NYTs: Sixth Circuit “Most Dysfunctional Federal Appeals Court in the Nation”

Here is a link to the article. And links to the materials in the underlying complaint here and here (from How Appealing).

An excerpt from the article:

The Belle Meade Country Club in Nashville has about 600 voting members. None of them are women, and none of them are black. But one of them is a federal judge.

In a confidential 10-to-8 decision last month, the Judicial Council of the Sixth Circuit, which hears misconduct complaints about federal judges in Tennessee and three other states, said the judge could keep his membership at Belle Meade.

The ruling opens windows on two odd institutions. One is a fading country club that was once an arbiter of success in Nashville’s social, political and business circles. The other is the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which sits in Cincinnati and is surely the most dysfunctional federal appeals court in the nation.

“The record before this court paints a picture of Belle Meade as an old boys’ club that considers and admits Caucasian male applicants on a different basis than African-American and female applicants,” Judge R. Guy Cole Jr. wrote in a dissent from last month’s ruling. “We federal judges must sometimes make sacrifices for the honor of the office we hold, and the judge’s membership in Belle Meade should have been one of them.”

Steiger v. Little River Casino — Title VII Complaint

Here are the early materials in Steiger v. Little River Casino Resort, a sex discrimination claim under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act:

Steiger Complaint

LRB Motion to Dismiss

Not sure how the plaintiff’s lawyer thinks the federal court has jurisdiction over this. The complaint just cites Title VII, without any argument as to why it could possibly apply to a tribe or its business. Other doing the same have been subject to Rule 11 sanctions (see our paper here).

Ann Tweedy on Conceptions of Sex-Based Equality under Tribal Law

Ann Tweedy has posted the abstract of her fine paper “Conceptions of Sex-Based Equal Protection under Tribal Law: Broad-Based Prohibitions Against Discrimination, Context-Specific Protections, and Sex-Based Distinctions” on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

This article undertakes a broad-based survey of tribal laws that pertain to sex-based classifications, focusing primarily on laws that prohibit sex discrimination. The sources relied on include the tribal codes, constitutions, and cases available online from the National Tribal Justice Resource Center; cases included in the Indian Law Reporter; the University of Washington’s 1988 microfiche compilation of tribal codes and constitutions; the decisions of the Northwest Intertribal Courts; the limited tribal law resources available on Westlaw; and occasionally legal resources downloaded from the websites of individual tribes and from other miscellaneous websites.

Continue reading

Federal Court Holds Lumbee Tribe Must Comply with Title VII

Here is the opinion from the Eastern District of North Carolina in Cummings v. Lumbee Tribe — cummings-v-lumbee-tribe-dct-order

The issue wasn’t briefed at all, it appears, by the defendants, who just made a motion. But here are the materials anyway:

lumbee-tribe-answer

cummings-opposition-brief

Quinn v. Leavitt — Gender Discrimination Claim against IHS

In Quinn v. Leavitt, the District of South Dakota found in favor of the IHS in a sex discrimination claim against the Indian Health Service.

quinn-v-leavitt-dct-judgment