Women’s History Month, Policy Issues, and Fighting for Gender Justice

Episode Notes

Transcript

Amy Royce:

As these issues come up, people are coming up to vote and they are standing up for the things that they believe in. And I would expect we’ll continue to see that. I’m very proud to be working in an organization where I have colleagues that are working directly on those issues and are really paying attention to the impacts on the ground.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to the award-winning podcast, Lawyer 2 Lawyer with J. Craig Williams, bringing you the latest legal news and observations with the leading experts in the legal profession. You are listening to Legal Talk Network.

J. Craig Williams:

Welcome to Lawyer, lawyer on the Legal Talk Network. I’m Craig Williams, coming to you from Southern California. I wrote a blog named May It please the court and have two books out titled How To Get Sued In the Sled, my blog. May it please. The Court is up and running in the new year, so please check it out at may. It please the court.com. And I have a new book coming out called Bad Decisions, 10 Famous Trials that Changed History. Well, March is Women’s History Month, where we celebrate contributions women have made to the United States throughout American history in a variety of fields. Charlotte E. Ray, Beville Lockwood, Sandra Day O’Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. These are just some of the standout women who have shaped our legal history and fought for women and girls across the nation. Well, unfortunately, in recent years, women’s rights have come under attack with scotus, recent overturning of Roe v.

Wade, and many other women’s policy issues like Equal Pay, title ix, childcare, taxes, and Equity and Education. Women continue to fight for their individual rights. So today on Lawyer 2 Lawyer, we’re going to spotlight Women’s History Month by discussing current policy issues involving women. And we’re also going to take a look back at women throughout history who have paved the way and what women across the nation can do to rise up against legislation and fight for their rights. And to help us better understand today’s topic, we’re joined today by Amy Royce. She’s the senior Counsel for income security for the National Women’s Law Center where she works to advance federal policies to increase economic security for women. Prior to joining the NWLC, Amy served as a presidential appointee as the special assistant to Commissioner David Claney at the US Commission on Civil Rights. Her work encompassed a broad portfolio of intersectional civil rights issues, including the rights of incarcerated women, criminal justice concerns, voting rights and disability employment policy. Welcome to the show, Amy.

Amy Royce:

Thank you so much for having me.

J. Craig Williams:

Why don’t you talk first about your role at the National Women’s Law Center and how you first got involved with women’s policy issues.

Amy Royce:

So my role at the National Women’s Law Center is work on our income security team, which is our economic justice team. I focus primarily on federal tax policy, but the work that we do on my team includes advocating for investments in childcare and housing and public benefits and other things that help lift women up.

J. Craig Williams:

Kind of explain what income security means for women.

Amy Royce:

Income security to us means that everyone has what they need to thrive, and we see the federal system as an important way that women can benefit and that we can invest in women and families to make sure that they have those things. So it’s a pretty broad portfolio and within the National Women’s Law Center, we really see issues of economic justice as connecting to many other issues that women are facing, including reproductive rights, education, employment, and workplace justice. So it’s a broad theory of what’s needed to advance gender equity.

J. Craig Williams:

What’s the mission of your organization?

Amy Royce:

Our short mission is to advance gender justice and we do that through Litigation through public policy and then more broadly in society. So we use the law in all its forms to change cultures and drive solutions to lift up women L-G-B-T-Q people and with a particular focus on women of color and low-income women.

J. Craig Williams:

So what are the particular policy issues right now facing the National Women’s Law Center?

Amy Royce:

As you are well aware, I’m sure there’s many policy issues that we work on across the center, but my work particularly is focused on tax policy and two real key issues in tax policy at the moment are a bill in Congress that has been proposed to expand the child tax credit. And then longer term, we’re looking at a really broad tax policy debate as some of the provisions that were passed during the Trump administration are expiring at the end of next year.

J. Craig Williams:

And right now there’s a key case pending before the Supreme Court Moore versus United States right up your alley.

Amy Royce:

Yes, that’s right. I think it’s important to ground that conversation in the context of why we think tax policy is a gender justice issue. It’s really twofold. So the reason that we have a tax code is to collect revenue so that we can fund the priorities that we all believe in. And we see the need right now to really turn away from the tax policy of the past that was focused on trickle down economics tax cuts at the top as the only way to advance economic security and to make the investments that we need. And we also think it’s really important how we’re raising the revenue that we need. So we look at different tax policies to ask the question, how can we craft this policy that is so that it’s advancing racial and gender equity within the tax code. So things like preferences for wealth or things that are really skewed toward the top in that way are not going to be policies that advance gender equity because we know historic and systemic discrimination mean that women are underrepresented at the very top and are overrepresented at sort of the bottom of the income scale.

So with all of that background, the reason that we’re tracking the Moore case is that it has really brought implications for how tax policy can move forward in the future and how our existing tax code is going to continue to operate

J. Craig Williams:

Well and in more I think the basic issue is under revenue code section 69, what constitutes income and when that income is realized. That’s probably the key question, the realization issue.

