> Supreme Court Will Hear Three Women's Rights Cases
>
> Run Date: 09/29/00
>
> By Deborah Mesce
> WEnews correspondent
>
> The court will decide if states may test pregnant women for drugs and
> arrest them when the result is positive, if states can be sued for
> discriminating against the disabled, and if citizenship laws may set
> different rules for mothers and fathers.
>
> WASHINGTON, D.C.--Three cases coming before the Supreme Court in the new
> term that begins Monday will have a significant impact on women's
> rights. The court's nine justices will rule on appeals involving overt
> sex discrimination in citizenship law, the constitutionality of
> mandatory drug testing of pregnant women and the rights of state
> employees under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
>
> "We're in a difficult and hostile environment," said Kathy Rodgers,
> president of the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund. (NOW Legal
> Defense funds Women's Enews.)
>
> "We're up against not just resistance to expanding or generously
> interpreting civil rights, but we're also up against an extraordinary
> effort to roll back the civil rights gains that we have had over the
> last two or three decades," Rodgers added.
>
> Current citizenship law sets different requirements for fathers and
> mothers seeking to obtain U.S. citizenship for their children. In the
> case before the court, a Texas father is trying to prevent his adult son
> from being deported to Vietnam, a country the boy left when he was 6.
>
> "There are few sex-based statutes remaining, but it is very important to
> eradicate all that do because they continue to perpetuate the
> stereotypes about men and women and our roles in society," Rodgers said
> at a briefing for reporters Thursday.
>
> To confer citizenship upon a child, the mother needs only to have lived
> in the United States for one year. A father, however, must provide
> financial support for the child until the child is 18 and must
> acknowledge paternity under oath before the child turns 18. Courts may
> also establish the paternity--again before the child is 18.
>
> Differing U.S. rules for fathers and mothers to confer citizenship on
> children
>
> The child in this case is now an adult. Tuan Ahn Nguyen was born in 1969
> in Vietnam to an American man and a Vietnamese woman who never married.
> Nguyen's mother abandoned him shortly after birth and he was left in the
> care of his father, Joseph Boulais.
>
> After the fall of Saigon in 1975, Nguyen came to the United States as a
> refugee and was raised by his father and a stepmother. He became a
> permanent resident of the United States, but his father did not take the
> steps necessary to confirm Nguyen's U.S. citizenship before the boy
> turned 18. In 1992, Nguyen, then 23, was convicted of sexual assault and
> served his sentence. Three years later, the Immigration and
> Naturalization Service initiated steps to deport him.
>
> NOW Legal Defense, co-counsel in the case, claims that the law is
> unconstitutional because it places a greater burden on men than on women
> in determining U.S. citizenship.
>
> "This is a classic case of stereotyping in our society--the idea that
> nurturing a child is something that women do naturally but men do not,"
> said Sherry Leiwant, senior staff attorney for NOW Legal Defense.
>
> No date has been set for oral arguments in this case.
>
> In the case involving the mandatory drug testing of pregnant women, ten
> prenatal patients at the Medical University of South Carolina in
> Charleston tested positive for cocaine. Nine were arrested for cocaine
> possession, distribution of cocaine to a minor or child abuse. One
> avoided arrest by admitting herself to a substance abuse treatment
> program. In South Carolina, a third-trimester fetus is legally
> considered a child. All those arrested were African-American; the one
> permitted to seek treatment was white.
>
> Challenging mandatory drug testing of pregnant women as violations of
> law and right to privacy
>
> The hospital and city of Charleston defend the testing policy and
> arrests, saying they are in the public interest in order to protect
> maternal and fetal health by deterring pregnant women from using
> cocaine.
>
> However, the women and their attorneys claim that the policy constitutes
> a search without a search warrant and violates the right to privacy. In
> addition, women were arrested after they had given birth, too late to
> prevent any harm to the fetus. Further, the policy was implemented at
> the only public hospital in Charleston's predominately African-American
> community.
>
> The district court and the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the
> policy. Oral arguments before the high court are scheduled for Oct. 4.
>
> The testing policy and arrests could set a dangerous precedent that
> could affect all pregnant women and could deter them from seeing
> prenatal care, NOW Legal Defense lawyers argue.
>
> "Under the reasoning of this policy, the state could prosecute pregnant
> women for almost anything, including alcohol use or smoking if you could
> say that these activities could harm the fetus," said Roslyn Powell, NOW
> Legal Defense staff attorney.
>
> The third case involves two Alabama state employees who filed separate
> lawsuits claiming discrimination by the state in violation of the
> Americans with Disabilities Act. One was demoted to a lower-paid
> position at the University of Alabama at Birmingham's women's and
> infants' medical clinic after she returned to work following
> chemotherapy for breast cancer. The other employee, a corrections
> officer with the Alabama Department of Youth Services, alleged that the
> department failed to accommodate his asthma condition.
>
> Question: Can disabled individuals sue state employers under federal law
> protecting the disabled?
>
> The district court ruled in favor of the state, and the Eleventh Circuit
> Court of Appeals reversed part of the lower court's ruling. The issue
> before the Supreme Court is whether individuals can sue state employers
> under the federal anti-discrimination law that protects the disabled.
> Oral arguments are scheduled for Oct. 10.
>
> NOW Legal Defense, which filed a friend of the court brief in the case,
> says the case will provide the court an opportunity to narrow the civil
> rights of state employees, as they did last year in a case involving age
> discrimination and state employees.
>
> "While these decisions are couched in the seemingly technical context of
> the court's debate about federalism and states' rights, they have real
> and practical importance, particularly for the many women and people of
> color who work for state institutions such as universities and hospitals
> and may have cause to invoke civil rights laws," said Julie Goldscheid,
> senior staff attorney and acting legal director at NOW Legal Defense.
> More than half of the work force of state employers are women, she
> added.
>
> Deborah Mesce is a free-lance writer who previously covered Washington
> and Congress for The Associated Press.