I think Elie Mystal wrote about this a while ago. If I recall correctly, he came down on the side of banning dreadlocks being both racist, but also from a technical legal perspective, within the bounds of current law. I'll try to track down the article.
both racist, but also from a technical legal perspective, within the bounds of current law
So like, completely American.
The opinion is an interesting read. The decision was based, in part, on a 1975 decision regarding men with long hair.
I think the emphasis on immutability is misplaced, especially given that religion is a protected category.
That's the piece I was going to link too, especially because the line about his mom being in town is one of my favorite things ever.
Dreadlocks are a complicated style because for many of my (non-Rastafari) friends who wear them they're spiritual-but-not-religious in a way other hairstyles aren't. Starting them is personally meaningful and cutting them or combing them out is too. (I've been splitting Mara's lately, every time I retwist her locs dividing a few into two smaller sections instead of one huge one, which restarts the locking process. Going from a head of locs to loose hair with any significant length took most of my friends who've done it about a month's work.)
Does this mean that white people with dreadlocks are horrible because they make this kind of decision seem not-racially linked?
Also, the 11th Circuit makes it look like the EEOC made a mistake by not framing this as a disparate impact case.
Of course, banning dreadlocks on employees at a call center is too ridiculous for words. Title VII should be amended to add all the protected categories in the DC Human Rights law:
It is the intent of the Council of the District of Columbia, in enacting this chapter, to secure an end in the District of Columbia to discrimination for any reason other than that of individual merit, including, but not limited to, discrimination by reason of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, marital status, personal appearance, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression familial status, family responsibilities, matriculation, political affiliation, genetic information, disability, source of income, status as a victim of an intrafamily offense, and place of residence or business.
(I've been splitting Mara's lately, every time I retwist her locs dividing a few into two smaller sections instead of one huge one, which restarts the locking process. Going from a head of locs to loose hair with any significant length took most of my friends who've done it about a month's work.)
Huh, I'm ignorant. I thought locs were irrevocable -- you had to cut them short to change the style.
I thought locs were irrevocable
But not immutable.
ll
for those in need of diversion:
"disco matryoshka" and, ummmm, herpes. enjoy!
l>
This thread should have been called "The Dred Locks Decision".
9: It depends on how you create and maintain them. Mara's were started from two-strand twists (so like a rope) and she had 36 and will have about 60 when I finish. With hers, I sort of rip the loc in half from the end, sometimes comb out the shed hair and buildup she has, because locs started on preschoolers get messy pretty easily. Hers will still be very big and thick but a little more manageable than her giant ones where I've had a hard time getting the hair around her face incorporated into what was there.
Nia has more than 200 locs, so some of them are quite thin. I started them from single-strand twists, so each strand coiled around my finger. Hers could also be combed out if I needed to, but I've been combining some that look like they're so thin they might break.
Sisterlocs and very thin and/or very tiny locs are maintained by interlocking and weaving the loc through its new growth. Those you couldn't undo just with a comb and patience and a ton of conditioner. A few combs, I guess, since even just in working with Mara's I've ripped the teeth out of a comb.
Not legally inevitable at all though per 7 it seems like disparate impact would have been a better theory to proceed on than disparate treatment. It should be easier to proceed on both those theories simultaneously but the standards for each really preclude the other. That is, disparate treatment requires pretty clear and invidious intent, and disparate impact requires total cluelessness.
It's also a feature of employment law that there aren't a lot of ways to get at a shitty employer, so a lot of legit but legally unrecognized grievances have to be shoehorned into rather restrictive discrimination frameworks. Not that that's what happened here, just one of my hobby horses. Along with turkey cults and magnesium.
7: I suspect that wasn't a mistake, and that they specifically disavowed disparate impact because they wanted to use this case to try to broaden disparate treatment doctrine.
The distinction between "hair texture" and "hairstyle" that the opinion draws also seems misguided. Hairstyle, in many instances, is a function of hair texture--it's not really all that mutable.
16: No shit, I have a friend who got pushed out of a job. I think she's filing a claim with the EEOC and the state commission on discrimination which has a slightly broader scope. The supervisor was shitty about letting her use the service elevator as a back up to the regular elevator, which is shitty because she has a spinal cord injury. This particular supervisor seemed to have a pattern of abuse and discrimination toward individuals with psychiatric disabilities. But the more I look into it, the more I wonder if this woman isn't just abusive and awful to almost everyone. In the latter case, there's less recourse.
19: tbf there are often fairly strict rules about whether you can put people in a service lift. I know we aren't allowed to do so at my place of work.
They let my former boss use it during fire drills for just asthma. Which sounds like less of a deal than a spinal injury.
