Winter 2006 | Newsbriefs

Getting Even: Evelyn Murphy Speaks Out on the Wage Gap

Evelyn Murphy, an economist and former lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, stirred law students to action in November, when she spoke at Northeastern about her new book, Getting Even: Why Women Don’t Get Paid Like Men — And What to Do About It (Touchstone, 2005).

In Getting Even, coauthored by EJ Graff, Murphy confronts the myths that exist about why women are still only getting paid 77 cents to the dollar earned by their male colleagues. She contends the wage gap is the result of a variety of forms of sex discrimination in the workplace, including discrimination in hiring, promotion and pay, sexual harassment, occupational segregation, bias against mothers, and other ways in which women workers are undervalued.

Murphy has also created a new nonprofit organization called The WAGE (Women Are Getting Even) Project with a Web site, www.wageproject.org, that includes the first national database of sex discrimination cases. Students in the law school’s Law, Culture and Difference Social Justice Program contributed to the site by researching state and federal anti-discrimination laws. Students are currently analyzing sexual harassment consent decrees and methods for effective sexual harassment trainings. Volunteers from the law school are also summarizing sex discrimination cases to add to the Web site’s database. In effect, Murphy is already achieving her sought-after purpose: mobilizing women and men to work together to find ways to end sex discrimination.  — Jessica Copeland ’06

Enrich to Argue Before Supreme Court

The Supreme Court announced this fall that it would take up a case challenging the constitutionality of a wide array of state corporate tax breaks used to attract business investment. The court will review the Sixth Circuit’s decision in Cuno v. DaimlerChrysler, which found that Ohio’s investment tax credit, a major component in its package of incentives given to DaimlerChrysler in return for locating a Jeep assembly plant in Toledo, violated the Commerce Clause’s prohibition on state tax measures that discriminate in favor of in-state economic activity.

The litigation is based on a Harvard Law Review article written by Professor Peter Enrich; the suit began six years ago after DaimlerChrysler decided to replace its massive Jeep assembly plant in Toledo, Ohio, by extracting a package of more than $300 million in incentives from the city and state to keep the replacement plant in Toledo. Consumer activist Ralph Nader, who had read Enrich’s article, convinced the law professor to test his argument by litigating against Ohio, Toledo and DaimlerChrysler to end the tax breaks (see “Taxing Issues).

“I will be arguing the case in March,” said Enrich. “On the other side, representing DaimlerChrysler, is Ted Olson, who represented Bush in Bush v. Gore, then served as solicitor general, and has probably argued more cases than anyone else in the Supreme Court in recent years.”

Best to remember who triumphed when David met Goliath.