Watch The Supreme Court In 2003
The 2003 session of the Supreme Court will leave its mark in several areas. There will be a first amendment test of Virginia's cross-burning law. The rights of public libraries to install electronic filters on computers that block sexually explicit web sites will be challenged. The court will decide whether the states have rights to ban private sexual acts between gays and lesbians. And, some important business-related cases will be heard.
Judy Olian
(Judy Olian is Dean of Penn State's Smeal College of Business and a leading expert in strategic human resources management.)
The 2003 session of the Supreme Court will leave its mark in several areas. There will be a first amendment test of Virginia's cross-burning law. The rights of public libraries to install electronic filters on computers that block sexually explicit web sites will be challenged. The court will decide whether the states have rights to ban private sexual acts between gays and lesbians. And, some important business-related cases will be heard.
The first concerns definition of the term "employee". The case - Wells v. Clackamas Gastroenterology Associates, P.C. -- was filed under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). After her termination, Ms. Wells sued the medical practice alleging discrimination based on disability. The ADA covers all private employers with fifteen or more employees. Clackamas Associates would be covered under the law only if four physician-shareholders in the practice were counted as employees, boosting the size of the practice over the minimum threshold of fifteen. The appellate court found that the physicians participated in the management and operations of the practice and should be counted as employees. The physicians' defense is that they are owner-shareholders, not employees, and therefore the medical practice falls below the minimum threshold of the ADA. This ruling may affect the legal employment designation of many forms of professional partnerships, potentially bringing previously exempted categories under the umbrella of coverage of the ADA and other employment laws such as Title VII.
The second case involves the Federal Employers Liabilities Act (FELA) in Norfolk & Western Railway v. Ayers . Six retired employees sued the railway company for work-related asbestosis. A jury awarded them $5.8 million. A portion of that award was to compensate for emotional distress. Why? Because, the plaintiffs claimed they were afraid of getting cancer at some point in the future. The railway is challenging the emotional distress award because it is based on an amorphous fear of a potential future illness, not current symptoms of cancer. Another reason for the legal challenge is the absence of designated amounts for physical versus emotional damage. Typically, different insurers protect against distinct claims and they need to be able to assign liability to the different coverages. The high court will decide whether it's legitimate to award unspecified emotional damages for fear of future disease, in the absence of physical symptoms.
Finally, a landmark decision will be rendered in two related cases, both involving the University of Michigan's use of preferential admissions policies for undergraduates and law school applicants, based on race. The issue concerns the legitimacy of a two-track admissions system instituted by the University to inject greater diversity into the student body and their learning experiences. In practice, white applicants with certain levels of test scores and grade point averages were denied admission, while similar credentials among black applicants rendered a positive admissions decision.
After the historic University of California v. Bakke decision in 1978, there was widespread adoption of race conscious admissions policies by universities. More recently, legal or political challenges to these practices have been successful in Georgia, Florida, Texas and California and have caused some reversal in race conscious admissions policies into higher education institutions. In resolving these conflicting positions, the high court's ruling in the Michigan case may become a turning point for university admission policies.
So what's this got do with business practices? A lot. Over twenty of the largest Fortune 500 companies (General Motors, Intel, Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, and Eli Lilly among others) have filed friend of the court briefs in support of Michigan's two track admissions practices.
Why step into this fray? Because the pipeline into corporate management ranks is replenished from universities' graduating classes. If these graduates fail to represent the diversity of America, then the management of corporate America into the future will mirror that lack of diversity. These corporations see strong business advantages to a diverse workforce and rely heavily on universities as their primary channel for securing qualified and diverse graduates. They want that pool of graduates to be America, and not just white America. Accordingly, major business organizations are showing keen interest in the outcome of the University of Michigan cases.
Stay tuned. This court session may end up leaving an imprint on corporate America that lasts well beyond 2003.
