Pennsylvania Falls Further Behind While Workplace Protections for Pregnant and Nursing Women Take Effect in Connecticut and Nevada

Pregnant workers in Pennsylvania still lack adequate statewide workplace protections.

Starting this month, women in Connecticut and Nevada have stronger legal protections if they need reasonable workplace accommodations while they are pregnant or nursing.

These two states, like twenty-‍one others across the country, have each passed a law that explicitly grants pregnant and nursing women the right to pregnancy and lactation accommodations at work, and those laws went into effect on October 1.

Meanwhile, many pregnant and nursing women in Pennsylvania remain vulnerable, as similar bills languish in the state legislature.

The Pennsylvania Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (HB 1583, sponsored by Rep. Sheryl Delozier, R-Cumberland) would explicitly grant Pennsylvania women the right to reasonable accommodations for pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions, and the Workplace Accommodations for Nursing Mothers Act (HB 1685, sponsored by Rep. Mary Jo Daley, D-Montgomery) would provide more working women with the right to break time to express breast milk.  Both bills are currently sitting in the Pennsylvania House Committee on Labor and Industry.

They are among a package of bills supported by the Pennsylvania Campaign for Women’s Health, a group of more than fifty-five organizations calling for evidence-based policy solutions to real problems faced by Pennsylvania women and families.

As we wait on the Pennsylvania legislature to move these bills, Pennsylvania pregnant and nursing women can look to other federal, state, and local laws to protect their rights at work, such as the Philadelphia Fair Practices Ordinance—but those laws don’t cover all Pennsylvania employees.

If you have questions about your rights at work, contact the Women’s Law Project at 215-928-9801 or info@womenslawproject.org for assistance.

The Women’s Law Project is a public interest law center in Pennsylvania devoted to advancing the rights of women and girls.

Sign up for WLP’s Action Alerts here. Stay up to date on issues and policy by subscribing to our blog, following us on twitter and liking us on Facebook. 

We are a non-profit organization. Please consider supporting equal rights for women and girls by making a one-time donation or scheduling a monthly contribution.

WLP Statement on Pennsylvania Suing Donald Trump Over the New Contraception Rules

Philadelphia –  The Women’s Law Project applauds Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s announcement today that he is suing President Donald J. Trump and the Trump Administration for issuing new rules that allow virtually any company to deny women insurance coverage for contraception.

According to the lawsuit filed today in the United States District Court in Philadelphia, the rules issued by the Trump Administration on October 6 violate federal law, which requires insurance companies to cover preventive health care services, including contraception, with no co-pay. The administration’s illegal action and new rules mean that 2.5 million Pennsylvania women and their families could have to pay more for basic health care.

“They failed to repeal Obamacare, they failed to defund Planned Parenthood, so now they’re going after contraception,” says Carol E. Tracy, Executive Director of the Women’s Law Project. “The predictable results of this latest way to attack women is unconscionable. Access to contraception reduces maternal and infant mortality, and reducing that access will increase it. Claiming to be “pro-life” and supporting this is beyond hypocritical. It’s outrageous.”

According to the Attorney General of Pennsylvania, it’s illegal, too.

From the complaint:

“This lawsuit challenges the Defendants’ illegal and unjustified attempt to deny millions of women in Pennsylvania and across this country access to necessary preventive health care through their employer-sponsored insurance plans. As set forth more fully below, Defendants’ actions violate, among other provisions of law, the Administrative Procedure Act, the Affordable Care Act, the guarantee of equal protection enshrined in the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, and the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.”

“[The Trump Administration] replaced science and evidence-based medical reasoning with political calculation,” says Attorney General Josh Shapiro. “The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is filing a lawsuit in federal court to stop them.”

The Women’s Law Project is a public interest law center in Pennsylvania devoted to advancing the rights of women and girls.

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On Sexual Harassment in Hollywood, on Campuses, and in Pennsylvania

Movie mogul Harvey Weinstein

One of the biggest news stories right now reveal allegations of serial sexual harassment by Hollywood studio executive Harvey Weinstein. A wrenching New York Times story details decades of allegations following a pattern wherein Weinstein would allegedly invite younger actresses to work meetings in hotel rooms, then show up in a robe or inappropriately dressed, make sexual advances and even ask them to watch him shower.

