On a recent December Saturday, I hurried from the Metro train with my 6 year-old son trailing behind. We were joining friends and colleagues at the Justice for All March in Washington, DC. We had endured a dismal series of weeks in late November in which grand juries had refused to indict law enforcement for the killing of unarmed black men, and an African American domestic violence survivor had agreed to a plea agreement that included a return to prison after she’d already served 3 years for firing several warning shots to scare off her abusive husband.
The Women's Legal Defense and Education Fund
Legal Momentum Blog
Welcome to Legal Momentum's Blog.
We write about stories and issues that relate to our mission.
Our Intern Team also posts about issues important to them, offering discussion and insight regarding women's equality and opportunity.
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New Mexico teenager Karina Ramirez nearly dropped out of school just two weeks after the birth of her baby, because school officials said she had missed too many days. In fact, family responsibilities are the top reason why young women drop out of high school; the Gates Foundation found that 26% of students who dropped out of high school did so because they became a parent. Some are pushed out of school by administrators or teachers who don’t want parenting students there, and some just fall out of school because of inadequate support.
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Legal Momentum had a busy day Wednesday, presenting before legislative leaders in two places: the U.S. Congress and the New York City Council. In DC, Laura Wilkinson, Legal Momentum's Vice Chair, spoke to the Senate Democratic Steering and Outreach Committee on setting legislative priorities for the new Congress. In NYC, Senior Staff Attorney Christina Brandt-Young testified at a New York City Council hearing on the segregated New York City Fire Department workforce, which has the lowest percentage of women employees of any city agency.
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Legal Momentum is waiting with bated breath for the outcome of today’s oral arguments in the U. S. Supreme Court in the case of Young v. UPS, which could have a significant impact on working women—especially those in low-wage or manual-labor jobs.
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Last week, Legal Momentum’s President and CEO, Carol Robles-Román, was a featured panelist at the Thomson Reuters Trust Women Conference in London. The conference brought together more than 550 delegates from 55 countries to discuss realistic and visionary solutions to the global challenges facing women today.
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Legal Momentum's Lynn Hecht Schafran, senior vice president and director of the National Judicial Education Program, will be a speaker at the 2014 American Bar Association Women Rainmakers Mid-Career Workshop, to be held on Thursday and Friday, November 7th and 8th, in San Diego. The workshop is a biennial event of the ABA Women Rainmakers. It offers opportunities to network with national experts and learn about topics such as finding work/life balance, negotiating, combating gender bias in the workplace, establishing client relationships, and pay equity for women lawyers.
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Legal Momentum’s Department of Education complaint against Brown University is currently being featured in a New York Times “Op-Doc” “Brown's 'Rape List,' Revisited.” The sh
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Legal Momentum had planned this month as a celebratory one to toast the 20th Anniversary of the passage of the Violence Against Women Act and LM’s role.
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Legal Momentum is thrilled to congratulate our colleague Sarah Deer on being named a 2014 MacArthur Fellow. Sarah has long been a member of the National Judicial Education Program faculty, and has worked with Legal Momentum to educate judges across the country about the serious problem of sexual and domestic violence against Native American women, who suffer one of the highest per capita rates of violent crime in the world.