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U.S. Soccer Argued Biological Differences Justify Paying the Women's Team Less, According to Court Filings


Last summer when the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team won the World Cup (their fourth) in France, the stadium erupted into chants of “Equal pay!” Despite the women’s team’s total dominance, they’re paid less than their male counterparts, an issue that came to a head in March 2019 when the players sued U.S. Soccer for gender discrimination.

Back in August 2019, we learned talks between the two parties had broken down—and a new court filing this week gives us insight, perhaps, into why.

Per Buzzfeed, the documents show one of the arguments against equal pay being made by U.S. Soccer lawyers is that, under the Equal Pay Act, “The job of a [men’s national team player] carries more responsibility within U.S. Soccer than the job of a [women’s national team] player.” Excuse me?!?

You remember the USWNT, of course, as the winners of last year’s World Cup which turned stars like Megan Rapinoe, Alex Morgan, and Ashlyn Harris into household names for people who’d never even watched a game before then. Unless you’re a big soccer fan, you’re probably less familiar with the men’s team who have had, well, a lot less success in recent years as the women’s team dominates.

But, wait, the court documents get worse. U.S. Soccer also argued that indisputable “science” and biological differences prove that women should be paid less because the men’s team “requires a higher level of skill.” We’re not sure anyone has argued that there aren’t biological differences between men and women—just that those shouldn’t matter when determining how much to pay someone for the same job.

Buzzfeed also accessed court documents which showed U.S. Soccer’s questioning of some of the women’s teams stars. “Do you think that the team could be competitive against the senior men’s national team?” one asked Carli Lloyd. “I’m not sure,” she said. “Shall we fight it out to see who wins and then we get paid more?” Another asked Morgan, “Do you think it requires more skill to play for the U.S. Men’s National Team than the U.S. Women’s National Team?” She replied, “No,” Morgan replied. “It’s a different skill.”

It’s quite infuriating to see the national governing body of a sport be so dismissive (and regressive) in defense of their antiquated position that women deserve to be paid less for a job where they have proved they are quite literally the best in the world. But it’s not unsurprising, especially to any woman who has been faced with a similar situation in her own job where she has to be better and fight harder for the same rights and money automatically afforded a man.

We have no doubt the USWNT will keep pushing for what’s right—and that’s just one of the many reasons to celebrate them.



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Meghan Markle's Lawyers Correct Several Tabloid Rumors Via Court Documents


Meghan Markle has been the subject of tabloid rumors and abuse since she started dating Prince Harry in 2016; a few months into their relationship, he even issued a public statement asking for the press to “reflect” before publishing damaging false stories.

And in October of this year, after the royal couple spoke out about the toll the media scrutiny has taken on them, they resorted to legal action against multiple publications. This week, the independent outlet Byline Investigates obtained some of the first court documents from the lawsuit, which show that the royals’ lawyers are determined to correct multiple libelous reports.

The documents take issue with several stories that were written about Markle’s relationship to her father, who did not attend her wedding in 2017. A private letter she wrote to him was later published without authorization in the the Mail on Sunday; Markle’s lawyers point out that only sections were printed in turn mischaracterizing its intent. Additionally, the court documents explain that Markle did not “ignore” her father after the wedding.

“The true position is that the Claimant [Meghan] has a long history of looking after her father’s welfare and trying to find solutions to any health problems… she did provide extensive financial support for him, as well as act as primary caregiver for her grandmother… her father did not telephone her to explain that he was not coming to her wedding,” the documents read. “Her team in Los Angeles did provide him with continued support for which he had expressed gratitude… she had reached out to him prior to the wedding and sought to protect him, as well as to ensure that he would be able to come to the wedding… she did not ignore him afterwards.”

The documents also correct multiple details that have been reported about the duchess’s life, including that she had renovated Frogmore Cottage to include a yoga studio, orangery, guest wing, copper bath, and tennis court. (The documents say these things were written “to portray the Claimant in a damaging light by suggesting that she had indulged in this series of absurdly lavish renovations.”) They also explain that despite what had been reported, Markle’s mother Doria Ragland was, in fact, invited to her New York baby shower but couldn’t attend “due to work commitments.” The papers also countered figures which claimed the shower cost $300,000 by sharing, “[it] actually cost a tiny fraction of the $300k falsely stated in the article.”

