Race and the Law Series

In this virtual presentation, Professor Kristen Carpenter will explore the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent solicitude for religious freedom claims arising under the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Despite the current mood, however, the court is still sitting on precedents denying religious freedoms to American Indians. The key cases are 30 years old and their legacy is mixed at best. Indigenous peoples’ religious freedoms remain uniquely vulnerable as evidenced by recent cases upholding government destruction of Indigenous peoples’ religious sites. Professor Carpenter will review the legal history of governmental suppression of Indigenous peoples’ religions in the U.S., and consider the potential for reform based on a human rights approach to religion as in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. This installment of the Race and the Law series is presented in partnership with the Native American Law Students Association.

In this lecture, Tyrone Glover ('09), a civil rights and criminal defense lawyer at Killmer, Lane & Newman, LLP, will explore the link between the Black criminal inferiority narrative and the making of modern American systems of policing and criminal justice. Mr. Glover’s lecture will focus on the history of slavery, Black subjugation in the Jim Crow South, the excessive arrest rates and overrepresentation in Northern cities and prisons following the great migrations years, and the fallout from decades of war on crime politics and their corresponding laws. He will offer insights from his on-the-ground experience as a former state public defender, current civil rights and criminal defense lawyer, and social justice advocate. Lastly, he will offer insights as to how lawyers can seek to meaningfully change these modern-day manifestations of centuries of oppression. This installment of the Race and the Law series is presented in partnership with the Sam Cary Bar Association and Colorado Law’s Black Law Students Association. 

Professor Alexia Brunet Marks and postdoctoral research fellow Hunter Knapp ('20) will trace the history of structural racism in agriculture in Colorado focusing on disparate treatment for racial and other minorities. They will explore disparate labor protections for farmworkers and disparate health and safety protections for meatpacking workers. While the Biden administration has signaled a new Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) emergency labor protection standard, this is one among other options that will be contemplated. Systemic racism in agriculture has resulted in disparate protections for the minority workers who plant, harvest, and process the food we eat. Compared to workers in other economic sectors, farmworkers have been historically excluded from labor protections that guarantee a minimum wage, overtime and the right to unionize. Even for agricultural workers in meatpacking who qualify for labor benefits above, other injustices, like disparate health and safety protections have negatively impacted the lives of ethnic minorities, which have become more acute during the pandemic. These disparities became more acute during the pandemic. For instance, the U.S. meatpacking industry has long relied on vulnerable populations to fill its workforce: immigrants, refugees, people of color, and those with few other opportunities. During the pandemic, as meatpacking plants became hotbeds for the novel coronavirus, employees and their families used the courts to force employers to implement safety measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Lawsuits emerged claiming negligence, public nuisance, and wrongful death, in addition to fair labor and standards violations and failure to issue an Emergency Temporary Standard.