Untitled Document

US Supreme Court leaves Nike mum - for now

By Jim Lobe

Washington, DC, June 27 (IPS)— This country’s highest court has left Nike and other businesses operating in California wary of making any public claim about their operations, including responding to accusations about their overseas labor practices.

On Thurs.June 26, the US Supreme Court dismissed an appeal by the athletic apparel giant of a California Supreme Court decision last year that shocked the corporate world by saying basically that “commercial speech” is not entitled to the same degree of protection as ‘’free speech’’.

While in a dissenting opinion, three justices indicated sympathy for Nike’s appeal, the Court majority decided it was too early to take up the free-speech issues raised by Nike, Inc. v. Kasky and sent it back to California, where pre-trial maneuvers remain to be played out.

The case is being closely watched by corporate public-relations departments, free-speech advocates, and globalization activists worldwide. It hinges on whether Nike’s efforts to respond to public attacks on its overseas operations amounts to “free speech,” which is protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution, or “commercial speech,” which is not.

The case arose out of the growing public controversy over globalization, specifically the use by US apparel and shoemakers like Nike of overseas factories and assembly plants where, according to labor activists, working conditions and wages often fail to meet the core standards set forth by the International Labor Organization (ILO).

Nike, whose sales skyrocketed during the 1980s and early 1990s due partly to its phenomenal success in advertising, soon found itself a major target of the globalization debate and by the latter half of the decade launched an aggressive public-relations effort to rebut attacks by social and labor activists.

The firm even hired Goodworks International, a consultancy company owned by former United Nations Ambassador Andrew Young, to audit some of its factories and then touted its favorable conclusions in full-page newspaper ads in 1997. It also sent out press releases and letters to editors and other forums to deny that it was mistreating or underpaying workers at foreign plants.

But activists charged that these claims — and Goodworks’ audit — were not only misleading, but demonstrably untrue. In 1998, environmentalist Marc Kasky filed suit claiming that Nike had engaged in unfair business practices by making false statements about conditions in its Asian factories on at least six occasions.

Under California’s tough consumer-protection laws, the most far-reaching in the United States, members of the public are permitted to bring lawsuits to enforce the law without having to prove that they personally suffered as a result of misleading statements.

The trial court sided with Nike’s contentions that its efforts to respond to the critics amounted to “free speech” rather than “commercial speech,” because the subject dealt with a topic of public interest and was not aimed at selling a particular product. A California appeals court upheld the lower court’s dismissal.

But in May 2002, four out of the seven California Supreme Court judges disagreed. When a corporation makes “factual representations about its own products or its operations, it must speak truthfully,” wrote Justice Joyce Kennard for the majority.

She said courts should apply a three-pronged, “limited-purpose test” to determine whether speech should be considered commercial: the speaker must be engaged in commerce; the intended audience should be actual or potential customers; and the content of the message must be commercial in character.

“Speech is commercial in its content if it is likely to influence consumers in their commercial decisions,” she wrote. “For a significant segment of the buying public, labor practices do matter in making consumer choices.”

Two of the three dissenters assailed the decision as fundamentally unfair. “If Nike utters a factual misstatement, unlike its critics, it may be sued for restitution, civil penalties, and injunctive (relief),” they wrote. “When Nike tries to defend itself from these attacks, the majority denies it the same First Amendment protection Nike’s critics enjoy.”

Corporate-accountability and labor activists hailed the decision as a major breakthrough in countering sophisticated public-relations campaigns by corporations on issues ranging from their treatment of workers to environmental protection. “This puts corporate ‘greenwashers’ on notice that what they say needs to reflect what they actually do, rather than be a diversion from their true practices,” said Josh Karliner, director of the California-based corporate watchdog, CorpWatch.

But many free-speech activists were shocked. “It essentially shuts business speakers out of the public debate on any issue that affects them,” said Ann Brick of the American Civil Liberties Unions (ACLU), which has supported Nike’s position. “That kind of analysis is antithetical to the basic First Amendment principle that we let the people, not the government, decide who’s right and who’s wrong on an issue of public dispute.”

