I'll be damned if the conservatives on the Supreme Court weren't getting jealous of all the congressional and state-level battles in the war on women and decide that they needed to take up arms themselves. Is there no area that these
March 22, 2012

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I'll be damned if the conservatives on the Supreme Court weren't getting jealous of all the congressional and state-level battles in the war on women and decide that they needed to take up arms themselves. Is there no area that these conservatives won't try to mess up for most Americans?

State workers who are denied unpaid sick leave required by federal law cannot sue the states, the Supreme Court said in a victory for states' rights that some liberal advocates saw as a bad omen for President Obama's healthcare law.

The 5-4 decision is a setback for millions of employees of state agencies and state colleges, and it voided in part a provision in the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993. Among other things the act said that employees had a right to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to recover from an illness or childbirth.

The rights of employees of private companies are unchanged by the ruling.

So let me see if I have this straight: first, conservatives want to make sure you get pregnant by limiting access to birth control, then force you to have the baby by limiting access to abortions, then if you get fired for taking time off to have the baby, you have no right to recourse for being fired. Great. All these things that have been litigated decades ago and established as basic rights have been inverted. The very notion upset Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg enough for her to make an unusual step:

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, on behalf of Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, took the rare step of reading her dissent aloud in court. She called the result “regrettable” and observed that the Kennedy opinion “pays scant attention to the overarching aim” of the law, which was “to make it feasible for women to work while sustaining family life.” Ginsburg said that the law was a reasonable effort by congress to ensure the equal protection guaranteed by the 14th amendment for public employees facing discrimination.

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