Free Republic

WASHINGTON -- Three senators on Friday proposed new limits on expense-paid trips for federal judges and a system to let the public know about potential courthouse conflicts. Judges would be barred from taking free trips to seminars sponsored by special interests, although they could participate if their courts paid their ways, under the proposal by Sens. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, John Kerry of Massachusetts and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, all Democrats. The plan also would require judges to maintain and make public "recusal lists" of companies in which they have a financial interest and potential conflict. Judge travel has been...

Screaming and yelling by men at work may now be sex-based discrimination if women at work find the behavior more intimidating than men do. On September 2, 2005, in E.E.O.C. v. National Education Association, (No. 04-35029), the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the “reasonable woman” standard applies to workplace abusive conduct, even if there is no sexual content to the behavior. This decision significantly expands the types of behaviors that may furnish a basis for a claim of discrimination. Three women working for a labor union, the National Education Association, sued for gender discrimination claiming that the NEA...

San Francisco -- An appeals court heard arguments Wednesday in the case of a female casino bartender suing Harrah's Entertainment after she was fired for refusing to wear makeup. It was the second time the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the largest in the nation, heard the closely watched sex-discrimination case. In December, a three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based circuit said the woman's firing was legal, because the Reno casino also demanded male employees to be equally well groomed under the hotel's "Beverage Department Image Transformation" program. The smaller panel of judges tossed out Darlene Jespersen's case against...