Law Blog

According to LegalMatch.com consumers looking for employment legal help, the following jobs account for the most racial discrimination claims in the past two years, in order of frequency:

1. Professional (law, accounting, architecture, etc.)
2. Education
3. Construction
4. High Technology
5. Retail
6. Transportation
7. Manufacturing
8. Government

Only “retail” and “professional” place in the top 14 jobs by number of employed, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Retail actually tops the BLS’s list. Why the discrepancy?

In 2007 there were over 30,000 racial discrimination claims filed at the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. People on the human resources side of the equation were startled at the massive increase-in most cases plus 10%-of new cases compared to the previous year.

Instead of looking at jobs sorting people by how many are employed, the place to look is how many are unemployed. Most discrimination claims, after all, begin after someone has been let go. The 8 jobs listed above are a veritable who’s who of the hardest hit jobs in the economy since 2007. Almost every job on the list, other than government, has lost near or above half a million workers in the past year according to the BLS.

No surprise, then, that these jobs will have a large amount of disgruntled former employees claiming discrimination. Their cases may be warranted too, but all signs point to the massive layoffs of late as the key culprit for rising employment discrimination claims.

Last year, LegalMatch.com had thousands of clients seek Drunk Driving defense attorneys. Below are the top reasons these people said they were pulled over:

• Weaving / reckless driving: 24%
• Speeding: 20%
• Accident: 19%
• No reason given: 10%
• I don’t remember: 10%
• Vehicle non-compliance (expired registration tags, no headlights, etc.): 9%
• Sobriety check point / roadblock: 4%

The vast majority of stops were for weaving or reckless driving, generally considered the most obvious indicator of a drunk driver, but it doesn’t have to be alcohol related. Speeding, for instance, happens all the time and does not indicate drunkenness. Not having current registration tags certainly is not evidence of being drunk. Accidents are more likely with intoxicated drivers, but happen regardless of whether a driver is inebriated.

Is it unfair that people are pulled over for reasons unrelated to their crime? Maybe, but the issue of the “pre-textual stop” is well settled: police officers can pull you over for whatever they want, and arrest you for whatever they happen to lawfully find while you are stopped. (Keyword here is lawfully). Years ago in the case of Whren v. United States, the Supreme Court unambiguously stated that a pre-textual stop was constitutional. 

The multitude of vehicular codes makes it impossible to conform to all of them at any given time. If an officer’s ulterior motives in pulling you over are irrelevant, rules of the road become an easy target of police officer abuse. Our highways are essentially a giant magnifying glass, under which you have very little privacy.

I suspect, however, that not dying while you are driving outweighs your need for privacy in your car. For that reason I doubt many of us are shedding any tears over the plight of drunk drivers. I also doubt any of us would have much resistance to the honest enforcement of vehicle laws that are meant to make us all safer.

In the end, if an officer’s intent could be taken into account at a DUI motion to suppress, you would just hear a lot more lying going on in court rooms. “Well I just wanted to give him a speeding ticket, and imagine my surprise when I smelled the odor of marijuana!” Even though it may seem unfair to allow pre-textual stops, in reality limiting them may be impossible.

Within the past 5 years, tens of thousands of clients have come to LegalMatch.com seeking attorneys in sexual harassment matters. According to LegalMatch.com statistics compiled within the last 5 years, the following jobs had the most reported sexual harassment cases: 

Retail: 28%
Manufacturing: 16%
Government: 12%
Transportation: 9%
Professional (law, accounting, architecture, etc.): 9%
Education: 8%
Construction: 8%
High technology: 6%

Approximately 61% of these respondents reported their sexual harassment to their superiors. Federal whistleblower protections are meant to protect these people from retaliation. With these rules in place, why are almost 40% of employees not reporting sexual harassment?

For one, litigating a claim in federal court is intimidating. Federal Whistleblower cases are costly and complicated. The burden of losing a job often outweighs the small consolation of possible redemption years down the road.