In appealing to the Supreme Court, Nike had a lot of support, including business groups like the Chamber of Commerce, the ACLU, and media organizations that argued that upholding the California decision would exercise a “chilling effect” on the willingness of corporations to address key issues in the public domain. In a teleconference Thurs., Nike spokesman Vada Manager noted that the company has not issued its annual corporate responsibility report for fear of liability.

Even the AFL-CIO labor confederation filed a brief on behalf of Nike’s free-speech claims, although it opposed the company on the factual claims regarding its treatment of workers.

With so much attention paid to the outcome, the dismissal came as an anti-climax, if not a major disappointment to corporations doing business in California. “We look at the opinion as certainly not resolving what we had hoped to have resolved today,” said Jim Carter, Nike’s general counsel, in a press teleconference.

Writing for three of the judges who preferred to dismiss the case for now, Justice John Paul Stevens said the case is an important one and further noted, “the speech at issue represents a blending of commercial speech, non-commercial speech, and debate on an issue of public importance.” But, he added, in the absence of a “full factual record” as would be developed in pre-trial proceedings, as well as the trial itself, it was “premature” for the Court to rule on the key constitutional issues.

In a lengthy dissent written on behalf of himself and two other justices, Justice Steven Breyer insisted that he could “find no good reason for postponing a decision in this case,” particularly in light of “the importance of the First Amendment concerns at stake.” He predicted that Nike would eventually prevail on its First Amendment claims.

Muslims take lead in educating citizens

By Ushani Agalawatta

New York, New York, June 27 (IPS)— In response to the crackdown on members of their communities after Sept. 11, 2001, Arab and Muslim-American groups are striving to demonstrate to people here that there is a difference between a terrorist and a person of Arab, Muslim, Middle Eastern or South Asian descent.

A year-long ‘Islam in America’ advertising campaign, a weekly talk show, as well as numerous resources prepared for schools, law enforcement agencies, employers and parents are just a few of the initiatives undertaken by these organizations.

The non-profit Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) recently launched a year-long advertising campaign to raise awareness about the face of Islam in America.

The first ad, run by the New York Times in February, featured three individuals of different ethnic backgrounds with the caption, ‘’We’re all Americans, but which one of us is Muslim?’’

Answering, “We all are,’’ the ad explains, “it’s impossible to make general assumptions about Muslims because we represent more than one billion people from a range of races, nationalities, and cultures — from the South Pacific to the Horn of Africa.’’

CAIR spokesperson Ibrahim Hooper told IPS, “the campaign was prompted by the misinformation about Islam and Muslims that we hear on a daily basis from a number of sources, particularly right-wing, evangelical and pro-Israel circles, bashing Islam, bashing Muslims and creating a distorted picture of the reality of, particularly, the American Muslim experience.’’

“The reality of the American Muslim experience is that they are millions of people going about their daily lives as mothers, fathers, students, bus drivers, doctors, soccer moms, you name it, and will never come within a hundred miles of any act of violence or political instability within their entire lives,’’ added Hooper, whose group has headquarters in Washington DC and chapters country-wide.

Since 9/11, Arab, Muslim and South Asian communities have been under duress, marginalized and victimized in President George W. Bush’s “war against terrorism’’. Hate crimes, discrimination and public hostility are making individuals from these groups secondary victims of the terrorist attacks, according to spokespeople.

“The climate in the US towards Arabs and Muslims, including persons perceived to be Arab and/or Muslim, can best be described as intimidating,’’ said Laila Al-Qatami, spokeswoman for the American-Arab Anti Discrimination Committee (ADC), which calls itself the largest grassroots Arab-American civil rights group.

“While official statements coming from the administration and other officials are generally of a tolerant and inclusive nature, many of the policies instituted by the US Department of Justice reflect an entirely different reality, a reality that is not as welcoming and tolerant.’’

Earlier this month the inspector general of the Justice Department released a report that evaluated treatment of INS detainees after 9/11. The IG criticized the length and “unduly harsh conditions’’ of confinement of the more than 750 people held in Brooklyn and New Jersey after the terrorist attacks.

Earlier this week, the Justice Department issued guidelines that ban federal employees from racial profiling in day-to-day situations, such as random traffic checks. But it said “race and ethnicity may be used in terrorist identification, but only to the extent permitted by the nation’s laws and the Constitution.’’