We may be seeing the beginning of a Cosby effect take place, where more women are coming forward to share similar experiences now that the allegations, characterized as an “open secret” in Hollywood, have become public record.

One of the themes in the coverage is Weinstein’s support of liberal causes, and his apparent assumption that such support would somehow inoculate him from a scandal erupting around his own behavior.

A particularly troubling link between public displays of wokeness about the kind of rape culture that, in private, he allegedly perpetuated is Weinstein’s support of The Hunting Ground, a 2015 award-winning documentary produced by Amy Ziering and directed by Kirby Dick that explores sexual assault on college campuses and the ways many schools have failed to adequately address it.

WLP Executive Director Carol Tracy has a cameo on the film. Tracy’s work on improving institutional response to sexual assault began as a college student back in 1973, when she organized a sit-in on the University of Pennsylvania campus after female students were advised to dress conservatively in response to a gang rape on campus. Today, Tracy and WLP Managing Attorney Terry Fromson are recognized as experts in both reforming police response to sexual assault and Title IX, the landmark education equity law that prohibits federally funded education programs from discriminating on the basis of sex.

Vanity Fair just published an interview with Amy Ziering.

From the piece:

The irony of having what could have been one of the last Weinstein-orchestrated Academy Awards campaigns come from a film about a hidden-in-plain-sight sexual-assault crisis, was lost on no one. Reached Thursday, the film’s producer, Amy Ziering, said she and Dick had minimal contact with Weinstein during the release of the documentary. Still, she said they were not surprised by the charges. About a year after working with Weinstein, Ziering said, she spoke to women who offered her their own allegations against Weinstein.

Read the rest of the interview here.

Meanwhile, the problems explored in The Hunting Ground have become even more urgent now that the Trump administration has rolled back protections for victims of sexual assault and harassment in federally funded schools.

As we re-examine the dynamics and frequency of sexual harassment in the workplace, it’s worth noting: Here in Pennsylvania, most women working at companies with three or fewer employees are not protected under the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act, which prohibits sexual harassment (the exceptions are workers protected by a local ordinances better than state law).

There is no evidence that employees of smaller businesses are less likely than employees at larger corporations to experience harassment.

Legislation to extend equal protection to all Pennsylvania workers under the Human Relations Act (HB2300 of 2013-2014 session, HB846 of the 2015-2016 session) has been repeatedly introduced by members of the Women’s Health Caucus of the Pennsylvania legislature, and repeatedly ignored by the Pennsylvania legislature at large.

If you care about this issue, you should contact your Representative and ask them to support amending the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act, so that all employees in the Commonwealth are covered, not just some.

The Women’s Law Project is a public interest law center in Pennsylvania devoted to advancing the rights of women and girls.

Sign up for WLP’s Action Alerts here. Stay up to date on issues and policy by subscribing to our blog, following us on twitter and liking us on Facebook. 

We are a non-profit organization. Please consider supporting equal rights for women and girls by making a one-time donation or scheduling a monthly contribution. 

WLP Statement on Trump Administration’s Rollback of Contraception Mandate

The Trump Administration issued a new rule eviscerating the contraception coverage mandate of the Affordable Care Act.

“We’re experiencing an unprecedented attack on contraception in this country, despite having full knowledge of all the public health benefits, and cost-savings, of ensuring contraception is widely available,” says Carol E. Tracy, Executive Director of the Women’s Law Project. “Contraception reduces unplanned pregnancies and abortion rates, and infant and maternal mortality rates. We’re dealing with a strategic effort to sabotage the health of women and children here.”

Contraception is standard medical care that has helped more than 99% of American women who have been sexually active to prevent pregnancy and treat medical conditions such as dysmenorrhea, menorrhagia (excessive menstrual bleeding), migraines, endometriosis, and uterine fibroids.

In April, Trump signed a bill allowing states to cut off funding to Planned Parenthood for preventative healthcare including contraception.

In May, Trump appointed Teresa Manning, a person who has publicly stated “contraception doesn’t work” in charge of overseeing Title X, the country’s family planning program.

In July, the House appropriations committee voted to eliminate $286 million for Title X, the already-underfunded federal program that funds contraception and related preventative healthcare services for low-income Americans.

In September, the Trump administration abruptly cut off funding for teen pregnancy prevention, amid repeated efforts to defund Planned Parenthood’s preventative healthcare program.

