Last night in Springfield, the Illinois House of Representatives approved borrowing $3.7 billion to pay for the Illinois retirement system. This was coupled with the House passing a $57.1 bilion appropriations bill and sending over to the Senate a bill that would grant Governor Quinn “emergency” authority over cutting and borrowing to close the $13 billion budget hole. As many of you are aware, over the past several months, the social work community has been very active is voicing its support for a responsible budget and sufficient revenues to support the human services sector across the state. The deliberations by the General Assembly still do not solve the shortfall of revenue.
While the General Assembly was deliberating in Springfield, the NASW IL Chapter’s Diversity Committee presented a workshop entitled Cultural Competence Issues and Social Work Practice which focused on three ongoing challenges to cultural competence of practitioners and services organizations: white privilege, domination, and subordination (Presented by Barbara Wahler), politics, the media, and immigration (Presented by Tom Kenemore); and the origins and current impact of race and racism (Presented by Carl Johnson). Their presentation took place as the news on Tuesday was dominated by the Supreme Court’s decision in the case of Lewis v. City of Chicago. By a vote of 9-0, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that employers who use tests that have the effect of ruling out disproportionate numbers of women and minorities may be sued each time they use the results to hire. The case stemmed from a group of City of Chicago fire fighters who argued that the city used the 1995 firefighter’s exam in a way that favored whites. The unanimous decision on Monday means that “a new act of discrimination was committed every time scores from the 1995 exam were used to hire new firefighters.”
The NASW Legal Defense Fund filed an amicus friend of the court brief in this case last November. The full brief can be found here. For those of you who don’t know, the Legal Defense Fund (LDF) is another one of those hidden jewels of the association. Established by NASW in 1972, it provides financial legal assistance and support for legal cases and issues of concern to NASW members and the social work profession; it also supports educational projects and programs to improve the legal status and knowledge of the social work profession. As a part of its mission, LDF has supported precedent–setting lawsuits and makes available legal resources of interest to NASW members and social workers generally On its web page on the National NASW Web site, it publishes “Legal Issues of the Month,” and other valuable information for social workers. Before joining the National Board of Directors, NASW IL member Joe Monahan, ACSW, JD, served two terms as an LDF trustee and served as chair in his final term.
