Absinthe
Living my life as an exclamation, not an explanation...
It should be noted by readers that Absinthe is not a lawyer,
and anything posted in this blog should not be used as a
substitute for professional advice from a lawyer
Kay Weber has declared today "Blog Awareness Day" in honor of a blog I recently talked about here.
I additionally suggest that May 8th should be Free Speech Awareness Day. People need to speak out about their right to free speech, especially women who have suffered discrimination and harassment in the workplace. When the American Physical Society can get all documents sealed in a discrimination lawsuit by pointing to tame blog entries as the need for the gag, there is something very wrong. Especially when those blog entries were the only evidence put forth as the "need" for the gag, and then the judge subsequently ruled in the partial gag order that the Plaintiff is free under the first amendment to continue blogging!
To sum up, the APS managed to somehow get a gag order judgement based on public statements the Plaintiff made that have subsequently been ruled as protected by the first amendment. The APS managed to convince the judge that the Plaintiff might publicly say something that wouldn't be protected by the first amendment, merely because she was publicly mentioning her lawsuit in the first place.
Women, if you are fighting or have fought a discrimination lawsuit (or know someone who has), say something about it to someone today. Share your experiences. Exercise your right to free speech.
I came across a very recent gender discrimination lawsuit against the American Physical Society in PACER today.
What is really interesting about this particular lawsuit is that a partial gag order was issued, such that the Plaintiff's original complaint and the Defendant's response to the complaint are not available in PACER. This pretty much never happens. It would seem that some pretty wild and lurid stuff apparently went on at the APS office that ultimately resulted in the lawsuit.
The APS demanded a gag order by pointing to blog articles written by the Plaintiff and saying they were "malicious". You can see their motion for a gag order here, and the blogentries they submitted as an Exhbit to their motion. Interestingly, the blog entries are very tame stuff, and the entries that talk about the APS do so for the most part only very generally. Taken by themselves, it is extremely odd that they would be grounds for a gag order because the blog entries give very few actual details of the events that led to the lawsuit. The APS was clearly fearful of the prospect of the Plaintiff potentially talking in more depth about what happened to her.
The judge granted only a partial gag...everything collected during discovery in the case will be confidential, and it also appears the original complaint and response have also being made confidential. The Plaintiff however is free to continue blogging. As she should be...she has a first amendment right to state her feelings about her employment at APS.
It always amazes me how scared people in the sciences are of women who find their voice. Even when what those women say is very moderate compared to what they could be saying while still being protected by the first amendment.
I came across this blog today. The author appears to be suing the American Physical Society. Females in the sciences blogging about their discrimination lawsuits appears to be a new trend.
I believe everything she says about the APS. I have been less than impressed with this society in the past. They host the Women in Physics (WIPHYS) online bulletin board, which in my experience is ruthlessly moderated. The bulletin board pretty much sticks to posting new job openings, which could be easily found elsewhere on the APS website. Take a look at their archived posts and marvel at the fact that virtually none of them talk about gender issues in any form whatsoever (despite the stated mission of the bulletin board).
Go APS! Proudly not serving the women of the physics community for over 100 years!
This new blogging trend is great. When I first started this blog, it was literally the only one of its kind in the blog-o-sphere. Even today when people do Google searches related to Title IX, Title VII, or EEOC my blog comes up right near the top of the list. Very few people blog about the machinations of going through a lawsuit...even fewer blog about the general topic of gender discrimination in academia and its legal aspects. The more people who do it, the better. It gives a voice to a very lonely struggle, and it lets other people in similar situations know that they are not alone. Isn't technology a wonderful thing?
