Five Supreme Court Justices just rolled back the most effective civil rights provision in our nation's history. What should we do now?
One option is to declare "mission accomplished" and forget about race in politics.
That, however, will not work. Although we have made amazing progress in the past fifty years, too many state and local politicians still maintain power by manipulating election rules.
The Supreme Court dealt the Voting Rights Act a serious body blow Tuesday, but it did leave Congress an out. The court said, “Congress—if it is to divide the States—must identify those jurisdictions to be singled out on a basis that makes sense in light of current conditions.”
The Supreme Court just declared that the Civil War is no longer relevant to the history and administration of racial justice in America.
In a sense, the court's decision in Shelby County v. Holder validated a generations-long effort -- first by Democrats and later by Ronald Reagan and the Bush family -- to throw off the moral weight that slavery and the Civil War had placed on the South. [...]
Immigration reform is likely to mean higher wages for workers at the bottom of the economic ladder—both foreign and native born.
The reason is that the large number of undocumented workers in the U.S. exerts a downward drag on wages because employers routinely exploit such workers by paying them below the minimum wage and flouting other labor laws.
A firm announces a plan to build a new facility, but where? Local and state development officials compete to attract the firm with ever-more-generous tax breaks and subsidies.
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously warned in 1996 that welfare reform was a huge gamble and that the result could be extraordinary human suffering.
Those predictions came to seem extreme as the years passed. The boom of the late 1990s and then the credit fueled prosperity of the Bush years ensured a steady supply of low-wage jobs and, for a long time, it seemed that TANF was not the disaster many predicted.
Workers at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center filed a complaint with the Labor Department on Monday alleging a slew of labor violations against their employers, including not being paid the minimum wage and working as many as 80 hours a week without overtime pay.
The Reagan Building is a federal property, but the workers who lodged the complaint are employed by private businesses in the building's food court, like a Subway sandwich shop, a Quick Pita franchise and a Smoothie King location.
Can some types of debt cause the blues? Why are people approaching retirement age carrying credit card debt? This column shares results from recent research about credit card debt among older Americans. [...]
When people talk about corporations spending money in politics, it’s commonly assumed that the corporation is a single thing with a clear position on any given issue. This masks the fact that corporations are complex, state-created entities with their own governance structures and a multitude of conflicting interests.
A Supreme Court decision Monday that struck down an Arizona law requiring people to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote was hailed by voting-rights advocates as a big win. But several legal scholars say the ruling, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, could in fact set back the voting-rights cause in cases to come.
In a 2011 speech on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, civil rights hero and Congressman John Lewis (D-Ga.) eloquently described attacks across the country on Americans' access to the ballot box: "Voting rights are under attack in America.
Philadelphia requires city-subsidized organizations to give employees health benefits, a living wage of $10.88 an hour and paid sick leave. But the ordinance only applies only to “businesses with direct city contracts,” according to The Philadelphia Inquirer, and excludes subcontracted employees at Philadelphia International Airport (PHL). Philadelphia Councilman Wilson Goode Jr.
Credit reports weren’t designed to be job-screening tools. But about half of employers now use them when making hiring decisions, according to a 2012 study by the Society for Human Resource Management. The practice cuts across all sectors of the economy, from high-level management to office assistants, home health-care aides, and people who work the counter serving frozen yogurt.
For some job seekers, repeated rejection by potential employers may be traceable to an unlikely source: their credit report.
Regulators are cracking down on some of the methods companies are using to screen candidates (two major companies this week were accused of using background checks to discriminate against black applicants.) But employers’ use of credit checks during the hiring process is legal and fairly common.
Evelyn Coke was a Jamaican-born, single mother of five who worked for decades providing care for sick and frail people in their homes. She came to the United States in her thirties and ultimately brought her children to live with her in New York City.
Last month Nevada joined a growing number of states and cities that are forbidding companies from using credit checks to make employment decisions. But the practice is still legal under federal law. [...]
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo spent his career cultivating the image of a man who gets what he wants. In 2011, he rammed same-sex marriage legislation through the legislature, even with a Republican-controlled Senate. In 2012, when he wanted New York to be the first state to pass gun-control laws after the Newtown shooting, he was similarly productive. This year, Cuomo has said he wants to make state elections fairer, by lowering contribution limits and supplementing small donations with public dollars to give them more weight.