Legal Momentum
http://www.legalmomentum.org
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[Return to Index of Expertise] Last updated 07/18/02
Contact Information:
395 Hudson Street, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10014
Phone: 212-925-6635
Fax: 212-226-1066
CENTER DESCRIPTION
Founded in 1970, Legal Momentum (formerly NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund) is the country's oldest national legal advocacy organization dedicated to achieveing women's equality. Through strategic litigation, public policy advocacy, and broad education programs, Legal Momentum has been at the forefront of national efforts to achieve gender equality in the areas of economic justice, education, violence against women, child care, reproductive freedom, and family life.
AREA(S) OF EXPERTISE
Affirmative action; child care; economic and social status of women; employment; equity issues; immigration; law/legal issues; poverty; reproductive rights; sexual harassment; violence against women and girls; welfare reform; work and family.
RECENT PROJECTS AND ACTIVITIES
As part of its on-going commitment to low-income families, Legal Momentum has long focused on the need for child care. Legal Momentum is broaening its work into a campaign to provide a comprehensive system of quality, affordable child care for every family in America.
Legal Momentum supports the State Advocacy Project, an initiative that promotes child care, reproductive rights, employment rights, and ending domestic violence for low-income women.
Recognizing that 90% of adult TANF recipients are female, Legal Momentum views welfare as a women's issue. Currently, our work has focused on ensuring that a fair and sensible welfare policy that addresses the barriers to women's economic security will be implemented upon Congressional reauthorization.
Legal Momentum supports placing women in non-traditional jobs, such as firefighting and law enforcement, as well as construction trades and technology fields. Following the World Trade Center disaster of 9/11/2001, Legal Momentum launched Women Rebuild NY/Women Rebuild America, a program designed to further training and job opportunities in these areas.
Legal Momentum advocates on behalf of battered immigrant women and victims of trafficking. The organization's Immigrant Women Program, based in the Washington, DC office, has extensive contact with grass-roots organizations and works with federal legislators to ensure the rights and protections of immigrant survivors of violence and sexual abuse. We also advocate for immigrant women to receive economic benefits to which they are lawfully entitled.
Legal Momentum crafted the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 (VAWA) and currently leads the fight for passage of the Victims Economic Security and Safety Act (VESSA).
Under our Economic Rights for Survivors of Abuse (ERSA) program, we are litigating cases on behalf of women whose careers and well-being are affected by domestic and sexual violence.
Legal Momentum's Project on Federalism monitors and seeks to educate the public about the Supreme Court's recent decisions limiting the federal government's ability to legislate such vital areas of national policy as violence in the home, guns in schools, protection of our environment, and many other civil and women's rights issues.
The National Judicial Education Program to Promote Equality for Women and Men in the Courts (NJEP), develops trainings, publications, and video curricula to educate judges and prosecutors on gender issues.
PUBLICATIONS
Know Your Rights: Parents Receiving Public Assistance in New York City
Nowhere to Turn: New York City's Failure to Inform Parents on Public Assistance About Their Child Care Rights
Still Nowhere to Turn: New York City's Continuing Failure to Inform Parents on Public Assistance About Their Child Care Rights
A Leadership Summit: In the Lives of Women and Their Children: Program summary and recommendations from the leadership summit held at Georgetown University Law School in the Spring of 1995; includes excerpts from the speeches of activists, researchers, lawyers, and policymakers.
Bonus for Building Real Opportunities for Poor Families: State Action Packet
Brutal Need: Lawyers and the Welfare Rights Movement, 1960-1973, Martha Davis (1993). Describes the emergence of welfare rights litigation in the 1960s and highlights the strategies of important constitutional cases.
Dangerous Indifference: New York City's Failure to Implement the Family Violence Option
Welfare Reform Information Packet (1998). Includes background on child exclusion (family cap) and illegitimacy ratio.
What Congress Didn't Tell You: This 50-state report begins to track state responses to welfare reform in the area of reproductive choice and specficially focuses on the illegitimacy bonus, the family cap, and the abstinence-only sex education funding.
Working First But Working Poor: The Need for Education & Training in Wefare Reform (Executive Summary and Full Report Available): A Study by Legal Momentum and the Institute for Women's Policy Research on how women welfare recipients are denied access to job training for good-paying jobs in fields traditionally populated by men.
Household Workers' Rights Under Federal Law Fact Sheet
Know Your rights: A Woman's Guide to Sexual Harassment and Workfare
Manual for Survival for Women in Nontraditional Employment
Nontraditional Employment for Low-Income Women: A Guide for Advocates
The Women of Ground Zero: A Documentary: A 12-minute film documenting the efforts of six women form various backgrounds who helped at the disaster site on and after 9/11.
Action Packet: State Laws Can Help Domestic Violence Victims At Work
The Impact of Violence in the Lives of Working Women: Creating Solutions, Creating Change: Designed to aid employers, managers, supervisors, and human resource professionals, this guide explains how violence against women affects the workplace and how businesses can develop solutions that assist women employees who have suffered.
Protecting Women's Welfare in the Face of Violence: Critiques welfare reform proposals in light of data on the relationship between violence against women and poverty.