The legal team also noted the blatantly wrong and also racial undertones of headlines like, “Harry’s girl is (almost) straight outta Compton: Gang-scarred home of her mother revealed—so will he be dropping by for tea?” The documents read, “The statement that the Claimant lived or grew up in Compton (or anywhere near to it) is false. The fact that the Defendant chose to stereotype this entire community as being ‘plagued by crime and riddled with street gang’ and thereby suggest (in the first few days of her relationship being revealed) that the Claimant came from a crime-ridden neighborhood is completely untrue as well as intended to be divisive. The Claimant will also refer to the fact that the article cites her aunt as living in ‘gang-afflicted Inglewood’ in order to bolster this negative and damaging impression of where this (black) side of her family is said to come from. In fact, Ava Burrow (said to be ‘the actress’’ aunt’) is not her Aunt or any blood relation at all, a fact which if correctly stated would have undermined the narrative which the Defendant was intended to convey.”



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After Charlottesville, Robbie Kaplan and Karen Dunn Are Taking the Alt-Right to Court


The threats are like a bad faucet, a ceaseless stream of invective and hatred. The pitter-patter is so constant that Robbie Kaplan has learned to tune it out; white noise.

Still, some pronouncements land harder than others. The ones that promise violence. The ones that mention her son. The ones that are too detailed, filled in with gruesome specifics. And the ones that leave just enough to the imagination. Like: “After this stupid kike whore loses this fraudulent lawsuit, we’re going to have a lot of fucking fun with her.”

It was mid-June, and months since Kaplan and her co-counsel Karen Dunn had filed a lawsuit against the white supremacists who’d swarmed Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017. In that time, Kaplan, who is Jewish, has grown accustomed to her neo-Nazi menaces. But even so, for her, this crossed a line. For one, the threat had been shared on Telegram, a messaging platform popular with the alt-right. And second, the person who posted it was none other than Christopher Cantwell, a famed internet white nationalist with a violent criminal record who also happens to be a defendant in Sines v. Kessler, Kaplan and Dunn’s suit. (Other defendants include Jason Kessler, Richard Spencer, Matthew Heimbach, and groups like Identity Evropa and the League of the South.)

The incident spurred Kaplan and Dunn to pursue sanctions against Cantwell, asking that the court order him to stop harassing not just Kaplan, but the plaintiffs as well. The motion is still pending. In the meantime, it’s at least cost Cantwell his representation. In a court filing, his now-former attorneys said they were at a “loss” over how to counter Kaplan’s claims.

When I meet Kaplan for the first time and ask about the threats, she almost smiles. She gets it; how much these men despise her. She’s a woman who happens to be both a lesbian and Jewish. Since the 2016 presidential election, she has worn a small star of David around her neck—a personal reminder to keep up the fight against hate in it all its nefarious forms.

When it became clear soon after that weekend in Charlottesville that there were survivors who wanted to seek justice in court, Kaplan decided to pursue the case. (It is now backed with support from Integrity First for America, an organization founded in 2017 that seeks to support public interest litigation. Amy Spitalnick, who was formerly the communications director to New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood, is IFA’s executive director.)

Her and Dunn’s approach is unique, but the case doesn’t stand alone. There has been at least one trial in connection to Charlottesville; in June, the man who plowed his car into a group of counter-protestors and killed Heather Heyer was sentenced to life in prison. But the case that Kaplan and Dunn will argue has different aims. With it, IFA doesn’t just take a group of men to court. It puts the alt-right on trial.

Two years ago, hundreds of white supremacists marched on Charlottesville. Within 48 hours, an entire metropolis had been immobilized and one woman was dead. In the months that followed, the violence piled up. In Pittsburgh, the Tree of Life shooting claimed 11 lives, and a hate-fueled attack in El Paso left 22 people dead. Terror is chaotic; that’s a feature, not a bug. But the implementation of it has to be meticulous.

Kaplan understood that—how much time it would have taken the men who’d swarmed Charlottesville to plan and plot “Unite the Right,” as their event had been christened, the resources that have to be marshaled to incite violence. But still, she knew, too, that our cultural theories about “lone wolves” and crazed, impulsive madmen are durable. It wasn’t just that she wanted justice for the victims of Charlottesville, although she did and does; she wanted to illuminate the sophisticated structure of a resurgent white supremacist movement in America. She wanted to prove that the violence committed in Charlottesville had been purposeful and deliberate. In legal speak, well, Dunn explains it best: “If two people are members of a conspiracy, one will be liable for the acts of the other, when those acts were reasonably foreseeable.” In 2019 terms, Kaplan wanted the receipts.





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Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Voted on Trump's Asylum Reform From Her Hospital Bed


On Friday, immediately following surgery to remove two cancerous nodes from her left lung, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg voted against President Donald Trump’s proposed immigrant asylum restrictions from her hospital bed. Hers was the decisive vote in the 5-4 decision to strike down the proposal, NPR reported.

The proposal, NBC explained, would have automatically denied asylum to people who enter the United States from Mexico without going through official border crossings. Trump said the proposal was in direct response to the migrant caravan making its way toward the southern border.