Then there is, of course, repeated efforts to gut and sabotage the Affordable Care Act.

This onslaught of attacks on contraception access arrive amid record-lows of both teen pregnancy and abortion rates.

“We are analyzing the interim rule and will be submitting a formal response,” says Terry L. Fromson, Managing Attorney of the Women’s Law Project. “But we’re also looking up long enough to see the big picture that emerges when you connect the dots between the Trump administration’s aggressive support of policies promoting unplanned pregnancy, rollback of protections for rape survivors, and obstruction of progress on workplace equality issues like equal pay. It’s a chilling picture.”

To request an interview with a WLP attorney about this topic, contact Tara Murtha at tmurtha@womenslawproject.org. 

The Women’s Law Project is a public interest law center in Pennsylvania devoted to advancing the rights of women and girls.

Sign up for WLP’s Action Alerts here. Stay up to date on issues and policy by subscribing to our blog, following us on twitter and liking us on Facebook. 

We are a non-profit organization. Please consider supporting equal rights for women and girls by making a one-time donation or scheduling a monthly contribution. 

WLP Statement on Congressman Tim Murphy

Pennsylvania Rep. Tim Murphy isn’t the first and won’t be the last hypocrite politician who fails to practice what he so emphatically preaches.

Rep. Tim Murphy reportedly asked his girlfriend to have an abortion while championing abortion restrictions for everyone else.

In fact, it’s unlikely any politician who votes to restrict access to safe legal abortion would ever have to practice what they preach. Every politician’s vote for an abortion restriction is a vote to preserve one standard of personal freedom and medical safety for themselves and loved ones, and a lower standard for their constituents. We know from public health data before Roe v. Wade that criminalizing abortion simply reserves access to the full range of standard reproductive healthcare for the relatively rich, and it is the working-class and poor—disproportionately women of color–who suffer the potentially fatal consequences of restricting access to safe legal abortion.

We suspect Rep. Tim Murphy knows this. We know this. Professional medical associations know this, which is why they strongly oppose H.R. 36, the 20-week ban co-sponsored by Rep. Tim Murphy that passed the House yesterday.

The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is the country’s leading group of physicians providing health care for women.

From ACOG’s statement on H.R.36: “The clear consensus by leading medical groups is that a ban on abortion after 20 weeks would interfere with the physician-patient relationship at a time when women are in need of empathetic, respectful and evidence-based care. These medical decisions should be made solely by each individual woman in consultation with those she trusts the most, including her obstetrician-gynecologist – not politicians.”

Frankly, we’re not particularly interested in Rep. Tim Murphy’s personal life. Now if only the Congressman would stop inserting himself into the personal decisions and lives of women and families across the United States.

We strongly urge all U.S. Senators to vote against this cruel bill.

The Women’s Law Project is a public interest law center in Pennsylvania devoted to advancing the rights of women and girls.

Sign up for WLP’s Action Alerts here. Stay up to date on issues and policy by subscribing to our blog, following us on twitter and liking us on Facebook. 

We are a non-profit organization. Please consider supporting equal rights for women and girls by making a one-time donation or scheduling a monthly contribution. 

WLP’s New Website Exposes Discrimination Against Female Athletes in Pennsylvania Secondary Schools

The Women’s Law Project is proud to present FAIR:PLAY, a new website that enables anyone to quickly and easily check if any given public secondary school in Pennsylvania may be discriminating against female athletes. We are launching the website at a kickoff party at Google’s Pittsburgh office on Wednesday, September 27.

“Discrimination against female student athletes is an ongoing, pervasive problem in far too many school districts across the state,” says Susan Frietsche, Senior Staff Attorney of the Women’s Law Project, a public interest law center dedicated to the rights of women and girls in Pennsylvania. “The problem cuts across factors like school size, budget, and location. We developed FAIR:PLAY to empower students, parents and community members to advocate for equality in sports, and hold their schools accountable for shortchanging female students.”

 Jordan Fields, 18, will speak at the event. In 2013-2014, Fields was having such a hard time at her school in New Jersey that she became a plaintiff for a lawsuit for systemic racism. These negative experiences with her teachers challenged her confidence. “I fell behind, my grades dropped,” says Fields. “Athletics turned that determination back on for me. I was reminded that I was capable of doing whatever I put my mind to. Sports helped me gain the confidence I had lost.”

