Real Stories
Alabama
Lilly Ledbetter
Lilly Ledbetter worked at Goodyear Tire & Rubber in Gadsen, Alabama for more than 19 years. For much of that period, she was the victim of pay discrimination. Read more >>.
Fonza Luke
Fonza Luke started working as a licensed nurse practitioner for Baptist Health Systems at its Medical Center in Princeton, Alabama in 1971. For almost 30 years, she received the highest performance ratings from the doctors she worked with everyday. Read more >>
California
Saint Clair Adams
As an employee of Circuit City, Saint Clair Adams endured constant verbal harassment in the form of sexually lewd comments. When his supervisors finally took his complaints seriously, Adams' co-workers were made aware of the complaints and harassed him even further. Read more >>
Sherri Warner
After being repeatedly sexually harassed by her boss and then fired when she complained, Sherri Warner filed a discrimination and wrongful firing suit against her employer. However, as a condition of the contract Warner signed with her employer, she was not allowed to bring her case before a judge and jury. Read more >>
Donald Lagatree
Donald Lagatree was offered a job at the law firm of Luce Howard. However, as a condition of employment, the firm asked that he sign a mandatory arbitration agreement, which would take away his option of ever suing his employer for employment discrimination – no matter what. Read more >>
Maryland
Great Oaks Center Residents
Residents of the Great Oaks Center, an institution for individuals with developmental disabilities run by the state of Maryland, sued the state alleging abuse, neglect, denied medical care, and the use of unnecessary physical restraints. Read more >>
Nebraska
Douglas King
For years, state troopers like Douglas King were working overtime and not getting paid for it. Failing to compensate hourly workers for overtime is a direct violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Read more >>
New Jersey
South Camden Citizens in Action
By the late 1990s, South Camden, an impoverished and largely minority community, already hosted the region's largest trash incinerator, a power plant, the county sewage treatment plant, a radioactive waste site and one of the nation’s highest cancer rates. Read more >>
New York
Arcenio Sanango
Arcenio Sanango worked as a laborer on a construction site in New York City. One day, while working on a ladder, Sanango fell 15 feet to the ground, tearing his rotator cuff, fracturing bones in his spine, and suffering nerve damage to both of his eyes. Read more >>
North Carolina
The Community of Holly Springs
For three decades, the predominately African-American community of Holly Springs, North Carolina, home to the largest percentage of African Americans of any municipality in Wake County, was forced to bear the burden of housing a disproportionate share of its county’s landfills. Read more >>
Pennsylvania
Juan Carlos Astudillo
Juan Carlos Astudillo, who worked as a maintenance helper, was hit in the head, neck, and back by a steel beam and was rendered unconscious at work. When he was terminated from his job, he filed for workers’ compensation, but was denied because he was an undocumented immigrant. Read more >>
Powell v. Ridge
In the late 1990s, Philadelphia’s public schools had the highest number of minority students in Pennsylvania. Parents, local leaders, and city officials quickly learned that the state's school funding formula favored school districts with high proportions of white students. Read more >>
Rhode Island
Marketa Wills
Marketa Wills, a student at Brown University, requested academic help from her chemistry professor. Upon her arrival, he shut his office door and asked Wills join him in prayer. Several minutes later the teacher picked Wills up, put his arms around her waist and sat her on his lap. Read more >>
Washington DC
Judy Jones
Starting in 1974, Judy Jones drove buses and subway trains for the WMATA. After her promotion to a supervisory position in 1984, she was repeatedly denied any further promotions, despite consistently excellent evaluations from her superiors. Read more >>
Case Summaries
Brown et.al. v. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas
Brown v. Board of Education is the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision that held that states and school districts that required students to attend racially segregated schools were in violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment to the United States Constitution. Read more >>
Gebser v. Lago Vista Ind. School District
The Supreme Court held that students who are victims of sexual harassment must meet a higher standard of proof to recover damages than employees who are victims of sexual harassment in the workplace. Read more >>
Green v. County School Board of New Kent County
The Supreme Court emphasized that school systems must do more than just stop requiring segregation; they must implement plans to create desegregation, with a focus on the effectiveness of the remedy, rather than on the "good faith" of those implementing it. Read more >>
Alexander v. Sandoval
In 1990, Alabama added an amendment to its state’s constitution which made English the state’s official language. As a result, the state’s Director of the Department of Public Safety issued a new rule that the state’s driver’s license exam would be offered only in English. Read more >>
Kimel et al. v. Florida baord of Regents et al.
The federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) protects workers above age 40 from discrimination by any employer with more than 20 employees. Read more >>
Alden et al. v. Maine
When a group of probation officers attempted to sue the state of Maine in 1992 for violating the overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, a federal court dismissed their case. Read more >>
Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA)
The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA), prohibits discrimination against persons because of their service in the Armed Forces Reserve, the National Guard, or other uniformed services. Read more >>
