A panel of three judges, including Judge Michael Boudin (presiding), Justice David Souter (formerly of the Supreme Court) and Judge Jeffrey Howard engaged with Harvey Silverglate, representing the original plaintiffs who were appealing the district court finding, and Bill Porter of the Attorney General’s office with David Guberman, representing the Commonwealth.  JALSA joined in an amicus brief with Armenian groups and the Irish Immigration Center arguing that the Department of Education had the right to determine what materials should be included in a Curriculum Guide established to carry out the legislative intent to teach about genocide in the schools.

When the initial legislation had been considered, our organizational leadership had urged the legislature to include a broad number of examples of genocide in the proposed curriculum so that students might study history of particular interest to their community.  As a result, the legislation had indicated that the study might include materials about the Armenian Genocide, the European Holocaust, the Cambodian Killing Fields, the Middle Passage of the African Slave Trade, and the Irish Potato Famine.  Turkish representatives wanted materials in the curriculum that argued that the Armenian experience during WWI was not an example of genocide but the result of the conflict.  The DOE had decided that denial materials should not be part of the Curriculum Guide.  The core question raised by the plaintiffs was whether the removal of the denial materials from the Curriculum Guide, possibly in response to political pressure, was a denial of constitutional rights.

An audio recording of the court proceedings will be available at http://www.ca1.uscourts.gov/

Click “Court Calendar,” and follow the links for the RSS feed of oral arguments.

Case name:  Griswold v. Driscoll.    Case should be decided by June.

Joint Committee on Labor and Workforce Development gave a thumbs up to the pending Paid Sick Day bill.  Now, quick progress is needed to move it through both houses by the end of the legislative term.  Calls to House Leadership about the importance of this bill would be very useful.

Enthusiastic audiences heard Nigel Savage at Temple Beth Zion and Cong. Dorshei Tzedek this weekend.  Members of Moishe/Kavod House, JALSA, Temple Shalom of Newton, TBZ, and Dorshei came together to listen to the HAZON leader and help build the Jewish Food Movement in Boston.   Immediate local steps include participation in CSA arrangements  (Community Supported Agriculture), support of the Nutrition Bill (H 4459) at the State Legislature (which includes provisions to encourage school purchase of local products), continued encouragement of workshops at different synagogues to encourage participation, and efforts to encourage local supermarkets to consider exploitation of workers as they determine where to purchase food.   The Nutrition Bill has been sent to Senate Ways and Means and JALSA members should talk to their senators to encourage swift movement of this legislation

A new Briefing Paper entitled Sick at Work: Infected Employees in the Workplace During the H1N1 Pandemic, released by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, finds that while almost 26 million employed Americans age 18 and over may have been infected with the H1N1 flu in 2009, nearly 8 million employees took no time off work while infected. Relying on data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on rates of illness and work attendance during the months of September through November, 2009, the study suggests that an alarming number of employees attended work while sick, and this pattern was especially prevalent in industries with low paid sick days coverage.  The findings suggest that a lack of paid sick days allowed H1N1 to spread in the workplace.    The full report is available

JALSA urged members of the Legislative Committee on Labor and Commerce today to vote on the pending legislation that would allow all Massachusetts workers the opportunity to earn up to 7 days each year of paid sick leave.     The legislation has the support of the majority of the committee and it is time that the committee vote and send the legislation to the floor.  Almost half of the workers in the state do not have a single day of paid leave in which they can take a family member to the doctor without fear of lost wages and the possibility of being fired.