“Sport is a place where young women can find their resilience,” says Addie Muti, Associate Athletic Director at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh. “It’s a place where girls can find comfort in their own skin and their own body. They discover their body is a strong tool that will carry them forward.”

How does FAIR:PLAY Work? Type the name of any public Pennsylvania high school, junior high, or middle school into the search bar, and you will be shown the Title IX gap. The Title IX gap is calculated by subtracting the percent of school-sponsored athletic opportunities filled by female athletes from the percent of female students. For comparison’s sake, the results will also display the statewide Title IX gap (which is 6.53%) and the relevant countywide Title IX gap. A double-digit Title IX gap strongly suggests that the school’s athletic program is not in compliance with Title IX. You will also be able to tell if a particular school failed to submit data at all.

Why do we need FAIR:PLAY? Since 1972, federally funded schools have been required by law to provide male and female students with equitable athletic opportunities. Forty-five years later, a disturbing number of Pennsylvania schools are still failing to comply with the law.

In 2012, the Pennsylvania Legislature passed Act 82, a state law that requires middle and high schools to annually report athletic participation data by gender and race for students in grades 7 – 12. Unfortunately, the data was compiled in ways that made it nearly impossible to review.

FAIR:PLAY is an elegant first-step toward solving a persistent problem by increasing access to relevant information, and encouraging community-driven advocacy for female athletes.

Why Does Ensuring Girls Have Access to Sports Matter? Shortchanging female students of athletic opportunities deprives them of the many benefits of sports participation. Girls who play sports are more likely to earn better grades and to graduate than girls who do not play sports. Female student athletes have higher levels of confidence and a more positive body image than women and girls who do not play sports, and lower levels of depression. Participation in sports is also linked to increased career opportunities throughout a woman’s life. High school girls who play sports experience lower rates of unwanted pregnancy, smoking, eating disorders, and substance abuse. Girls of color and girls from immigrant families are disproportionately affected by the Title IX gap.

How we created FAIR:PLAY. The Women’s Law Project, with support from the FISA Foundation, worked with undergraduate and high school student programmers and professional female coders—themselves beneficiaries of Title IX—to develop the FAIR:PLAY website during a weekend-long hackathon in February 2017.

“It was a remarkable STEM learning experience that showcased the region’s technical talent as well as the participants’ dedication to fairness and equality,” says Kristy Trautmann, Executive Director of the FISA Foundation. “We believe FAIR:PLAY will make a real difference for parents, students, teachers, coaches, and community members, by giving them the tools they need to improve opportunities for female athletes in their schools, and fight for equality.”

About the FISA Foundation: The mission of FISA Foundation is to build a culture of respect and improve the quality of life for three populations in southwestern Pennsylvania: women, girls, and people with disabilities.

About the Women’s Law Project: The Women’s Law Project is a public interest law center in Pennsylvania devoted to advancing the rights of women and girls.

To request more information or an interview about FAIR:PLAY, discrimination against female athletes, or Title IX, contact Tara Murtha at tmurtha@womenslawproject.org. 

Sign up for WLP’s Action Alerts here. Stay up to date on issues and policy by subscribing to our blog, following us on twitter and liking us on Facebook. 

 

WLP Statement on Trump Administration’s Rollback of Protections for Sexual Assault Victims in School

The Office for Civil Rights in the United States Department of Education has formally rescinded longstanding guidance requiring federally funded schools to address allegations of sexual misconduct, including sexual assault.

The administration has rescinded two documents: A 2011 guidance known as the “Dear Colleague” letter, and a 2014 document containing questions and answers on Title IX.

“The actions taken by the Office for Civil Rights today are premised on incorrect assumptions,” says Women’s Law Project Managing Attorney Terry L. Fromson. “It will return us to the times when campus sexual misconduct procedures were stacked against victims and forced them to leave their school to safely pursue their education.”

The rescission letter erroneously claims the 2011 Dear Colleague letter “impose[d] new mandates” related to resolving allegations of student-on-student sexual misconduct. In fact, the 2011 merely articulated a long-standing interpretation of Title IX, a landmark education equity law passed in 1972.

