Antidiscrimination Law

Beyond Breimhorst: Appropriate Accommodation of Students With Learning Disabilities on the SAT.

by Nancy Leong

57 Stanford Law Review 2135 (2005)

Until relatively recently, students with documented disabilities -- including learning disabilities -- could apply... more Until relatively recently, students with documented disabilities -- including learning disabilities -- could apply for, and receive, up to double time on the SAT. But the scores they achieved were still "flagged" with an asterisk, communicating to colleges admissions committees that the scores of such students had been achieved with extended time. Following a lawsuit by a student with a disability, however, Educational Testing Services (ETS) -- the company that creates and administers the SAT -- agreed as part of a settlement that it would cease flagging the scores of students who received extra time.

This Comment examines the consequences of this settlement. Previously, the fact that colleges would know that a score was achieved with extended time provided a disincentive to apply for extra time. But the settlement removes that disincentive. Testing authorities have since documented an upsurge in applications for extended time -- indeed, at some prestigious high schools, over half of all students receive some sort of extended-time accommodation.

I conclude that the previous practice of flagging scores achieved with extended time was undesirable because it unfairly stigmatized students with learning disabilities. Failure to indicate which scores were achieved with extended time, however, harms the validity of the SAT, creates incentives to seek improper diagnosis of learning disabilities, and ultimately disrupts the level playing field that the SAT ideally provides. The Comment concludes that, in light of ETS's statement that the SAT is not designed to measure speed, the best course of action would be to allow all students who desire extended time to have it, thereby maintaining a level playing field while avoiding harm to students with learning disabilities.

Comparative study on the collection of data to measure the extent and impact of discrimination within the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands

by Patrick Simon

Report for the European Commission, DG employment & Social Affairs, Antidiscrimination Unit, 2004

Bridging the Gap: The British Communist Party and the Limits of the State in Tackling Racism

by Evan Smith

in E. Smith (ed.), Europe's Expansions and Contractions: Proceedings of the XVIIth Biennial Conference of the Australasian Association of European Historians (Adelaide, July 2009), Australian Humanities Press, Adelaide, 2010.

German Court Bakes Tatin Judgment on EU Antidiscrimination Law

by Costanza Hermanin

draft - quote only with author permission

'Faire de La diversité une richesse pour l'entreprise': la transformation d'une contrainte juridique en catégorie managériale

by Laure Bereni

JOURNAL ARTICLE
In French
Published in Raisons Politiques, n°35, 2009

"'Making Diversity a Business Asset'. How French Corporations Transformed Anti-discrimination Legal Constraint... more "'Making Diversity a Business Asset'. How French Corporations Transformed Anti-discrimination Legal Constraint into Managerial Category"

Abstract: Since the second half of the 2000s, the flourish of “diversity” rhetoric in French corporations has mainly rested on the idea that diversity is good for business. This
article examines the social conditions and the features of this discursive shift, by which a legal constraint – antidiscrimination law – was transformed into a managerial
category. After a focus on the American roots of “diversity management”, the article demonstrates that the legitimation of this discourse in corporate France has been the result of mobilization efforts of a handful of people whose professional positions predispose them to promote social justice through the market lens. In the third part of the article, the main dimensions of the business case for diversity are presented in details.

Résumé: Depuis la moitié des années 2000, la diffusion du discours de la « diversité » dans les entreprises françaises a principalement reposé sur l'idée qu'elle constitue une « ressource pour entreprendre ». Cet article analyse les logiques sociales et les registres de ce travail de mise en forme rhétorique, par lequel une contrainte juridique ­ l'antidiscrimination ­ a été transformée en catégorie managériale. Après un retour sur les origines anglo-saxonnes du « management de la diversité », l'article montre que l'acclimatation française de ce discours a été le produit d'un travail de mobilisation de la part d'un petit groupe d'acteurs dont la position professionnelle les prédispose à promouvoir la justice sociale au prisme du marché. Dans un troisième temps, les principaux registres de la rhétorique de l'intérêt de la diversité sont analysés de manière détaillée.

Gendering Political Representation: The Debate on Gender Parity In France

by Laure Bereni

BOOK CHAPTER
Published in K. Palonen, T. Pulkkinen & R.M. Rosales (eds), The Ashgate Research Companion to the Politics of Democratization in Europe Concepts and Histories, Ashgate, 2008

For the first time in French legal history, a constitutional amendment in 1999 and an electoral law in 2000 mandated a... more For the first time in French legal history, a constitutional amendment in 1999 and an electoral law in 2000 mandated a positive discrimination policy to help women gain political representation. These laws are the national translation of an international process of redefinition of the categories of gender equality and fair representation. However, what is particularly striking in the French case is the apparent contrast between the radical character of the reform and the existing context of a dominant “republican universalistic” frame, which is a priori hostile to such a reform; indeed, French republican universalism is based on the idea that proper political representation should be defined by rejecting social differences into the private sphere, rather than bringing them into the public sphere.

This paper tackles this seeming paradox, by trying to assess how and to what extent the introduction of the “gender parity” (parité) reform in France led to a gendering of universalistic, “republican” political representation.
To address this question, I first investigate the intellectual and institutional sources of affirmative action toward women in political representation. The first identified source is a set of theoretical works produced by feminist scholars since the early 1980s that point out the limits of universalistic political representation. In addition to these theoretical critiques of democracy, several international organizations (UN, EU) have promoted affirmative action policies toward women in decision-making sites since the late 1970s.

While the gender parity reform stems from a general questioning of political representation through affirmative action, careful examination of the discourses of justification of the parity reform in France reveals a bracketing of affirmative action principles. Faced with strong oppositions to parity reform in the name of “French republican universalism”, parity campaigners tried to disconnect their demand from “affirmative action” policies, arguing that women are not a “category”, or a “minority”, but “half of humanity”, and cannot be considered to form one of the target groups of such policies. Parity advocates defined their demand as an extension, rather than a breach, of republican universalism. Moreover, parity was justified mainly by the necessity to improve political representation in the context of a perceived “crisis” of political elites: it was intended to reduce the gap between representatives and the represented to bring “feminine” qualities into politics. Dissociating itself from affirmative action, this dominant rhetoric has therefore promoted the parity reform as a means of perfecting political representation, rather than as a device to remedy gender inequality.
http://www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&calcTitle=1&title_id=10233&edition_id=10923