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The following statement can be attributed to Elizabeth Lower-Basch, deputy executive director for policy at the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP).  

Washington, D.C., June 27, 2024–Today in a pair of cases, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority overturned a 40–year–old precedent, known as “Chevron deference,” which generally required courts to defer to the expertise of agency rulemakers. This precedent has supported tens of thousands of rules used by federal agencies to execute regulatory authority on topics from the environment to financial services to patient, consumer, and worker protections, and protected them from frivolous lawsuits. With this change, all regulations will be much more vulnerable to litigation – which will delay implementation even when the regulations are eventually upheld – and judges will be able to make decisions grounded in their personal opinions rather than the substantive knowledge of agency experts.  

Exactly how damaging this decision will be remains to be seen; Justice Roberts in his decision claims that it “does not call into question prior cases that relied on the Chevron framework.” But the decisions in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce raise the stakes for judicial appointments at all levels, as well as increase the need for Congress to pass detailed legislative instructions that leave less room for judicial meddling. Because countless federal regulations support people with low incomes, these decisions have the potential to significantly affect their lives. 

 

June 26, 2024, Washington, D.C.–More than 100 state administrators and advocates gathered for a two-day conference this week to share best practices for implementing successful paid family and medical leave programs at the state level. Absent a national paid leave program, 13 states and the District of Columbia have passed their own paid family and medical leave laws that allow workers to take paid time off to bond with a new child, care for a sick family member, or attend to their own medical needs. 

The conference was convened by the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) and Family Values @ Work (FV@W), organizations that have been at the forefront of the paid leave movement for over two decades. The event drew advocates and administrators from 18 states and D.C., many of whom had firsthand experience in campaigns to establish paid leave programs in their states.  

“Paid family and medical leave is a critical program that recognizes our full humanity and the need we all have to care for ourselves and our loved ones,” said Emily Andrews, Director of Education, Labor, and Worker Justice at CLASP. “Paid leave allows us to take time off work and be present during life’s most important moments.” 

Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), a long-time paid leave champion and House author of the FAMILY Act, which would establish a national paid leave program, delivered a keynote in which she reflected on her own experience as a young Congressional staffer. After receiving a devastating cancer diagnosis, Rep. DeLauro was able to recover while retaining her job and still getting paid thanks to paid leave offered by her employer. 

“Our health care system works best for those already well off enough to take advantage of it,” Rep. DeLauro said. “A simple illness or injury means their life can spin out of control. This is where paid leave is critical. I don’t know where I would be in my life or career had it not been for the leave Senator Chris Dodd provided to me when I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Paid leave is essential–and we must expand it to all Americans.”

Since California passed the first-ever state paid family leave law in 2002, momentum has grown in other states to provide paid leave benefits to over 64 million workers, including millions of low-wage workers and those in nontraditional jobs. Only 27 percent of U.S. workers have access to paid family leave through their employers, and 41 percent have access to personal medical leave through employer-provided short-term disability insurance.   

Organizers noted that state paid leave programs have continuously evolved over the decades, from offering more weeks of leave to providing higher wage replacement rates to upgrading technology to process and pay out paid leave claims. States have also expanded the types of leave covered, including “safe leave” or time off for survivors of domestic violence to focus on their own or a loved one’s safety and recovery.  

“Implementation gives us insights to what is and isn’t working, what can be changed and improved,” said Josephine Kalipeni, Executive Director of FV@W. “It also gives us an opportunity to iterate and revolutionize paid leave for all workers.” 

Attendees shared lessons on what it takes to build and administer paid family and medical leave through social insurance systems that collect premiums from employers, workers, or both to pay replacement wages while workers are out on leave. Administrators of both new and established programs described outreach efforts to vulnerable workers and communities who may be unaware they are entitled to paid leave benefits and strategies to ensure these workers can access them. And advocates discussed their work building coalitions across constituent groups, including employers who warmed up to paid leaves policies once they became state law. 

The Pennsylvania legislature is considering its own paid leave bill, and advocate Samuel Jones expressed optimism about its chance of passage. Pennsylvania would be the first “purple state” to pass a statewide paid leave policy, noted Jones, Deputy Director for Strategic Partnerships at ROC United, a worker advocacy group. “Pennsylvania can be a blueprint for other states to take seriously the idea that they can pass paid family medical leave,” Jones said. “Workers should not have to choose between their jobs and taking leave for caregiving or medical needs. Paid family leave allows people to live and work with dignity and financial security, and every worker in America deserves it.”

June 18: CLASP hosted a Senate Hill Briefing with AFL-CIO, SEIU, and the Good Jobs Collaborative on the importance of a workforce development system that builds worker power. Emily Andrews participated in a panel.