Much has been made about the evidentiary standard, or burden of proof, used in administrative hearings addressing allegations of sexual misconduct. The rescission letter misleadingly suggests that the Obama-era guidances lowered the standard of proof. In fact, most schools already used the preponderance standard, to the extent that they published any procedures at all (failure to articulate procedures is itself a violation of Title IX).

The preponderance standard is fully consistent with the requirements and spirit of civil rights laws, as well as with OCR’s past enforcement of Title IX, going all the way back to the 1975 regulations and subsequent Title IX guidance documents. Other educational civil rights statutes like Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits race discrimination by educational institutions and is also enforced by OCR, and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which addresses employment discrimination including sexual harassment, rely on the preponderance standard.

Relying on a different standard of proof to adjudicate allegations of sexual misconduct than what is used to address other forms of discrimination would, in fact, be a form of discrimination itself. It is worth noting the preponderance standard is what is used when male students accused of sexual assault sue their schools for allegedly discriminating against them.

The rescission document was signed by Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Candice Jackson. Recently, Jackson smeared rape survivors by publicly stating the false, easily disproven claim that “90%” of sexual assault allegations on campuses “fall into the category of ‘we were both drunk.'”

These guidance documents have been replaced by an interim guidance that borrows liberally from criminal justice procedure, a system that is heavily weighted to favor accused defendants. By mimicking the criminal justice system, this attack on Title IX protections tips the scales against survivors and will make it even harder for them to come forward.

The rescission letter states OCR will pursue a new approach that “responds to the concerns of stakeholders,” and cites “accused students” before victims of sexual abuse–a priority list echoed in the action taken today.

The Women’s Law Project is a public interest law center in Pennsylvania devoted to advancing the rights of women and girls.

Sign up for WLP’s Action Alerts here. Stay up to date on issues and policy by subscribing to our blog, following us on twitter and liking us on Facebook. 

We are a non-profit organization. Please consider supporting equal rights for women and girls by making a one-time donation or scheduling a monthly contribution. 

Report: PA Crisis Pregnancy Center Chain Misused State Funds

A taxpayer-funded Pennsylvania-based “crisis pregnancy center” chain called Real Alternatives has been misusing state funds for decades, according to the Pennsylvania Office of the Auditor General.

“It is outrageous that, by its own admission in court, Real Alternatives used hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvania taxpayer dollars to fund its activities in other states,” Auditor General Eugene DePasquale said in a statement.

In March, the organization sued in order to stop an audit of their finances.

The recently published 24-page performance audit revealed that between fiscal years 2012/13 and 2014/15 alone, Real Alternatives collected $497,368 from subcontractors through a 3 percent fee that the organization admitted was collected to promote their business outside of the state, rather than provide direct services for Pennsylvania women. According to DePasquale, they have been doing this since 1997, making the total much higher.

“We will never know how much money was taken out of the Commonwealth nor how many Pennsylvania women and children may have been affected because this company channeled our tax dollars to other states,” DePasquale said. “But, we need to make sure it doesn’t ever happen again.”

DePasquale said the state intends to recover the misspent funds.

Pennsylvania was the first state to fund crisis pregnancy centers with taxpayer money. Today, we are one a handful that diverts funds from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families fund to do it.

Many CPCs intentionally misinform and mislead women seeking pregnancy-related information, and some even force women to watch anti-abortion propaganda, according to multiple reports.

Real Alternatives is no stranger to controversy in Pennsylvania.

In addition to suing to block the state’s assessment of how they are spending state funds, the organization sued seeking an exemption from the Affordable Care Act’s birth control mandate. In August, a federal judge ruled against them.

Pennsylvania’s five-year $30.2 million dollar state grant for Real Alternatives was set to expire this summer, but was extended to September 30.

The Women’s Law Project is a public interest law center in Pennsylvania devoted to advancing the rights of women and girls.

Sign up for WLP’s Action Alerts here. Stay up to date on issues and policy by subscribing to our blog, following us on twitter and liking us on Facebook. 

We are a non-profit organization. Please consider supporting equal rights for women and girls by making a one-time donation or scheduling a monthly contribution. 

We Filed a Brief Supporting the City of Philadelphia in the Fight for Equal Pay

The Women’s Law Project filed an amici brief in federal court on behalf of itself and 27 organizations supporting Philadelphia’s prior wage legislation. Despite passing into law unanimously last year, the equal pay ordinance has been stalled due to a lawsuit.