Al-Qatami told IPS that the civil society groups’ latest activities are imperative to promoting and protecting the rights of Arab, Arab-American, Muslim and Muslim-American communities in the United States.

Added Hooper: “Any law is fine as long as it does not single out people based on their race, religion, ethnicity or national origin. Unfortunately we are seeing all too many policies that are based on those factors and that is what is disturbing.’’

CAIR says its ad campaign and TV show are a success. “Both projects have been received very well by the Muslim and non-Muslim community. CNN featured our ad campaign on one of their shows and invited Ibrahim Hooper to talk about it. We have hundreds of testimonies from a variety of people who appreciate and welcome the campaign,’’ says Rabiah Ahmed, CAIR communications coordinator.

“The show is also doing well. Many Muslims write in from around the world saying that it’s about time that Muslim Americans have a show discussing issues affecting them and other minorities,’’ adds Ahmed.

That echoes the comment of an observer who has studied US Muslim and Arab communities since 9/11.

“The experience of Muslim and Arab communities post-Sept. 11 is, in many ways, an impressive story of a community that first felt intimidated, but has since started to assert its place in the American body politic,’’ said Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute and co-author of a report, released Thursday, on authorities’ treatment of members of those groups and its effects to date.

But some people question if the groups’ public relations efforts can work. For instance, Professor Khalid Abu Alfadhl of the UCLA School of Law says the ad campaign is well-intended, but he doubts it will make a ‘’significant difference in how Islam is viewed by non-Muslims.”

“Muslims are not the only minority group in America to have faced hostility,’’ adds Abu Alfadhl, a Muslim American, in an interview with Voice of America.

“During the major Jewish migration to the United States, which was in the 1800s, there was widespread hostility towards Jews. Also, Chinese Americans had a very negative image in the late 1800s and early 1900s.’’

But, he adds, “Muslim Americans have an added difficulty—their historical legacy. Muslims and Christians have fought in years past; some people believe they might always be enemies.”

But the organizations say it is their responsibility to educate and solidify their community’s places in US society, and that the administration should also play a role.

“We welcome government initiatives that are well thought out,’’ said Hooper.. “After all, the ad campaign launched by CAIR in the United States is similar to the advertising promoted by the US government in the Middle East.’’

Strom Thurmond, symbol of segregation, dies at 100

By Rupert Cornwell

Washington, DC, June 28— President George Bush led the American political world yesterday in paying tribute to Strom Thurmond, the segregationist former South Carolina senator and presidential candidate who died on Thursday after one of the most remarkable careers in American politics.

In a written statement, Bush, who hosted a 100th birthday party at the White House in December for the senator, who was still sitting at the time, praised him as a friend who had led an extraordinary life. Even at the end it had a capacity to cause turmoil.

A similar celebration on Capitol Hill led to the downfall of Trent Lott as Senate Republican majority leader, after he said the US “wouldn’t have had all these problems” if the rest of the country had followed the example of his native Mississippi, South Carolina and two other southern states in voting for Thurmond, who was running on a segregationist platform, in 1948.

Those ill-judged words generated angry criticism of Lott as an unreconstructed racist, and considerable embarrassment in the White House. Bush issued a strong rebuke that made Lott’s position untenable, and a few days later Lott resigned.

Senator Thurmond died in hospital at his native Edgefield, a picturesque town in South Carolina, where he was born on December 5, 1902, and whose square has a statue of its most famous son. His body will lie in state in South Carolina’s state-house in Columbia, before burial in a family plot in Edgefield cemetery.

His career encapsulated the 20th-century history of the American South. He was a racist and diehard segregationist who ran as a Dixiecrat for President against Harry Truman in 1948, whose crossover from the Democrats to the Republicans foreshadowed the Republican capture of the South that transformed national politics.

He held the record for the longest Senate filibuster (24 hours and 18 minutes in 1957, in protest at a civil rights measure). He was the last serving US politician to have won the votes of veterans of the American Civil War (in local elections in South Carolina in the 1920s), and the last to have participated in the 1944 D-Day landings, when he was decorated for valor.

