Women’s History Month isn’t just a time to recognize achievements made throughout the decades to advance women’s rights and demand equity. It’s also an opportunity to celebrate women making history today, the ones in our unwritten history books.
For example, U.S. Supreme Court Justice nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, if confirmed, will be the first Black woman to serve on the nation’s highest court. Judge Jackson, a former clerk for retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, graduated from Harvard Law School and served as a federal district and appellate court judge in Washington, D.C. Before serving as a judge, she worked for two years as a federal public defender, a vitally important role and an experience that few judges share. Indeed, she would be the first Supreme Court justice to ever have held such a position.
Shalanda Baker, a Member Scholar on leave from the Center for Progressive Reform, currently serves as the secretarial advisor on equity and the first-ever deputy director for energy justice in the Office of Economic Impact and Diversity at the U.S. Department of Energy. Baker’s decade-long research on the equity dimensions of the global transition from fossil fuel energy to clean energy sources established her as a leader and one of the foremost respected voices in energy justice. She is currently headed back to the U.S. Senate for confirmation to be director of the Department of Energy’s Office of Minority Economic Impact.
Another trailblazer in the U.S. government right now is Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.). While the second Asian American woman elected to Congress, she is the first senator to give birth while in office and first female recipient of the Purple Heart military decoration to serve in the Senate. Her experience as a veteran of the Iraq War, during which time she lost both of her legs in combat, has carried through her public service in government, as she is a fierce advocate for veterans and disability rights. She uses her voice and position of power to push legislation that supports underserved and marginalized communities as well, notably with the Environmental Justice for All Act, which she introduced in 2021. The bill addresses the many environmental, public health, accessibility, legal, and financial challenges that marginalized communities face — the first legislation of its kind.
While Jackson, Baker, and Duckworth are making history as individuals in each branch of the federal government, there are also noteworthy laws making headway for women’s equity. The Ending Forced Arbitration for Sexual Assault and Harassment Act was signed into law in February and is designed to address concerns that arbitration agreements are used to shield allegations of sexual harassment and assault from public disclosure and protect those accused of harassment and abuse. The law specifically prohibits enforcement of predispute arbitration agreements or joint-action waivers in cases filed under federal, tribal, or state law that relate to sexual assault or sexual harassment, unless the person challenging the conduct agrees to move forward with an arbitration process outside of court. No such law previously protected victims of sexual harassment and assault (predominantly women) in the workplace.
Women’s History Month will continue to catalogue the women forging the path for equal rights and representation, and we at the Center for Progressive Reform will be here to recognize and celebrate their achievements.
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Marcha Chaudry | March 24, 2022
Women’s History Month isn’t just a time to recognize achievements made throughout the decades to advance women’s rights and demand equity. It’s also an opportunity to celebrate women making history today, the ones in our unwritten history books.
Daniel Farber | March 22, 2022
In describing cost-benefit analysis to students, I've often told them that the "cost" side of the equation is pretty simple. And it does seem simple: just get some engineers to figure out how industry can comply and run some spreadsheets of the costs. But this seemingly simple calculation turns out to be riddled with uncertainties, particularly when you're talking about regulating the energy industry. Those uncertainties need more attention in designing regulations.
Alexandra Klass, Hannah Wiseman | March 21, 2022
The U.S. system for regulating electricity divides responsibility among too many players, assigns too many overlapping or competing tasks, and creates too many distorted incentives, a group of law professors says. They propose reforms that would break down governance silos to ensure greater collaboration in the clean energy transition.
Catalina Gonzalez | March 16, 2022
State officials in California are leading an extensive multisector planning effort to develop the 2022 Scoping Plan, the third update to California’s climate mitigation strategy. The new plan will outline a pathway for statewide action toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030 and reaching net-zero emissions no later than 2045.
Daniel Farber | March 15, 2022
On March 11, there were two seismic shocks in the world of gas pipeline regulation. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has spent years resisting pressure to change the way it licenses new gas pipelines. The whole point of a natural gas pipeline is to deliver the gas to users who will burn it, thereby releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. FERC has steadfastly refused to take those emissions into account. The D.C. Circuit held that position illegal in an opinion released last Friday. That same day, by coincidence, FERC published guidelines in the Federal Register explaining how it proposed to consider those emissions.
Sidney A. Shapiro | March 14, 2022
When it comes to historically marginalized groups, an “out of sight and out of mind” approach has too often infected agency policymaking. Agencies have responded with outreach to marginalized communities, but regulatory policymaking is hardly inclusive. Last January, President Biden required the government to increase engagement “with community-based organizations and civil rights organizations,” and the Administrative Conference of the United States responded with a multiday forum on underserved communities and the regulatory process. Addressing the lack of participation by marginalized communities in regulatory decision-making is crucial, but there is another fundamental issue. The input of marginalized communities will not matter if agencies ignore or devalue it because these insights are not expressed using the standard narratives of policymaking.
Allison Stevens | March 9, 2022
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, recently nominated to succeed retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, has received the endorsement of over 200 Black law deans and professors.
David Driesen | March 8, 2022
Arguments and judicial reasoning in administrative law cases usually focus on the case at hand. Indeed, the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) commands that narrow focus. The APA does not give the courts any role in shaping the laws governing administrative agencies, for that is what Congress does. Instead, it gives the courts a modest, albeit difficult responsibility: They may determine whether a particular agency action is arbitrary and capricious or contrary to law. Therefore, parties challenging an agency rule they disapprove of generally argue that the agency has violated some restraint stated in the statute or exercised its discretion in an arbitrary way. But in the U.S. Supreme Court case heard last week about the scope of EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions (West Virginia v. EPA), coal companies relied heavily on a "parade of horribles" argument — a listing of bad things that might happen in future cases if the Court upheld EPA's interpretation of the Clean Air Act in the case before the Court.
Karen Sokol | March 4, 2022
Last fall, on the same day that the parties to the Paris Agreement gathered in Glasgow for their first day of their annual international climate meeting, the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would review an appellate court decision about the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate greenhouse gases from fossil fuel power plants under the Clean Air Act. Fast forward half a year: On February 28, the day that the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel Climate Change issued its sobering report on climate adaptation and harms to human and planetary well-being, the court heard oral arguments in the case -- West Virginia v. EPA. Once again, it was a split-screen reality.