Articles

If government can strip you of choice just because unconscious bias might influence that choice, its power would have no bounds. But that is precisely what Seattle is doing to its landlords. … ...

Equality Under the Law Project — Implicit Bias Victory The Iowa Supreme Court today issued this unanimous opinion in Pippen v. State of Iowa, tossing out an “implicit bias” discrimination lawsuit against the State of Iowa. Under the theory of the case, because Iowa state government officials had, unbeknownst to themselves, an  ...

In a unanimous opinion, the Iowa Supreme Court affirmed the trial court dismissing the plaintiffs’ disparate impact claims.  In this case, plaintiffs alleged that the subjective thoughts and biases of Iowa government officials caused a disparate impact on the basis of race.  To our knowledge, this was the first time that plaintiffs had t ...

In George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, police monitored residents of Oceania for evidence of “thoughtcrime.”  In Pippen v. Iowa, a case that takes the concept of unintentional discrimination to dangerous new levels, that concept doesn’t seem too far away.  In Pippen, several black employees and job applicants filed a law ...