Beyond being able to cast her vote, it appears the Notorious RBG is also on the up and up with her health. In November, the Supreme Court justice was hospitalized following a fall that left her with several broken ribs. According to a statement from the Supreme Court, doctors discovered her cancerous nodes while undergoing routine care for her injury. Following the surgery, doctors announced they were able to remove all of the cancer, and it appears it did not spread.

“According to the thoracic surgeon, Valerie W. Rusch, MD, FACS, both nodules removed during surgery were found to be malignant on initial pathology evaluation,” a statement by her physicians read. “Post-surgery, there was no evidence of any remaining disease. Scans performed before surgery indicated no evidence of disease elsewhere in the body. Currently, no further treatment is planned. Justice Ginsburg is resting comfortably and is expected to remain in the hospital for a few days. Updates will be provided as they become available.”

As NPR noted, by Friday evening, the 85-year-old was sitting up in her hospital room’s chair calling friends and sounding “chipper.” She apparently even hopes to be back in the courtroom for the next argument session, which begins in early January—and that’s entirely possible, according to Dr. Douglas Mathisen, chairman of thoracic surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital, who told NPR that recovery from an operation like hers typically ranges from two to four days in the hospital. And because RBG seems to get a lifetime’s worth of work done in an hour, we’re confident we’ll see her back in her robe in January.

Related Content:

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Undergoes Surgery for Lung Cancer

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The Notorious RBG Got the Epic Rap Tribute She Deserves on SNL



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Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Undergoes Surgery for Lung Cancer


The Supreme Court issued a statement announcing that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg underwent surgery today (December 21) for lung cancer in New York City.

Just last month, Ginsburg was briefly hospitalized for broken ribs suffered during a fall. According to the Supreme Court’s statement, the nodules were discovered. “Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg underwent a pulmonary lobectomy today at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. Two nodules in the lower lobe of her left lung were discovered incidentally during tests performed at George Washington University Hospital to diagnose and treat rib fractures sustained in a fall on November 7,” it reads.

The good news is that doctors believe that they were able to remove all of the cancer and that it has not spread. “According to the thoracic surgeon, Valerie W. Rusch, MD, FACS, both nodules removed during surgery were found to be malignant on initial pathology evaluation,” the statement continues. “Post-surgery, there was no evidence of any remaining disease. Scans performed before surgery indicated no evidence of disease elsewhere in the body. Currently, no further treatment is planned. Justice Ginsburg is resting comfortably and is expected to remain in the hospital for a few days. Updates will be provided as they become available.”

This is not the first time Ginsburg has battled cancer. In 1999, she had surgery for colorectal cancer and then in 2009 she was treated for the early stages of pancreatic cancer. “I said I will do this job as long as I can do it full steam,” Ginsburg said on Sunday (December 16) at a screening of On the Basis of Sex, the movie based on her early work as a lawyer.

Social media users were quick to send their support and wishes of a speedy recovery to the woman affectionately called the Notorious RBG.

This story will be updated with new information as it is available.





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Cardi B Found Out About Her 5 Grammy Nominations at Her Court Appearance


There’s truly never a dull moment when it comes to the life of Cardi B, but this week has been especially eventful. First, she dropped the bombshell that she and husband Offset are divorcing. Then she revealed the very first photo of their adorable baby Kulture. Finally, she got nominated for five—five!—Grammys.

But she didn’t get the news in the usual way, say, for instance, by getting a call from her management team. Instead, she was informed of the big news by reporters outside a New York City courtroom where she was making an appearance for assault and reckless endangerment charges stemming from a fight at a strip club in October.

A reporter shouted to a rainbow-wigged Cardi, “How do you feel that you’re nominated for Grammys?”

She responded, “I am? I am? How many nominations?”

When someone yelled out the number, the rapper stuck out her tongue in celebration.

Later she posted video footage of the encounter on Twitter. “This is not How expected to find out I’m nominated for a Grammy ???,” she wrote. “I need a do over ??‍♀️??‍♀️?”

She also put the video on Instagram. “What a way to find out I got 5 Grammy nominations ??? I’m tellin you my life is a movie,” she wrote in the caption. “I work my ass off for this! Win or not at least I had a chance and people was watching and admiring my work. Im Soo happy! THANK YOU!”

She’s the second most-nominated woman this year—behind Brandi Carlile, who has six. Cardi’s up for Album of the Year and Best Rap Album for Invasion of Privacy, Record of the Year for “I Like It,” Best Pop/Duo Group Performance for “Girls Like You” with Maroon 5, and Best Rap Performance for “Be Careful.”

Not too shabby—congrats to the star!

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Cardi B’s Dedication to Her Monochrome Look Is Honestly Impressive





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