June 5: Christian Collins will moderate an event on behalf of the D.C. chapter of the Labor and Employment Research Association entitled “Care Work and Wage Inequality in the United States: A Role for Care as Industrial Policy.”

Please join the Community Partnership Group (CPG) on Tuesday, June 25, at 1 p.m. ET for an insightful webinar exploring the crucial work of co-creating policies alongside individuals with lived experience. Embark on a journey with Barbie Izquierdo, Tamika Moore, and Alice Aluoch as they share insights into how these policies are formed, best practices, impact, and invaluable lessons they have learned. The panel will also discuss why it is imperative for funders to invest in initiatives that prioritize the perspectives of those with lived experience. By supporting projects that center those voices, funders contribute to the creation of policies that better reflect the needs and realities of the communities they serve.

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn how co-creating policies alongside experts with lived experience can drive transformative change and foster a more inclusive and just society. Join us and be part of the movement towards meaningful and impactful policy reform.

 

 

2024 marks the 60th anniversary of the War on Poverty, an ambitious package of social welfare legislation introduced under President Lyndon B. Johnson. Today, as we continue the fight to end poverty, we face both long-standing and more recent structural, systemic, political, and economic challenges that impede this urgent goal.

Our nation has made meaningful gains in the last few decades to bring economic security and opportunity to millions. However, the reality is clear—we remain far from achieving the equitable, inclusionary, and transformative changes needed to end poverty and advance a multiracial democracy. In 2023, CLASP redoubled our strategic advocacy, implementation and technical assistance, research and analysis, and narrative change work at the national, state, and local levels.

Our 2023 Impact Report highlights just some of the ways CLASP has worked to limit the harm of poverty in America through a multitude of strategies and collaborations. The COVID public health emergency may be behind us, but the profound economic insecurity experienced every day by millions of children, working people, families, and communities of color is an epidemic that requires immediate attention with substantial public investments.

I often say that poverty is a choice—one made by policymakers, not by people who experience it. CLASP offers policymakers the information, ideas, insights, and inspiration to shrink poverty and help move our country toward equity, justice, and inclusive democracy.

Thank you for being a partner in our mission and vision for a world where children, families, youth and young adults, immigrants, and individuals across all lived experiences and identities can live a healthy, economically secure, and civically engaged life now and for generations to come.

Indi Dutta-Gupta

President and Executive Director

>> Download the full report

The Department of Education’s (DOE) Community Workforce Readiness Accelerator for Major Projects (RAMP) fellowship is a first-of-its-kind investment in local workforce development capacity building. The agency has launched a two-year fellowship opportunity available for candidates from a wide range of backgrounds to develop strategic workforce partnerships in their communities and meet the labor market needs for energy jobs in regions of significant DOE investment.

On June 4, join a webinar to learn more about the RAMP Fellowship and ask any questions you may have about the opportunity. Hear from DOE’s Betony Jones, Director of the Office of Energy Jobs, as well as leaders from the Good Jobs Collaborative, a coalition of organizations advocating for new workforce development policies that build worker power.

The opportunity to apply for the fellowship will close on June 30, 2024. Subscribe to New America’s Future of Work and Ed & Labor Bulletin newsletters for related research, writing, and events.

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May 20: Emily Andrews spoke at the International Rescue Committee’s Building Inclusive Economies event in NYC. She participated on a panel titled, “Envisioning Inclusivity As the Cornerstone of America’s Economic Future.”

By Lulit Shewan

An exploitative labor economy exists within the confines of this nation’s prisons. This is a fundamental pillar of the criminal justice system, yet it is largely concealed from public view. In the United States, all state and federal prisons allow some form of involuntary labor as part of various correctional work programs. Even when prison labor is ostensibly voluntary, the combination of meager pay (often less than $1/hour) and the presence of harsh alternatives creates an inherently exploitative system that depends on the labor of those behind bars and perpetuates a cycle of exploitation and marginalization. Prison labor amplifies deep-seated issues within the criminal justice system and casts a stark light on the intersection of labor rights, social justice, and the ethics of incarceration

The Exploitative Prison Labor Economy

Incarcerated men and women toil in workshops, kitchens, and fields, producing goods and services that reach far beyond their confinement. From manufacturing furniture and processing food to fighting fires and working in call centers, their labor fuels supply chains, corporate profits, and consumer markets. Yet these workers remain invisible, their contributions often overlooked or dismissed. The commodification of their labor perpetuates a cycle of vulnerability, where meager wages and limited rights prevail. In the intricate tapestry of the prison industrial complex, we confront a profound challenge that transcends temporary reforms. The only holistic and ethical approach calls for a paradigm shift, a reimagining of justice itself. Within this context, we fiercely advocate for granting incarcerated individuals fundamental rights: the right to choose voluntary work and earn fair wages, and the freedom to join unions. These rights are not concessions; they are affirmations of human dignity and agency, and are necessary to improving the
material conditions of incarcerated people.

