The Supreme Court yesterday ruled 6 to 3 state workers can sue their employers for violating the Family and Medical Leave Act. The law entitles the workers to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for work for several reasons, including birth or adoption or a family emergency. The court extended the protections of the federal law to almost 5 million state employees. The ruling breaks with the court’s recent tradition of siding with states against the federal government involving the extension of federal anti-discrimination laws. Women’s rights groups hailed the ruling.
However, the Supreme Court yesterday refused to hear an appeal of a federal court decision that upheld the Bush administration policy of holding secret deportation hearings for hundreds of foreign nationals detained after September 11. The appeal was brought by a group of New Jersey newspapers that argued the public has a need to know how the government is responding to the 9/11 attacks. We’ll have more on that in the other hour of democracy now.