20: Not sure about everywhere in the US, but everywhere I have worked, people normally accompanied the items being transported. I think the bigger pount isthat if the passenger elevator was unreliable, it should be management's responsibility to make an accommodation (work from home? office on the first floor?) that they find acceptable.
16: yeah - my first boss was an incredibly abusive bully. I lasted six months in that job.
But when friends would ask why I didn't sue given the terrible treatment (all equivalent to emotional abuse), I had to point out that he was an "equal opportunity" bully. He treated ALL of the junior associates the same way.
There's no law against being an asshole. It's only when you cross the line into being a sexist/racist/etc asshole that the law can sink its hooks into you.
And then, only sometimes.
There's no law against being an asshole
Only in 49 states.
Definitions. In this part, the following definitions apply:
(1) "Constructive discharge" means the voluntary termination of employment by an employee because of a situation created by an act or omission of the employer which an objective, reasonable person would find so intolerable that voluntary termination is the only reasonable alternative. . . .
(5) "Good cause" means reasonable job-related grounds for dismissal based on a failure to satisfactorily perform job duties, disruption of the employer's operation, or other legitimate business reason. The legal use of a lawful product by an individual off the employer's premises during nonworking hours is not a legitimate business reason . . .
Elements of wrongful discharge . . . (1) A discharge is wrongful only if: (a) it was in retaliation for the employee's refusal to violate public policy or for reporting a violation of public policy; (b) the discharge was not for good cause and the employee had completed the employer's probationary period of employment; or (c) the employer violated the express provisions of its own written personnel policy.
Which state do I need to be careful in?
I forget who usually links Chris Arnade here but he is on fire lately. https://twitter.com/Chris_arnade
22: agreed. And in fact the even larger point is that the passenger lift is so unreliable that people routinely need to use a backup!
Of course, per 21, no one should be using any lifts during a fire, surely, asthma or not?
27: Can you trust a man who publicly admits he doesn't know the meaning of "pwned"?
25. Looks a lot like the constructive dismissal laws here, but in practice the "objective, reasonable person" is forced to be pretty subjective in their definition of "so intolerable that voluntary termination is the only reasonable alternative". Most claims are not upheld.
But something like that should be federal law as a minimum.
28.2. There is or should be a "fire lift" which can be isolated from the rest of the system and used in some circumstances by the emergency services to move their kit around. Again in some circumstances it can be used to evacuate disabled and injured people who are in the refuges on each floor.
Of course all this implies that the H&S standards in the building have been updated in living memory.
31: That's what this was. There was list of people who couldn't make it down the stairs. Maybe a forty story building.
We have constructive discharge as a component of the federal anti-discrimination laws, but you still have to be able to fit into a protected category for it to matter, federally.
Also constructive discharge requires that things be bad enough that you actually have to leave. I mean there are tort ways to get at an employer who like, locks you in a broom closet, I guess.
I've surely mentioned before having been involved in a discrimination case where the interviews with the jurors afterwards made clear that tortious interference was a much better fit, but because it wouldn't have had fee shifting, title VII was the preferred vehicle.
In this case, fees were well more than twice the damages awarded; award might have gone higher, but plaintiff had mitigated, and the jury didn't think the standard for punitives was met (common law punitive standard, not the easier but capped title VII standard).
Inside a broom closet it's too dark to sue.
If anyone knows everything about the admissibility of evidence of gang affiliation in non-conspiracy crimes, I need to figure it out and make it seem interesting/complicated for a presentation next week.
I don't know how often the admissibility of gang evidence comes up in employment cases though honestly it's probably not never.
I suppose it comes up less often than how to file a W-2 comes up in actual gangs.
Huh. Lawyers, like math teachers, skip the even numbered problems.
It's almost always going to be baseline relevant where it's sought to be admitted so not 401, no real controversy around that. (If it's REALLY irrelevant and it comes in there can actually be some 1amm issues but I'm presenting to a bunch of con law experts so not going to wade into areas where they'll be more likely to spot gaps.)
More 403/404. And I need to understand whether/when cops need to qualify under 702 to talk about gang activity. Hi non-lawyers, here's a meaningless list of numbers.
Maybe that explains why everybody is always screaming about the 2nd Amendment but there's hardly any litigation about it compared to the 1st.
Only a lawyer could distinguish that which is unauthorized from that which is forbidden.
46. Thus we differentiate a free society from an authoritarian one: in a free society that which is unauthorised is merely the product of individual or group initiative without reference to authority; in an authoritarian society it is synonymous with forbidden. (There are obviously gradations, but that's what you need to keep your eye on.)
I was looking up something else earlier this year, and there seemed to be an awful lot of 702 gang activity cases out there.
|| Hanukkah gift hijack:
My smart, non-violent, non-sports-loving 18-year-old niece wants PS4 games. She has played practically nothing before but wants to start. My 10-second research suggests these:
Journey
flow
Flower
Portal
Portal 2
Limbo
Fez
Opinions on these or others?
