A Powerful Ally

Many might not see them as allies but I do, there are so many lawyers who fight for us but there are many who are also against us.

The American Bar Association has mixed reviews with Jim Crow laws and other discriminator laws but last week they came out in support of our rights,

ABA takes timely stand on sex harassment
ABA Journal
By Lee Rawles
February 5, 2018

In one of its final acts at the 2018 Midyear Meeting, the ABA House of Delegates has taken a stand against sexual harassment, approving a resolution to urge all employers to create and enforce effective sexual harassment policies.

“There can hardly be a resolution more timely,” said Stephanie Scharf, chair of the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession, as she introduced the resolution on Monday in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Scharf pointed to earlier leadership from the ABA on the issue of sexual harassment, when it passed a 1992 resolution that sexual harassment should not be tolerated.

Unfortunately, Scharf says, “it continues to affect individual people by driving them away from work they enjoy and that they are eminently qualified to perform.”

Resolution 302, which was introduced by the Commission on Women in the Profession, the Section of Litigation and the Section of Civil Rights and Social Justice, also garnered support from numerous other ABA entities and minority bar associations.

It urges that all employers adopt and enforce policies to “prohibit, prevent, and promptly redress” harassment and retaliation based on “gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation, and the intersection of sex with race and/or ethnicity.”
[…]
Wendy Shiba, the representative from the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, praised the resolution for specifically using referencing the “intersection of sex with race and/or ethnicity,” pointing out that women of color experience particular types of sexual harassment and at higher rates than their white women colleagues.

I do not know how much of a difference this will make but at the very least it makes a positive statement that discrimination is wrong.

This will not mean, just like other professional associations, that they can stop bad apples from discrimination but it does mean that the association will not support laws and policies that discriminate against us.