As the tributes flowed in yesterday, Thurmond’s controversial racist past was mostly forgotten. “One of the greatest people I have ever known,” was the judgment of Orrin Hatch, his fellow Senate Republican from Utah.

“A giant oak in the field of public service has fallen,” said Ernest Hollings, Senator Thurmond’s colleague from South Carolina who, despite 36 years in the Senate, had to wait until he was 81 in January of this year to earn the title of senior senator from the state. South Carolina’s graveyards, it is commonly said, are full of aspiring politicians who waited for Strom Thurmond to retire.

As news of his death reached Washington, Congress interrupted its business to remember him. “He was a governor, a presidential candidate, a soldier, a citizen,” Tom Daschle, the Senate minority leader, said on the Senate floor.

Of greatest historical significance was his abandonment of the Democratic Party in the mid-1960s in disgust at the civil rights policies of a Democratic President, Lyndon Johnson. The move set a trend that transformed the south from Democratic stronghold into cornerstone of an emerging Republican majority. Developments were carefully noted by Richard Nixon, whose race-pandering “southern strategy” helped him to win the White House in 1968.

Over the subsequent 35 years, Republicans have dominated presidential politics. Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, the only Democrats to interrupt the trend, were both from the South. Senator Thurmond’s race views moderated over the years, and he was among the first southern senators to hire black staff.

By the time he won his eighth and final term in 1996 at the age of 93, Senator Thurmond’s health was failing. He was hard of hearing, his steps shakey. He traveled the corridors of Congress in a wheelchair, living in special quarters at the Walter Reed military hospital.

He left few legislative landmarks in Washington. But by common consent, few senators have served their constituents as assiduously. Therein lay the secret of his enduring popularity and political success.

Source: Independent (UK)

Supreme Court overturns sodomy ban

Compiled by Shane Perlowin

July 1 (AGR)-- State sodomy laws that make it a crime for gays to have consensual sex in their own bedrooms violate constitutional privacy rights, the US Supreme Court ruled on Thursday in a landmark decision.

By a 6-3 vote, the nation's highest court struck down a Texas sodomy law, a decision applauded by gay rights advocates as a historic ruling that overturned sodomy laws in 13 states. The 30-year-old Texas "homosexual conduct" law makes it a crime for same-sex couples to engage in oral and anal sex, even if it is consensual and occurs in the privacy of a person's bedroom.

The case involved John Geddes Lawrence and Tryon Garner. In 1998, police officers entered Lawrence's apartment in Houston while investigating what turned out to be a false report of a disturbance with a gun. The officers found the two men engaged in anal sex.

Lawrence and Garner were arrested and charged with violating the Texas law. They pleaded no contest to the misdemeanor charges and each were fined $200. The two men then challenged the law's constitutionality.

"We never chose to be public figures or to take on the spotlight. We also never thought we could be arrested this way," said Lawrence. "We are glad this ruling not only lets us get on with our lives, but opens the door for all gay people to be treated equally."

Gay-rights groups had regarded the challenge to the law banning certain sex acts between same-sex couples as one of their most important legal cases in decades. On Thursday, they said the high court's ruling would help protect gays and lesbians from discrimination in other areas as well.

By a separate 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court took the rare step of overruling one of its own decisions, Bowers v. Hardwick, which, in 1986 upheld a Georgia sodomy law and declared homosexuals have no constitutional right to engage in sodomy in private.

Since 1986, lower courts have relied on Bowers to take away or limit custody to gay parents and to uphold firing or refusing to hire gay people. Bowers has frequently been invoked in legislative debates as a reason not to protect gay people from discrimination.

In sweeping language, the Court said the Constitution protects the right of gay people to form intimate relationships and "retain their dignity as free persons." Gay people, the Court said, have the same right to "define one's concept of existence, of meaning, or the universe, and of the mystery of human life," that heterosexuals do. The Bowers decision, the Court said, "demeans the lives of homosexual persons."

Ruth Harlow, who argued the case before the Supreme Court as legal director of Lambda Legal, said the court was merely "catching up" with public opinion. The Supreme Court was criticized by civil rights groups 17 years ago when it upheld Georgia's sodomy law. Georgians later repealed that law, and now, "82 percent of Americans have already expressed the view that these kinds of laws are inappropriate. State after state have repealed them," Harlow said.

