By Tiseme Zegeye, ACLU Women's Rights Project at 12:33pm
In a Louisiana public school, female students who are suspected of being pregnant are told that they must take a pregnancy test. Under school policy...
By Tiseme Zegeye, ACLU Women's Rights Project & Elayne Weiss, Washington Legislative Office at 9:53am
The combat exclusion rule ignores the reality of modern warfare. Women are already serving in combat, and at present, 139 women have made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.
By Tiseme Zegeye, ACLU Women's Rights Project at 5:24pm
This year marks the 40th anniversary of Title IX, the groundbreaking federal law passed in 1972 to eliminate sex discrimination in educational institutions that receive federal funding. However, after four decades, its mandate continues to be ignored.
Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit heard arguments in a case in which one university continues to employ some disingenuous, if rather creative, strategies to achieve compliance with Title IX. In March 2009, Quinnipiac, a private university in Connecticut, announced it was terminating its women’s volleyball program, despite the fact that it already failed to provide women with equal athletic opportunities. Eliminating the women’s volleyball team would put Quinnipiac even further out of compliance with Title IX.
By Tiseme Zegeye, ACLU Women's Rights Project at 2:21pm
This Saturday marks the 40th anniversary of the passage of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the landmark law that prohibits sex discrimination in federally funded education programs and activities. Among its other, better-known applications (for example, mandating equality in athletics), Title IX bans discrimination against pregnant and parenting students. Title IX’s regulations mandate that schools cannot apply school policies differently on the basis of sex based on marital or parental status, nor can a school discriminate against or exclude any person “on the basis of pregnancy, childbirth, termination of pregnancy, or recovery therefrom.”
Following action by the ACLU and numerous sister organizations, the Law School Admissions Council (LSAC), the organization that administers the Law School Admission Test (LSAT), recently announced a new lactation policy for nursing mothers. The new policy allows nursing mothers, to request extended or additional breaks to pump during the LSAT, for up to one year following childbirth.
By Tiseme Zegeye, ACLU Women's Rights Project at 4:28pm
The University of California and former U.C. Davis students and women wrestlers announced yesterday that an over $1 million dollar settlement had been reached in the almost decade-long Title IX athletic opportunities case.
In 2003, after the University eliminated women's opportunities in wrestling and numerous other sports, then-students and wrestlers Arezou Mansourian, Christine Ng, and Lauren Mancuso filed suit demanding equal athletic opportunities for women. Title IX, the landmark federal law passed in 1972 to eliminate sex discrimination in educational institutions that receive federal funding (the law turns 40 this year) mandates gender equality in athletic opportunities.
