• A new Tina Turner documentary was recently released, wherein Tina describes the vicious intimate partner sexual abuse to which her first husband subjected her to until she escaped. In the film, Oprah Winfrey observes that when Tina disclosed this in 1981 “nobody talked about sexual abuse, physical abuse, domestic abuse, abuse period. Ours was the generation that started to break the silence.” 

• Just one year before, in 1980, Legal Momentum had established its National Judicial Education Program to Promote Equality for Women and Men in the Courts (NJEP) to "break the silence" about gender bias in judicial decision. Following this, supreme courts nationwide appointed task forces to investigate gender bias in their own court systems and recommend reforms.
• According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “About 1 in 5 women and 1 in 12 men have [been subjected to] contact sexual violence by an intimate partner.” This statistic severely understates the nature and extent of Intimate Partner Sexual Abuse which encompasses far more than “contact sexual violence.

• As we mark another Equal Pay Day on March 24th, it is essential that government and businesses invest in solutions to lift up the disproportionate number of women doing low-wage work.
• For over a decade, the federal minimum wage has stagnated at $7.25, with an even lower threshold of $2.13 set for workers in tipped industries, who are expected to make up the difference in tips.
• The current minimum wage relegates too many women and their children to cycles of poverty, economic insecurity, and inequality. And this reality is not by chance, it is the product of decades of structural discrimination and slavery-era policies that targeted industries predominated by black workers (and now immigrant workers).
• We are at a critical juncture to achieve transformative change for the most vulnerable women and we must maintain momentum. Any self-proclaimed advocates of gender and racial equity has a responsibility to join these efforts, because we cannot achieve meaningful gender equity without a living wage for all.

• On January 20, 2021, Legal Momentum issued its list of priority actions urging the Biden-Harris administration to swiftly reverse assaults on gender justice within its first 100 days in office.
• Legal Momentum’s agenda—which is not exhaustive—makes specific recommendations to undo harm to anti-discrimination enforcement, equity in education, economic and workplace equality, access to reproductive health and justice, healthcare access, and immigrant rights.
• Find our Full Agenda and Executive Summary on our website.

Legal Momentum looks forward to working with the new administration to center gender equity in its agenda, by prioritizing:

• Eradicating violence against women and girls 
• Ensuring workplace equality and economic empowerment,
• Providing equal educational opportunities and,
• Promoting gender fairness in the justice system.

• The petition and our brief challenge an alarming ruling issued by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals that threatens to eviscerate Title IX’s core safeguards against sexual harassment in schools.   
• The Circuit Court acknowledged that the professor’s allegations of cheating were fraudulent, but nonetheless concluded that Rhodes College could not be held directly liable.
• We argue that by artificially severing the sex-biased actions of Bose’s professor from the school’s expulsion, which was undeniably based solely on those actions, the decision undermines the core purpose of Title IX.