to protect all Americans, including the millions who work for state governments, from
discrimination and other harms. The Supreme Court recognized that power yesterday. We hope it does so more regularly in the future.
Submitted by:
Messrs. John Crowell Campbell & Richard John Harrison, Co-Founders &
Sponsors of Gay & Lesbian Political Action & Support Group
(GayPASG@att.net), & the Task Force for Same-Sex Marriage. Visit
www.gaypasg.org for mission statements.
Edward G. Martone, Political Advisor |
