During Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing last month, Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) asked the nominee about her role in addressing harassment and discrimination as an employer in the federal courts system. Hirono referenced the Judiciary Accountability Act (JAA), a bill she helped introduce last year with Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) to provide statutory protections against workplace misconduct to employees of the federal judiciary.
Earlier this year, President Joe Biden signed another bill aimed at addressing workplace harassment into law: the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault & Sexual Harassment Act, legislation the Bustos office and the Purple Campaign had been working to advance since Tarana Burke’s #MeToo movement went viral in the fall of 2017. The newly enacted law takes the important step of invalidating forced secret arbitration clauses that prevent sexual assault and sexual harassment survivors from seeking justice and public accountability under the laws meant to protect them.
To this day, despite its role as the institution tasked with enforcing such anti-harassment laws to protect employees in other workplaces across America, the federal judiciary has resisted efforts to provide similar statutory protections to its own employees. While various federal laws—such as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act—exist to protect employees from harassment and discrimination at work, until the...
President Lee Jae Myung on Friday reaffirmed his commitment to keeping Cabinet meetings open to the public, expressing "deep regret over false claims" that live broadcasts were preventing minister...