The ordinance prohibits reliance on and inquiry about a job candidate’s prior wage to determine his or her salary. Such a ban is important and necessary because salary offers based on a prior wage–rather than the job’s responsibilities and the applicants’ qualifications—perpetuate systemic pay discrimination. Despite federal and state laws adopted over fifty years ago to eradicate the gender wage gap, a significant pay gap persists that harms women, especially women of color. Typically, the gender wage gap is present early in a woman’s career, then widens throughout her life.

By removing prior wages from the conversation, the Philadelphia ordinance enables women to be paid based on objective criteria, like education and experience. When the ordinance passed into law last December, it was celebrated as a significant step forward in workplace equality.

However, as reported in the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Chamber of Commerce of Greater Philadelphia and Comcast Corp. began privately lobbying against the bill after its passage, trying to persuade Mayor Kenney to veto it.

The Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce filed suit in early April.

As a result the ordinance, which was scheduled to go into effect on May 23, has stalled.

In our brief, we argue that Philadelphia’s prior wage legislation is a rational legislative policy decision like many longstanding laws regulating the employment relationship for the purpose of eliminating discrimination, and cite the many, many longstanding legal precedents supporting this argument.

“The fact is that Philadelphia’s prior wage ordinance is based on both evidence and legal precedent,” said WLP Managing Attorney Terry L. Fromson, who co-authored the brief with Staff Attorney Amal Bass. “This law is especially important in Philadelphia, the poorest city of the ten most populous cities in the country. We’re talking about a commonsense anti-discrimination policy here, and it’s being blocked by business interests using faulty arguments.”

Read our brief here.

The Women’s Law Project is a public interest law center in Pennsylvania devoted to advancing the rights of women and girls.

Sign up for WLP’s Action Alerts here. Stay up to date on issues and policy by subscribing to our blog, following us on twitter and liking us on Facebook. 

We are a non-profit organization. Please consider supporting equal rights for women and girls by making a one-time donation or scheduling a monthly contribution. 

WLP Statement on Betsy DeVos’s Title IX Announcement

The Department of Education will “replace the current approach” to addressing sexual misconduct at schools that receive federal funding, according to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

In remarks given this afternoon, DeVos repeatedly stated that “the current system” does not work. It remains unclear what exactly she is referring to since there is not one “current system” schools are using in administrative proceedings to resolve allegations of sexual misconduct.

What is needed now is more clarification, guidance, and enforcement–not less oversight.

School administrators have not always gotten it right. They certainly didn’t get it right for the many decades when sexual violence was almost entirely ignored.

Title IX is a landmark federal civil rights law designed to eliminate sexual discrimination in federally funded schools and education programs that was passed in 1972.

In 2011, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights issued a guidance document known as a “Dear Colleague letter.” The guidance was issued in response to victim complaints that schools were failing to respond to their assaults. The 2011 guidance was designed to help school administrators understand and implement their responsibilities under Title IX to address sexual harassment and violence.

In her remarks, DeVos characterized the years since the guidance was issued, arguably the first time in history sexual violence has been seriously addressed since women earned equal education opportunities, as an “era of rule by letter.”

The Dear Colleague letter was a clarifying document. It did not contain new legal obligations.

“It is mind-boggling that the Secretary of Education can pretend to be interested in students’ welfare while characterizing the era wherein we finally took sexual assault in schools seriously as an ‘unraveling of justice,’” says Terry L. Fromson, Managing Attorney of the Women’s Law Project.

“It’s unsurprising that an administration led by a man who bragged about grabbing women between the legs would actively try to mitigate efforts to make schools accountable for addressing sexual assault and harassment,” says Women’s Law Project Executive Director Carol E. Tracy.

“But here’s the situation. No matter what this administration says or does, you can’t un-ring a bell. These days, rape survivors refuse to be silenced. The culture has shifted. Title IX is not going anywhere, and schools are still obligated to provide educational opportunities free of sexual harassment and violence.”

The Women’s Law Project is the only public interest law center in Pennsylvania devoted to advancing the rights of women and girls.

Sign up for WLP’s Action Alerts here. Stay up to date on issues and policy by subscribing to our blog, following us on twitter and liking us on Facebook. 

We are a non-profit organization. Please consider supporting equal rights for women and girls by making a one-time donation or scheduling a monthly contribution.