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National Girls and Women in Sports Day!

In honor of National Girls and Women in Sports day, we share two updates relating to equity in athletics in Pennsylvania. First, from Western Pennsylvania, the courageous action of a fifth-grade basketball player has transformed the elementary school sports program for girls in the Pittsburgh Public Schools. We hope you find her story inspiring. Our second update is to relay news about SB 209, the High School Athletics Reporting bill in the Pennsylvania Senate. We expect the Senate Education Committee to act on this bill in the near future. Please help us celebrate National Girls and Women in Sports day by calling your Pennsylvania Senator and asking for their support of SB 209 - Help us level the playing field for our girls! 

WLP Applauds Attorney General Holder on Changes to UCR Definition of Rape

January 6, 2012 - U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Uniform Crime Report's (UCR) definition of rape will be revised to provide a more comprehensive statistical reporting of rape in America. WLP applauds Attorney General Holder as well as Vice President Biden and Director Susan Carbon of the Department of Justice Office of Violence Against Women for thier leadership in moving this issue foward. (see WLP Press Release and read more about our work here.)

Fromson Receives Award for Excellence from Pennsylvania Legal Aid Network

Picture of Terry Fromson receiving award
Samuel W. Milkes, Esq., Executive Director of PLAN, presenting the Award for Excellence in Public Benefits Advocacy to Terry Fromson.

On November 30th, the Pennsylvania Legal Aid Network presented Terry Fromson, WLP's Managing Attorney, with an award in recognition of her outstanding work on behalf of low-income families and individuals.

Terry, along with Ed Zogby, Gail Bean, and Carolyn Stevens, were acknowledged for their work on implementing the TANF Family Violence Option in Pennsylvania. This work has resulted in policies that have helped thousands of victims of domestic violence access benefits and supports for themselves and their families, enabling them to escape and remain safe from violent situations.  

Congratulations Terry!

Title IX Advocates Request Review of Penn State’s Handling of Sexual Harassment and Violence Allegations Implicating Athletes

This week ten legal organizations submitted a letter to the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education requesting a Title IX Compliance Review of how Penn State responds to sexual harassment and violence allegations.  The letter also calls for routine reviews to determine whether schools across the country respond differently to complaints of sexual harassment and violence when athletes and athletic department members are implicated.  The request was made by the Women’s Law Project, California Women's Law Center, Legal Voice, Equal Rights Advocates, National Women’s Law Center, Equity Legal, Legal Aid Society–Employment Law Center, Women’s Sports Foundation, American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, and Southwest Women’s Law Center. See full press release.

Governor Corbett Signs Disastrous “TRAP” Law

On December 14, 2011, after a raging legislative fight over women’s abortion care that lasted most of the past year, the Pennsylvania General Assembly passed Senate Bill 732 and sent it to Governor Corbett for his signature or veto. Unfortunately on December 22, the Governor signed it into law. SB732 requires safe, accessible abortion providers to comply with the burdensome and costly regulations now reserved for ambulatory surgical facilities, even though abortion is much safer and simpler than surgeries commonly conducted in ambulatory surgical centers.  (See more).

WLP Asks President Obama and Secretary Sebelius to Reconsider Plan B Decision

In a letter sent on December 19th to President Obama and Secretary Sebelius, WLP urged the President to reevaluate and reconsider this decision and to take future action to protect, not undermine, women’s health. Among the many concerns cited in its letter, the WLP noted that when our country faces approximately 3.1 million unintended pregnancies each year, unrestricted access to safe and effective contraception is vital.  WLP also pointed out that there is simply no evidence to suggest that making emergency over-the-counter contraception available encourages young women to begin having sex at a younger age, or engage in sex with more partners.  Further, the FDA’s recommended change would have made emergency contraception – which remains behind the pharmacist’s counter for women ages 17 years and older – far more accessible to women of all ages, an important development given the vast number of unplanned pregnancies among women in their twenties and thirties. See WLP Blog about this.

WLP Managing Attorney Terry Fromson Urges HHS to Define Maternity Insurance Coverage Broadly

At a listening session held by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) how HHS defines essential health benefits, Fromson commented on the need to broadly define essential benefits, focusing specifically on maternity and behavioral health benefits.  Under the ACA, all new health plans selling coverage to individuals and small groups must provide the Essential Health Benefits that HHS is responsible for defining.  To get input from stakeholders, HHS is holding listening sessions around the country and came to Philadelphia on November 8, 2011.  Fromson emphasized the importance of defining maternity and newborn benefits to include prenatal, delivery, and postpartum care, elements of insurance coverage often unavailable to women.  In response to HHS request for comment on the Institute of Medicine’s recommendations to HHS released on October 7, 2011, Fromson expressed disagreement with IOM’s recommendation that HHS take cost into account and use a small employer plan as the typical health plan benchmark to guide HHS in defining essential health benefits. See Fromson's comments.  

Women’s Law Project and ACLU Applaud PPS Agreement to End Gender Segregation at Westingthouse Academy

Calling it “a step toward genuine reform,” women’s rights advocates at the Women’s Law Project, ACLU of Pennsylvania, and ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project applauded the decision of the Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS) to end its recent experiment with gender segregation for core academic classes taught at Westinghouse Academy, a grade 6-12 public school. The agreement to end single-sex classes in all core subjects at Westinghouse effective no later than February 1, 2012, was announced at a school board meeting on November 7, 2011, following months of discussions between PPS and the advocacy organizations, which were initiated at the request of parents of Westinghouse students.  If approved by the PPS school board, the agreement will avert the filing of a federal civil rights complaint against the school district with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. See more.

WLP Files Brief in U.S. Court of Appeals, Third Circuit in a Clinic Protest Case

On August 1, 2011, the Women's Law Project filed a brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in a clinic protest case, Kuhns v. City of Allentown, No. 11-1982 (3d Cir.), in which abortion protesters accused the Allentown Women's Center and its executive director Jennifer Boulanger of conspiring with police and local officials to violate the First Amendment rights of clinic protesters.  Together with Thomas Zemaitis and Nicole Aiken of Pepper Hamilton LLP and David S. Cohen of Drexel University Law School, the Women's Law Project represents the Women's Center and Boulanger.  

In March 2011, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania granted summary judgment for the Women's Center on the protesters' First Amendment claim, concluding that there was no evidence of any conspiracy between the clinic and police.  The dispute arose in November 2007, when Allentown Women's Center escorts came up with the idea of carrying two blue plastic tarps on either side of a crosswalk to create a "peaceful blue tunnel" to help patients pass unmolested from the Women's Center's parking lot to its entrance. The police determined that carrying sheets of plastic across a public street was not illegal behavior and so did not arrest the escorts as the protesters demanded.  The protesters filed their lawsuit six months later. 

New Hope Solebury Update

On May 16, 2011, the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) entered into a resolution agreement with New Hope Solebury School District (NHS) in which NHS agreed to provide participation opportunities for female and male students that equally effectively accommodate the athletic interests of both sexes, and to provide the girls’ athletics program as a whole with locker rooms, practice and competitive facilities comparable to those provided to the boys’ program.  By September 1, 2011, NHS will submit documentation to OCR to demonstrate compliance with Title IX’s participation opportunities.  By October 3, 2011, NHS will provide OCR with a report of its assessment of the comparability of locker rooms, practice and competitive facilities and, if it determines such facilities are not comparable, NHS will submit a corrective plan to OCR by December 1, 2011.  OCR will monitor compliance. (Note: In March of 2008, the WLP filed a complaint against NHS with the U.S. Dept. of Education's Office of Civil Rights.)

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