Reaction to the Court's decision was especially strong in those states with sodomy laws still on the books -- Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah and Virginia.

"It could have been a historic day just for Texas, but it's a historic day, period," said Paul Scott, executive director of the Dallas-based John Thomas Gay and Lesbian Community Resource Center.

While gay men and lesbians across the country similarly exulted over the high court's ruling, conservative groups, spurred on by Justice Antonin Scalia's scathing and bigoted dissent, predicted the ruling would lead to gay marriage -- and worse.

In his dissent, Scalia said the court had "largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda" and had "taken sides in the culture war."

He said the ruling called into question "state laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity."

Scalia noted that, though seldom enforced by police in recent years, the Texas law and its cousins are still invoked by judges at times to deny homosexuals legal custody of their children, equal employment guarantees and other civil rights. There were murmurs from some in the courtroom crowd as Scalia railed for more than seven minutes against what he called a hypocritical ruling that runs roughshod over democratically elected legislatures.

"Many Americans do not want persons who openly engage in homosexual conduct as partners in their business, as scoutmasters for their children, as teachers in their children's schools or as boarders in their home,'' he wrote, "They view this as protecting themselves and their families from a lifestyle that they believe to be immoral and destructive.''

Scalia was joined in the dissent by the court's two other most conservative members, Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Clarence Thomas.

In Houston, Harris County District Attorney Charles Rosenthal, who defended the Texas law, said he was disappointed the high court "did not allow the people of the state of Texas, through their elected legislators, to determine moral standards ... for this state."

"The implications for other sexual crimes is unmistakable," said Scott Lively, director of the Pro Family Law Center in Sacramento, which filed a brief supporting the Texas law. "If the state doesn't have even a legitimate interest in criminalizing sodomy ... how can the state continue to regulate against group sexual encounters, sadomasochism, sex between brothers and sisters, sex with animals and sex with corpses?"

Republican Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who drew fire after saying he believed states have a right to ban gay sex or other private behaviors, agreed. "The court has determined to slide down the 'slippery slope.' The question for the court now becomes: what are the parameters for judges to decide cases if some non-marital sex acts are protected by the Constitution and some are not? What we do know is these unclear criteria will not be decided by the people through the democratic process of the legislatures," he said.

The president of the Christian Coalition of Alabama, John Giles, agreed with the majority that personal privacy should be protected, but said he worries that the decision will further a national campaign to legalize marriage between gays. "God have mercy on America," he said.

Mathew D. Staver, president of Liberty Counsel, an Orlando, Fla.-based religious rights group, said cultural conservatives would not let the decision stand unchallenged. "The split decision underscores the importance of the next Supreme Court appointment, not only on the issue of abortion but now on the issue of same-sex unions," he said. "Regulating homosexual conduct and marriage is the right of the people to be exercised through the legislative rather than judicial branches of government."

That the high court's ruling came in June, the month traditionally reserved for gay pride celebrations across the country, made the victory all the more sweet for gay rights advocates.

"It's hard for gay people to explain how freeing it is that our lovemaking has been recognized as no longer illegal in a place we call America," said San Franciscan Terry Anderson, 44.

"This is something that has been a black eye on our Supreme Court and our country and in Missouri for years," said Jeff Wunrow, executive director of PROMO, a Missouri gay rights organization.

"This decision will affect virtually every important legal and social question involving lesbians and gay men," said James Esseks, Litigation Director of the ACLU's Lesbian and Gay Rights Project. "For years, whenever we have sought equality, we've been answered both in courts of law and in the court of public opinion with the claim that we are not entitled to equality because our love makes us criminals. That argument -- which has been a serious block to progress -- is now a dead letter." Esseks added, "from now on, cases and political debates about employment, custody and the treatment of same-sex couples should be about merit, not about who you love."

"With this decision, the Court has finally recognized that we are part of the American family. Now it's time for the rest of society to do the same," Esseks said. "Our civil rights laws need to make the workplace fair, our schools safe, and to give basic respect to the relationships at the core of our lives--with our partners and our children. By acknowledging that we are not criminals, this decision will make it far easier for us to get society to change."

Sources: ACLU, Associated Press, Reuters