Sex Discrimination

Don't look for Hooters guys any time soon. After four years, a federal agency has quietly ended its investigation of the Hooters restaurant chain for refusing to hire waiters to work alongside its scantily clad waitresses. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission told Rep. Harris Fawell (R-Ill.) recently that it will not intervene in a sex discrimination lawsuit that sought to force Hooters to hire men as waiters.

More than 500 current and former female employees of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. have filed discrimination claims against the retailer with the U.S. Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission after a national class-action lawsuit was blocked by the Supreme Court last year. The claims were filed to preserve the women's rights to pursue individual and regional class-action suits against Wal-Mart over alleged discrimination on pay and promotions, their attorneys said. "The fight continues to seek justice for the women employees of Wal-Mart," said Joseph Sellers, one of the attorneys representing the women, in a statement.

Veteran minor league umpire Pam Postema filed a federal sex discrimination complaint Thursday, charging that the American and National leagues passed her over for promotion from the minors because of her gender. The complaint was filed with the U.S. Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission and also listed the triple-A Alliance of Professional Baseball Clubs and the Baseball Office for Umpire Development.

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that female employees of Wal-Mart could not band together to sue over what they said was pervasive gender discrimination by the iconic retailer. The legal issues in the case were complicated, but the central question was a simple one and the court got it wrong. As a result of the decision, serious allegations against Wal-Mart dating back a decade won't be tested in court, and similar lawsuits against other employers will never be undertaken at all. The overall decision was 9 to 0 in favor of Wal-Mart.

The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a sex discrimination suit against Petco Animal Supplies, accusing the San Diego-based retailer of paying women less than men to manage stores in Alameda and Contra Costa counties. The commission said it was also seeking damages for any other Petco employees who had suffered similar discrimination. In one instance, Katherine Bloom was assigned to manage a new store in the Alameda County community of Dublin in August 1995 after more than two years as a company manager.

Three female members of the Mission Viejo Country Club have filed a lawsuit alleging that the club discriminates against women by making it difficult for them to golf with their female friends. The lawsuit also says that the club illegally bars women from eating at a male-only luxury lounge. "There is absolutely no reason for it," said Michelle A. Reinglass, a Laguna Hills lawyer who filed the lawsuit in Orange County Superior Court on behalf of members Kathleen Kellogg, Marguerite L.

A female sound engineer with NBC News in Burbank filed a $10-million discriminationsuit against the network Wednesday, alleging that it has kept her and other women from becoming camera operators. The civil complaint filed by Lee Serrie, a 12-year network employee, in Los Angeles Superior Court claims that "NBC-TV has no women camera operators working in any of their network facilities and they have only three women sound engineers in the nation."

A Del Mar woman passed over for promotion and then fired from La Jolla-based Science Applications International Corp. won $3.1 million Tuesday in court, the largest award ever issued by a San Diego County jury in a sex discrimination suit. Bernice Stanfill, 48, who in 16 years with the company worked her way up from secretary to corporate vice president, was passed over for promotion in favor of one man, then another a few years later.

Kohler Co. has agreed to pay $886,500 to more than 2,000 women who were refused jobs because they were considered too short. The plumbing fixture company, based in Kohler, Wis., agreed to settle a Labor Department suit accusing it of sex discrimination for its practice of hiring only workers who were at least 5 feet, 4 inches tall. The rule was intended to make sure employees could handle physical labor, the company said.

A Japanese court awarded damages in a sexual discrimination case for the first time, giving $640,000 to 10 female workers. The women had sued the social insurance remuneration payment fund 10 years ago over its policy of promoting only males on the basis of length of service. The judge ruled that the government-affiliated agency had violated the constitution and the labor standards act. The agency said it may appeal.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a ruling that may mean new limits on class-action suits, rejected an effort to sue Wal-Mart Stores Inc. for discrimination on behalf of potentially a million female workers. The justices said the lawyers pressing the case failed to point to a common corporate policy that led to gender discrimination against workers at thousands of Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores across the country. The court ruled unanimously on some aspects of the case and divided on others.

The Supreme Court has agreed ? ominously ? to consider derailing a sex-discrimination lawsuit against the giant retailer Wal-Mart. If the justices rule that the class-action suit can't go forward, Wal-Mart employees may not be the only ones to be denied a meaningful day in court. The allegations against Wal-Mart, which haven't yet been put to a trial, are that women are paid less than men for comparable jobs and that women receive fewer promotions. But those issues aren't before the Supreme Court.

By many counts, 2009 was a great year for women in Hollywood. Female directors knocked out such hits as "The Proposal," "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel," "It's Complicated," and "Julie & Julia," as well as the Oscar contenders "The Hurt Locker" and "An Education." Sandra Bullock and Meryl Streep outperformed most of their male counterparts dollar for dollar at the box office, nabbing Oscar nominations to boot. The elusive female movie-going audience has started to gel into a potent force, driving such hits as the "Twilight" franchise, "The Blind Side" and this weekend's "Alice in Wonderland."

The well-being of children reared by same-sex couples dominated the federal trial over Proposition 8 on Friday as the measure's proponents attacked studies that showed children of lesbians and gays fare well. Lawyers for two gay couples challenging Proposition 8's ban on same-sex marriage called to the stand Michael Lamb, head of Cambridge University's Department of Social and Developmental Psychology. Lamb reviewed about 100 studies that compared children of gay families to those reared by heterosexual couples.

The legal team challenging Proposition 8 in a federal trial tried to show Thursday that the ballot initiative was a form of bias that was likely to make gays and lesbians more vulnerable to mental health problems. Columbia University professor Ilan H. Meyer, an expert in mental health issues among gays, lesbians and bisexuals, testified that gays and lesbians were more likely to suffer from mental disorders than heterosexuals because of discrimination. Proposition 8 sent "a message that gay relationships are not respected, that they are of secondary value if they are of any value at all," Meyer said.

A verbal row between reformers and hard-liners is raging in Saudi Arabia, as the monarchy's recent cautious steps toward modernizing the ultraconservative nation have ruffled the feathers of some uncompromising clerics. On Sunday, a group of hard-line clerics exhorted authorities to ban women from appearing on television or in newspapers or magazines. On the same day, in an unusually bold move, Saudi human rights groups criticized the country's religious police, who enjoy wide powers to enforce adherence to the strict mores of the Wahhabi sect of Islam.

Faced with the possibility of paying multimillion-dollar damages, Lucky Stores settled a sex discrimination lawsuit filed by a former employee, attorneys said Wednesday. The settlement was reached late Tuesday night after Orange County Superior Court Judge William F. McDonald tentatively ruled that Robin Henry had been mistreated by the supermarket chain's administrators in Buena Park. The terms of the settlement were kept confidential by both sides.

A federal appeals court has granted Wal-Mart Stores Inc. a new hearing to decide whether plaintiffs grouped in a nationwide class-action case will instead be required to file separate lawsuits. A majority of judges on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the issue should be heard by an 11-judge panel, but a hearing date has not yet been determined. Six female employees sued the Bentonville, Ark.-based company in 2001, saying they were paid less than men and promoted less frequently.

California insurers are discriminating against women, charging them more for individual health insurance than men, the city of San Francisco maintained in a lawsuit filed Tuesday against the state regulators who govern them.