Report From the Front Lines: The Impact of Violence on Poor Women: This qualitative study demonstrates that domestic violence and poverty interact to keep women on public assistance. Also included is a copy of the Family Violence Amendment.
State-by-State Laws on Discrimination Against Domestic Violence Victims
State-by-State Laws on Domestic Violence Workplace Policies
State-by-State Laws on Employment Leave for Domestic Violence Victims
State-by-State Laws on Unemployment Insurance
Employment Rights for Survivors of Abuse (ERSA) General Brochure
Domestic Violence and Unemployment Insurance: A Manual for Clients and Advocates
Eligibility for Unemployment Benefits (also available in French)
Employment Rights of Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Domestic Violence Survivors
Job Protections & Accommodations for Disabilities Caused by Domestic Violence
Safety Planning in the Workplace: Protecting Yourself and Your Job (also available in Chinese, French, Hindu, Korean, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, and Vietnamese)
Survivors' Right to Take Time from Work to Participae in Criminal Proceedings (also available in French)
Taking Leave from Work for a Family Member's Serious Condition
Taking Leave from Work for Your Own Serious Condition
Welfare-to-Work Programs
Welfare-to-Work Programs in New York
Workplace Discrimination Against Abused Women (also available in French)
Your Legal Rights When an Abuser Injures You at Work
National Judicial Education Program (NJEP)Publications List
Credibility in the Courts: Why is There a Gender Gap?
Implementation Resources Directory, a publication of the Gender Fairness Strategies Project: Provides an annotated list of actions taken and materials available to address gender bias in state courts that can be replicated or adapted in other jurisdictions.
Is the Law Male? Let Me Count the Ways: Illustrates the concept of the law as male by analogizing it to the medical community's treatment of the male body as the norm.
Overwhelming Evidence: Reports on Gender Bias in the Courts
There's No Accounting For Judges: Recounts recent cases in which judges imposed minimal sentences on wife beaters and murderers, the intense response of the communities in which these cases occurred, and the ways in which judicial selection, election, education, evaluation, and discipline can be used to prevent recurrence of this type of gender bias.
Women of Color in the Courts
NJEP curricula materials for judges and prosecutors also available.
An Annotated Summary of the Regulations for Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (1997). A summary and an analysis of Title IX regulations, including housing and facilities, counseling, scholarships, and athletics.
Public Education Programs for African-American Males: A Women's Educational Perspective, Walteen Grady Truely and Martha F. Davis (1995). Reviews educational research data and theories relevant to recent public school programs targeting African-American males and analyzes the programs from a gender equity perspective.
Drawing the Line: A Handbook for Creating Residential Picketing and Buffer Zone Laws in Your Community: Explores the legal basics of how to enact and implement residential picketing and buffer zone ordinances to protect clinics and their staff from anti-choice violence and harassment. It covers legal standards, perovides an overview of recent court decisions, and offers guidelines for drafting municipal ordinances.
Stop the Terrorism: Understanding Your Rights Under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE): Explains how you can use FACE in your community to prevent, stop, and redress anti-abortion tactics including clinic blockades and invasions, and acts of violence, intimidation, and property damage directed at those seeking to obtain or provide reproductive health services.
Collections of materials providing general legal information are available on the following topics:
Divorce
Domestic Violence and Child Custody
Employment Sexual Harassment & Discrimination
Filing a Judicial Complaint in State Courts
How to Find a Lawyer (also available in Spanish)
Incest and Child Abuse
Sexual Harassment in Housing
Sexual Harassment in the Schools
Stalking
Violence Against Women
Analysis and Policy Implications of the New Domestic Violence Police Studies (1994).
Battered Women - Procedure for Change of Name and Social Security Number (1995).
Batterer's Pathology: Questions and Implications (1993).
Defending a Battered Woman Accused of Parental Abduction (1992).
The Effect of Woman Abuse on Children, 2nd. ed. (1994).
Guide to Interstate Custody: A Manual for Domestic Violence Advocates, 2nd. ed. (1995).
Improving the Health Care Response to Domestic Violence Through Protocols and Policies (1994).
Mandatory Arrest Laws (1994).
Mandatory Arrest: Problems and Possibilities (1994).
Mediation - A Guide for Advocates and Attorneys Representing Battered Women (1990).
Mediation and You (1991).
Mediator's Guide to Domestic Abuse (1989).
Mediation of Domestic Violence Cases (1994).
Medical Domestic Violence Protocols and Standards (1994).
Mutual Orders of Protection (1994).
National Handbook on Teen Dating Violence and the Law. For teens and college-age students.
Non-Disclosure Laws: Protection for Domestic Violence Victims (1994).
State Domestic Violence Laws Regarding Firearms (1993).
State Laws Exempting Battered Women from Mediation (1992).
Status of Marital Rape Exemption Statutes in the United States (1996).
Suing the Police After DeShaney (1995).
Voter Address Confidentiality for Domestic Violence Victims (1995).
Woman Battering: A Major Cause of Homelessness (1991).
Back issues of The Women's Advocate newsletter also available.
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