[…]

>>Read the full brief

By India Heckstall

In 1954, the landmark Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional, marking a pivotal moment in the struggle for civil rights in the United States. While this decision was a crucial step toward equality in education, its promise remains unfulfilled.

Despite significant progress in expanding opportunity to Black Americans since Brown, K-12 school districts remain deeply segregated and unequally resourced. Racial disparities in access to college preparatory coursework and discriminatory admissions practices persist. Black and Latino students’ college completion rates are behind those of white students. And segregation remains a reality in higher education, with declining representation of Black students at selective universities even before the 2023 Supreme Court decision banning affirmative action in college admissions.

On the 70th anniversary of the Brown decision, it is important to consider its legacy in the aftermath of last year’s Students for Fair Admission (SFFA) v. Harvard and SFFA v. University of North Carolina. The SFFA ruling declared that holistic admission policies explicitly considering race were a violation of the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.

The litigation was the culmination of a decades-long battle fought in both the courts and the ballot box to dismantle race-conscious admissions policies in higher education.

Notably, both sides in the debate over the constitutionality of affirmative action and school integration evoke Brown to justify their positions, but to very different ends. Brown itself hinged upon the 14th Amendment. NAACP Legal Defense Fund lawyers built their case on proving that segregation of Black children into separate and inferior schools, a requirement of the Jim Crow era, violated their rights to equal protection.

Unfortunately, affirmative action opponents—including SFFA and the court’s conservative majority—have weaponized Brown to support their view that the Constitution will only allow race-neutral policies to undo past racial harm. Advocates call this a perverse reading of Brown, which catalyzed the broader effort to desegregate housing, employment, and public accommodations. Alongside major civil rights legislation that outlawed discrimination and efforts by colleges to diversify and integrate their campuses, Brown kicked open the door to postsecondary education for Black Americans, who had been systemically excluded for more than two centuries.

Yet paying homage to Brown should not prevent us from acknowledging its limitations. Despite his optimism, NAACP lawyer who argued the case and future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall’s prediction that schools would desegregate within five years never came to pass. Efforts to racially integrate schools encountered massive resistance in the South and in Northern cities that attempted busing. What advocates may not have fully grasped at the time were the systemic discrimination and racial biases embedded in K-12 and higher education that would play out over the decades and blunt Brown’s impact.

The Johnson Administration realized that desegregation and other policies built on the principle of equality under the law would be insufficient to produce racial equality. As President Johnson noted in his 1965 Howard University commencement speech, affirmative action recognizes that “it is not enough to open the gates or opportunity”—it was necessary to ensure “all citizens…have the ability to walk through those gates.” True racial justice was not just “equality as a right…but equality as a result.” As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in her SFFA dissent, “[d]eeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life.”

As a race-conscious policy, affirmative action in college admissions worked. By equalizing access to education and upward mobility, these programs more than doubled the share of Black undergraduates from 1965 to 1998, better reflecting America’s racial diversity. Data has also shown what happens when affirmative action ends: Black student enrollment plummets, as it did in California and Michigan after state bans went into effect.

Since the 2020 racial justice protests and the SFFA decision, advocates and researchers have become more vocal about articulating a view Johnson expressed so many years ago: policies that are race-neutral in theory are rarely so in practice. They fail to account for the structural inequities built into our institutions and the compounded disadvantages experienced by communities of color. From the New Deal to the Great Society, race-neutral policies led to worse outcomes for Black people in either their design or implementation.

Predictably, the SFFA ruling has also unleashed an ugly backlash against all programs intended to level the playing field between Black and white Americans, including initiatives to create more diverse, equitable and inclusive environments in K-12, higher education, and the workplace. Research has shown that diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and racially integrated schools not only boost outcomes for students of color, but also prepare all students to compete in a multicultural, globalized economy.

The headwinds facing racial justice advocates will grow stronger during this election year in our historically polarized country. As we reflect on Brown’s legacy, we must confront the reality that educational equity remains an elusive goal. Race-conscious policies and programs must be essential tools in our fight. To deliver on Brown’s moral vision, we must redouble our efforts to dismantle systemic barriers by acknowledging and honoring our racial differences—not pretending they don’t exist.