President Obama signed an Executive Order on January 23, 2009, reversing a previous Executive Order prohibiting non-governmental agencies receiving financial assistance from the U.S. from providing much needed family planning and reproductive health information to women.  Reversal of the Global Gag Rule will greatly enhance the health information and services women receive around the world.

President Obama signed into law the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which reinstituted fair pay protections under Title VII recently taken away by the Supreme Court.  The Supreme Court reversed decades of authority by limiting a female worker’s recovery damages resulting from the last paycheck, even though the paycheck was the result of a discriminatory pay practice put into place much earlier. Under the Act, a female employee’s time limitation for filing a charge of discrimination was deemed to run from the date on which the discriminatory pay practice was instituted, providing protection for women for what was in Ms. Ledbetter’s case, decades of discriminatory wage disparity. 

In Fitzgerald v. Barnstable School Committee, --- S.Ct. ----, 2009 WL 128173, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rejected a First Court of Appeals decision denying a student’s right to sue for discrimination under both Title IX of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.  In Fitzgerald, a kindergarten girl claimed that a third grade boy regularly harassed her on the school bus. Dissatisfied with the school’s response, her parents sued under Title IX, the federal statute that bars sex discrimination in schools that receive federal money, and the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution, which is enforced through 26 U.S.C. §1983.  The First Circuit Court of Appeals held that the parents could sue their school only under Title IX, and that no one protected under Title IX could also hold their school accountable for violation of their constitutional rights against discrimination.  The Supreme Court reversed, holding that students may sue for gender discrimination under both Title IX and the Constitution.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Reps. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) and Diana DeGette (D-CO) introduced the Prevention First Act (S. 21 and H.R. 463). The legislation’s purpose is to prevent unintended pregnancies through common-sense measures to expand access to contraceptives and provide comprehensive sex education.