In honor of Equal Pay Day, four women currently engaged in a gender discrimination lawsuit against the national labor and employment firm Ogletree Deakins opened up about the struggles and rewards of challenging pay discrimination, and the impact of women breaking the silence. As changemakers seeking to reform the entrenched legal industry, plaintiffs Dawn Knepper, […]

The Federal Fair Housing Act, along with many state and local laws, prohibits gender discrimination in housing, including sexual harassment. It is illegal for landlords, property managers, real estate agents, and maintenance staff to demand sexual favors in exchange for access to housing or repairs. They also cannot create a hostile environment for tenants based […]

The #MeToo Movement continues to call attention to victims of sexual violence and discrimination. A chorus of survivors’ voices grows. More and more survivors are filing sex discrimination lawsuits to vindicate their rights in court and hold accountable both the perpetrators who harmed them and the institutions that failed to protect them. Often it is […]

The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure generally require that a publicly filed lawsuit name all the parties involved.  However, under certain circumstances, plaintiffs can avoid disclosing their name by filing a lawsuit using a pseudonym (such as “Jane Doe” or “John Doe”).  Although the use of a pseudonym commonly arises in sexual harassment cases, some […]

Researchers at Vanderbilt Law School have found an alarming disparity in the job satisfaction rates between recent male and female law graduates, as detailed in a forthcoming research paper in the Marquette Law Review. The researchers discovered that “recently graduated female lawyers are 19 percentage points less likely to state that they are very satisfied […]

Any woman working in today’s corporate culture is no doubt familiar with the numerous excuses used to explain the underrepresentation of women in corporate management. A veritable cottage industry has emerged in the form of books and articles offering advice on the common mistakes women make that result in slowed career growth. The advice for […]

As of October 9, 2018, New York State employers are now required to provide sexual harassment training pursuant to the State’s recently enacted sexual harassment prevention legislation, Section 201-g of the New York State Labor Law. This new law requires that all employers within New York, both private and public, provide annual anti-harassment training to […]

Universities and employers have a duty to respond to allegations of sexual assault, harassment, and discrimination. Many organizations conduct investigations before responding, and plaintiffs have filed gender discrimination lawsuits based on the investigations themselves. For one example, read coverage of Sanford Heisler Sharp’s trial about a Columbia University investigation here. Whether an investigation is so […]

The EEOC first convened its Select Task Force on the Study of Harassment in the Workplace in 2015 and 2016.  The Task Force issued a report and several recommendations aimed at employers and the EEOC itself. The Task Force’s 2016 report foreshadowed many of the issues that would later become central to the #MeToo conversation.  […]

In my legal writing class my first year of law school, each student presented mock oral arguments, and received feedback from classmates.  Following my argument, I was told that I was “persuasive” and “well prepared,” but what resonated most was the handful of classmates who described my argument as “aggressive.”  One classmate felt that I […]