15 Trial Lawyer • Spring 2024 respectively suffered a 167% and 70% increase over that single year.63 By 2022, the U.S. DOJ showed hate crimes aimed at sexual orientation and gender identity continuing to disproportionately rise.64 Oregon’s DOJ cites the “mainstreaming of extremist rhetoric [a]s a leading factor in the recent rise of bias and hate in Oregon.”65 Accordingly, and because many incidents go unreported to law enforcement, the Bias Response Hotline was created in 2020.66 Since that time, hotline reports of bias-motivated incidents, inclusive of hate crimes, increased 178% by 2022.67 Here, too, a recent Oregon DOJ report showed: Anti-Black/African American bias remains the largest category of biasmotivated reports in 2022, making up nearly 1 in 4 reports submitted to the Hotline. Religious-motivated bias reports also increased year over year, from 66 in 2020 to 251 in 2022, with antisemitic/anti-Jewish bias the leading contributor in that category (75% of all religious-motivated bias reported). In addition, anti-LGBTQIA2S+ bias reporting is also up, with an increase in reported gender identity-based bias of 639% since 2020 and an increase in reported anti-sexual orientation bias up 430% since 2020.68 On June 24, 2022 the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade;69 in that attack on a woman’s constitutional right to privacy, the decisions in Lawrence v. Texas (laws criminalizing sex by same-sex couples unconstitutional) and Obergefell v. Hodges (same sex marriage as a fundamental right) also became vulnerable.70 While that Court has resisted prior challenges to The Voting Rights Act, that law continues to be under attack, most recently by a Trump-appointed federal appellate judge in the Eighth Circuit.71 The enforcers Now, more than ever, Oregon must rely on our champions of social justice to protect the interests and rights of our underrepresented populations as mandated by state and federal law. Those champions include organizations like the ACLU, Basic Rights Oregon and BOLI, and include OTLA’s civil rights and employment law practitioners. For example: • The ACLU has regularly supported LGBTQ rights in multiple cases,72 including the defeat of the OCA’s Measure 8 in Merrick v. Bd. of Higher Educ. (2022) and in the same sex marriage cases. (Charles Hinkle briefed and argued Merrick; practitioners on the same sex marriage cases included, among others, Justice Lynn Nakamoto, Lake Perriguey, Misha Isaak and Jennifer Middleton.) • BOLI has instituted its actions against discriminatory owners of public accommodations and employers. Klein v. Oregon Bureau of Lab. & Indus., 317 Or App. 138 (2022) (Sweet Cakes owners may not refuse service to same sex couple by asserting religious beliefs) (this decision has been vacated a second time by the U.S. Supreme Court on 6/30/2023); Frehoo, Inc. v. Bureau of Labor and Industries, 319 Or App 548 (2022) (strip club subjected underage girls to hostile work environment and sexual harassment) (related civil case for sex trafficking initiated by Joel Shapiro). In 2018, the Labor Commissioner filed suit against the Legislature for sexual harassment of nine women working at the Capitol.73 The case settled the following year for $1.3 million.74 • The Kafoury McDougal firm regularly brings unlawful discrimination cases, often under ORS 659A.403, among other claims. Wakefield v. Jackson Food Stores (2023) (jury awarded $450,000 in damages and $550,000 when gas station refused to “serve Black people”);75 Mangum v. Walmart Inc. (2022) (jury awarded $400,000 in damages and $4,000,000 in punitive damages for Walmart employee’s unlawful racial discrimination and profiling of African American man); Massey v. DW Portland, LLC (2019) ($3,000,000 in noneconomic damages alleged for false arrest and race discrimination in action against Doubletree Hotel for engaging police to escort an African American guest from the property for “loitering” in the hotel lobby while on a call with his family.) • The Albies Stark and Guerriero firm actively pursues discrimination cases often addressed to issues of equity. Ramos Gonzalez v. Gerstenfeld is a currently pending action against the Oregon Employment Department brought by its former lead policy analyst in the paid leave program, attorney Isela Ramos Gonzalez; the claims include allegations of a hostile work environment and discrimination based on race, ethnicity and gender.76 Equivel-Figueroa v. Benton County, is a 2022 action alleging that a non-binary person was discouraged in seeking further employment with employers calling their employment “disastrous” due to gender issue “hypersensitivity.” Foster v. OHSU, filed in 2020, alleged that OHSU discriminated against then unlawfully fired its Chief Nursing Officer for being such an “angry black woman.”77 The next year the firm, together with the Sugerman Dahab law firm, among others, filed the 2021 Richards v. OHSU class action, alleging that minority employees were fired and disciplined at a disproportionately higher rate than their white counterparts.78 • Caitlin Mitchell and Jennifer Middleton at the Eugene firm, Johnson Johnson Lucas & Middleton, actively protect issues of gender identity and equity. For example, in the case of Kelsy v. Greater Albany School Dist. 8J, a nonbinary child was severely bullied in the third and fourth grade when they began to identify as genderfluid. See Winding Road p 16
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