Additionally, whistleblower protections may not have applied to a large portion of sexual harassment victims until recently. The recent Supreme Court case of Crawford v. Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County, Tennessee, finally applied federal whistleblower laws to in-house employer investigations. Prior to this ruling, an employee could be retaliated against for answering an employer’s questions about sexual harassment in a private employer investigation. Lower courts stated that such investigations did not come under the ambit of federal protections, creating the absurd situation where employees reporting discrimination on their own initiative were protected, but employees reporting the same discrimination in the same words when their boss asked a question could be fired.

Such an obvious ruling should have come a lot sooner. How many sexual harassment cases flew under the radar while lower courts created and followed this absurd precedent?

It’s a common misconception that only the unemployed or unlucky have to file for bankruptcy. Now more than ever it is becoming apparent that bankruptcy can strike anyone.

Within the last 12 months, thousands of clients have come to LegalMatch.com seeking the advice of bankruptcy attorneys. These are the top fifteen reported occupations of those clients: 

Of this top 15, unemployed, retired, and disabled made up almost 50% of the total.  It shouldn’t come as much surprise that people unable to earn an income will have to file for bankruptcy. Other jobs are unsurprising as well: students will perpetually have student loan debt problems; realtors’ markets are always volatile; truck drivers and teachers simply aren’t paid a salary commensurate to their importance in society; and the self employed knew there was a risk when they decided to hang their own shingle.

Some jobs do raise an eyebrow however. Nurses, for instance, made U.S. News and World Report’s list of Top 30 Careers in 2008.

Regardless of the relative merits of the job, it harms us all when those who are disabled or those who have retired must file for bankruptcy. This is not an issue of compassion for people down on their financial luck; when people can’t pay their creditors, everyone in the food chain suffers. It may sound easy to simply blame the financial woes of the retired on poor planning, but how many of these people supposedly did everything right? They heeded the calls to invest, to have a portfolio, a 401K.  Unfortunately, so many of these once sound investments have lost tremendous value. (Or have been the victims of outright fraud.)

Those that question the wisdom of safety nets sometimes ignore the fact that these safety nets can act as an indirect “stimulus.” If a disabled worker gets SSI and can pay his bills and avoid bankruptcy, perhaps the bank that was relying on his cash has one less debt to worry about on its balance sheet. Instead of the money going from the treasury to the bank with everyone filing bankruptcy in-between (and loan markets drying up in the process), money goes from the citizen to the bank. The government still pays, but everyone else can pay their bills. (And the Feds don’t have to pay twice as much to clean up any mess.)

Safety nets, or “entitlements” as some would like to mischaracterize them, don’t just pay for the person who needs them. They help the system by helping people and banks alike avoid costly bankruptcy cases.  As we are witnessing, the ripple effects of a lot of people not being able to pay their bills costs all of us a whole lot of money.

Charitable contributions in wills and trusts are a vital source of funds for charity organizations and non-profit companies. These organizations and the money that sustains them are in turn important parts of our economy; Employees of non-profit agencies make up 7% of the American workforce, and over 83% of donations to these groups come from private donors.

Who is giving the most? According to statistics compiled by LegalMatch.com intake reports since 2006, the following states report the highest numbers of charitable contributions in estate documents:

1. California
2. Texas
3. New York
4. Illinois
5. Virginia
6. North Carolina
7. New Jersey
8. Ohio
9. Florida
10. Georgia

Charitable contributions in wills and trusts account for billions of dollars in much needed funds every year. Considering how important these contributions are, only a crazy person would want to reduce this amount, right? Well the crazy people have won, because in 2010 the Estate Tax will be repealed.

How are these related? Charitable contributions in wills are largely influenced by their generous tax benefits. Remove the tax incentive and you remove the motivation for generous giving. One study estimated that if the Estate Tax is allowed to die out next year, charitable contributions will be reduced by almost $13 billion. That $13 billion funds employees of non-profit organizations and needed social services in impoverished areas. Perhaps more importantly it does it with private money, not government funding. Pulling the rug out from under these organizations means the government (and therefore you and me) may wind up footing the bill.

In addition to problems associated with a small amount of people hoarding a massive amount of wealth, eliminating the estate tax also shifts the burden for important social services elsewhere. It is ironic that those who seek more private enterprise in areas of social services would sponsor something that lessens private giving and increases the need for government assistance. Why is the side deriding increasing government spending only making it more likely that the government will wind up spending more of our money?