Monday, October 31, 2005

Alito would have us worse off than Papua New Guinea

Wow.
I did a little digging into Judge Samuel Alito's record. Seems he would:

1. vote to overturn the Family Medical Leave Act
In 2000, Alito ruled that forcing employers to allow up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a loved one (including a newborn) was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court overturned his ruling. As a new father, this is my hotbutton issue. Even with FMLA, we have less mandated leave than any other first world country. Moreover, all of these countries but Australia have PAID leave. Australia is even better off than us, with a full year of unpaid leave. According to USA Today, we have less protection in this area than 163 other countries. We're apparently on par with the venerable nations of Lesotho, Papua New Guinea and Swaziland.

2. vote to overturn Roe v. Wade
The last major test of abortion rights was Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1991. Alito was the appelate judge who sided with Casey. The case went to the Supreme Court who overturned Alito's ruling and saved the right to abortion. In his dissenting opinion, Renquist quoted Alito.

Labels:

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home