Thanks, and hair racism is bad.
|>
49 I see he wrote Watership Down when he was 52 which is encouraging.
NMM to Carrie Fisher, too. And she was only 60.
I suppose I should own the pwnage that is 53
52 and 53:
Perhaps we should abandon this rule just this once.
My smart, non-violent, non-sports-loving 18-year-old niece wants PS4 games.
I don't know if its too violent for your needs, but The Last of Us is a PS exclusive that is considered one of the best games of all time.
Portal is really good. Fun and challenging. Not a gamer and haven't played the rest.
A rare case when NMM probably does literally apply, for a not insignificant number of people who were 70s teenage geeks.
59 to 52-3, although some people really do love bunnies.
I guess that's what people mean when you hear talk about "the rabbit."
50: Portal and Portal 2 are both fun and very funny; the latter has a great multiplayer mode. I adored Fez's puzzles, and its universe is charming and quirky and beautiful. flow is literally about critters eating other critters, so that might not satisfy the non-violence criterion (also Limbo--haven't played it but I think violence is done to you, if not the other way around?). I've only heard good things about Journey.
"Walking simulators" are first-person games, generally pretty short, in which there's almost no interaction besides movement. I recommend both Gone Home and Dear Esther, which are apparently both available on the PS4. These might be a useful introduction to 3D movement in a virtual space; if you're not used to it it can be a tricky stumbling block. (Fez, Limbo, and flow have 2D gameplay; the rest of what you listed are 3D.)
You may want to consider more abstract games where you don't control an avatar--for example, the games that have evolved out of the space Tetris created. Dunno what the new hotness is there, though.
57: I figure any game where you have a button exclusively for using a gun is probably too violent to count as non-violent. No surprise, given that it's a zombie survival game. But it is notable for having probably the best portrayal of a post-apocalyptic Pittsburgh in a video game.
At the park. Some kid loaned my son a light saber.
It's like when restaurants used to require men wear jackets and would loan you one if you came without proper attire.
Thanks for the game recommendations, everyone.
Fuck you yet again, 2016.
31: this was an old Stste hospital from the 50's, and my friend works with patients, so she couldn't work from home. There was another elevator that worked most of the time. There were two elevators in the other side of the building. One was truly a service elevator, one was used for food at meal times, and the other was really just an elevator, but she wasn't supposed to use it.
It's a difficult situation to explain, but this boss systematically undermines people and always finds ways that they've violated some kind of policy (even though the policies aren't available on the intranet) rather than building on strengths.
People who have raised concerns about patient care are targeted. There was one unit where a high number of patients were getting respiratory infections. It turned out there was black mold. Any staff who reported it got disciplined.
Again, that's just being a horrible person and a bad manager.
There was one unit where a high number of patients were getting respiratory infections. It turned out there was black mold. Any staff who reported it got disciplined.
This is why I am unsympathetic when people in the medical industry complain about the cost of malpractice insurance.
Well as long as people are copping to it, this NMM is the first one that I can think of that applies, and that makes me feel very old. The first one I recall here was Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
71: Maybe I'm misunderstanding but are you admitting to having had masturbation fantasies about both Alexander Solzhenitstyn and Carrie Fischer? Respect for eclectic tastes!
Common factor: taking on evil empires.
Geez, does every thread have to become a referendum on the Soviet Union?
I find your lack of lack of faith disturbing.
Stupid business card.
IT'S AS IF YOU DON'T EVEN LISTEN TO MY LYRICS! -
DRAH DI NET UM, OH OH OH
LACTATION KOMMISAR GEHT UM! OH OH OH!
Regular posting will return either Thursday or Friday.
78: of course. Lactation was tightly controlled in the USSR. Only in the West was there freedom of expression.
I thank you.
That is great, but what happened to British modesty?
It was collateral damage in the demolition of politeness, courtesy, diplomacy, diffidence, reserve and understatement.
Taking my kid to school when he was about 8, changing from the 24 to the 6 at the Haight-Divisadero stop, singing All I Do Is Dream Of You together while waiting for the bus. Thank you Ms. Reynolds.
86: there was an interview on Fresh Air from a month ago where Carrie Fisher said that her mother had made a full recovery. It must be very hard to live longer than your child. One wonders whether the loss pushed Debbie Reynolds over the edge.
I hope to continue for the next article, really interesting and a pleasure to read, thanks
in this world there are only parting words where there is a meeting, and therefore do not you be jealous of other people's lives, because they are innocent, they only fate better than you, for it is better thankful
I found a loophole. We know that Fisher already filmed her parts for Episode VIII. That means that in the Star Wars continuity, Princess Leia is still alive. Though she prefers General Organa now.