The Racist Woman-Hater on the Supreme Court Who Is Ruining Lives and the Country

So glad Senate Democrats used their constant filibustering of everyone Shrub nominated to keep this piece of shit off the nation's highest court.  Oh, wait.

Ian Millhiser at Think Progress:

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito lacks “either understanding or interest” in the discrimination faced by women, African Americans or Latinos, according to federal Judge Harold Baer.

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Whatever the wisdom of Judge Baer’s practice, however, it is difficult to look at Alito’s record and see a judge who is very concerned at all by discrimination against women or minorities. Alito authored the Court’s infamous opinion in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire, a decision that was widely criticized for rolling back women’s right to equal pay for equal work. That decision was eventually overruled by Congress.

More recently, Alito authored an opinion making it far easier for workplace supervisors to get away with racial or sexual harassment. Although federal law provides fairly robust protection to workers harassed by their supervisor, Alito’s opinion in Vance v. Ball State University defined the term “supervisor” so narrowly as to render it meaningless in many workplaces. Under Vance, a person’s boss is only their “supervisor” if they have the power to make a “significant change in [your] employment status, such as hiring, firing, failing to promote, reassignment with significantly different responsibilities, or a decision causing a significant change in benefits.” Thus, in many modern workplaces where final employment decisions are made by distant human resources managers and not direct supervisors, many victims of racial or sexual harassment will find themselves without recourse thanks to Justice Alito.

On the same day that Alito handed down Vance, he also voted in another case to make it easier for employers to retaliate against workers that complain about workplace discrimination and get away with it. 

Alito’s also voted to give employers an easy way to immunize themselves from class action lawsuits brought by their workers. And he’s a strong supporter of “forced arbitration,” a practice which allows employers to shunt discrimination lawsuits into a secretive and privatized arbitration system rather than allowing those cases to be heard by a real court.

Yet, for all that Justice Alito has done to prevent women and racial minorities from fighting discrimination in Court, he took a very different tone when faced with a group of mostly white plaintiffs alleging discrimination.

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The skepticism Alito showed in so many other opinions towards plaintiffs alleging discrimination suddenly abandoned him when white people made such an allegation.

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But Justice Alito has also had several years on the Supreme Court to demonstrate his commitment to abolishing discrimination against women and racial minorities. What he’s shown instead is a desire to roll back anti-discrimination law, even while he rails against discrimination against white people.