Amy Royce:

Exactly. Yeah, that is the key question. And it’s important for people to know that the challenge that’s at issue at Moore is a really specific challenge. So it’s to a one-time tax that was passed as part of that 2017 Trump tax law, but the legal theory is much broader and they’re raising a constitutional challenge to this one tax that really would have ripple effects throughout the tax code if the petitioner is really pretty extreme position is adopted. So a lot of the focus of the case has been on avoiding a bad outcome where a lot of the existing tax code would be thrown into uncertainty.

J. Craig Williams:

Well, as I understand it, we have two individuals, a husband and a wife who have invested some of their money is an overseas corporation and that corporation has reinvested its profits into the corporation itself or into the company, whatever form it’s in instead of issuing dividends to these individuals. And the issue in more is whether or not the government can tax the non realized income of the partnership or corporation. Do I have that about right?

Amy Royce:

Yeah, that’s about right. And the government’s position in the case has been that this income is realized and that it’s squarely within Congress’s taxing power and is very similar to other provisions of the tax code where similar types of incomes are taxed and that it is perfectly constitutional for this tax also to go after that kind of income.

J. Craig Williams:

And then the bigger issue that you talk about is when that realization occurs because the idea is that these two individuals are somehow enriched in their life by having this foreign investment, which is something I don’t quite understand.

Amy Royce:

So they’re arguing that, as you said, because they did not get a distribution, that it is not a constitutional for Congress to tax this income, but that’s very much at odds with the way that Congress taxes other type of income. It’s probably less familiar to most people because we think about wages and salary and that kind of income where it’s is more straightforward when income is being earned. But with these corporate tax provisions and the Supreme Court in oral argument sort of ran down a number of other provisions in the tax code that operate this way. So the government has been arguing this is really squarely within the taxing power. And they’re not the only ones. Actually the people who put forward the law in the first place, including Paul Ryan, have also said that they think the petitioner’s theory is way off base, and this is a clearly constitutional kind of tax.

J. Craig Williams:

And this is actually a test case. I mean these people signed up intentionally to try and expand or change the tax law, right?

Amy Royce:

That’s right. And as I said, it’s a pretty extreme theory that they’re pushing and we think it’s potentially very dangerous if the court goes down that road.

J. Craig Williams:

And if the court does go down this road, what’s the danger to women and how does this play into your advocacy?

Amy Royce:

Right. So as I was saying, we advocate to advance racial and gender equity within the tax code, which includes making sure the tax code is requiring the wealthy in corporations to pay more of their share so we can make the investments that we need. If the court were to limit Congress’s taxing power in the way that the petitioners are pushing for, it would cause a lot of chaos and it would be an impediment to that goal. So this was highlighted in many of the amicus briefs that were filed. It was highlighted in oral argument that if the court adopts this theory, it could potentially cause chaos, invite Litigation and really limit Congress’s options going forward.

J. Craig Williams:

Right. Well Amy, it’s time for us to take a quick break to hear a word from our sponsors. We’ll be right back and welcome back to Lawyer 2 Lawyer. I’m joined by Amy Royce. She is senior Counsel for the income security for the National Women’s Law Center. And we’ve been talking about the riveting topic of the tax code. Not to joke about it, but it does have a big effect. And the question that I wanted to follow up are right before the break we were talking about how different entities are taxed by the government, by the IRS. How does the IRS tax corporations don’t? Corporations themselves get taxed twice, especially small, closely held corporations, they get taxed at the corporate level and then when the income gets passed to the shareholders, the 25 or so, however smaller those people get taxed on that income. Again, how does that square up with what Moore is trying to do?

Amy Royce:

So that’s right in broad strokes about how the tax code works and how corporate income is taxed, as you mentioned, we have a separate corporate income tax for companies that are like a C Corp or something like that. But for other smaller businesses, the income is taxed, it passes through and is taxed at the owners file those taxes on their personal returns. That’s correct. And so the tax that’s being challenged in more is not really at odds at all with that system as we know it. And that’s what the government has that similar to other types of taxation such as pass throughs, taxation such as other types of US shareholders of foreign corporations is constitutional for Congress to tax that income.

J. Craig Williams:

But there’s a part of me that says that what the Moores are arguing makes kind of logical sense because basically what they’re saying is, look, we have this offshore corporation over there in India and we put $11,000 into it as an investment and we haven’t gotten anything on it. We’re still sitting there, it’s still earning money, and one of these days we’ll sell it or we’ll sell our shares in it or something’s going to happen or where we get income from it. But that’s the point in time where we sell or where we get income that you should be taxing us not over there sitting while it’s just percolating away in the pot. Doesn’t that make more sense?

Amy Royce:

So I think this gets to one of the tricky things about this cases, which is that the way we usually understand taxable income is that it is realized income, and most people think of it realized on a personal level, but there are many provisions of the tax code that don’t operate that way. And the issue and more is that the petitioners are claiming that there’s this constitutional requirement that would invalidate not only this tax, but all of the taxes that operate in that manner.

J. Craig Williams:

And what’s wrong with that? I mean, we just go back to a straight out flat tax where corporations get whacked at 40% and everybody else gets 15%. What’s wrong with that?

Amy Royce:

Well, I mean I think that it gets into some of the broader questions that are at stake and more, which is there are a broad range of ideas about what tax policy is a good idea, but that’s not what’s at issue in the Supreme Court case. The issue in the case is the constitutional limits of the 16th amendment. And so the question is whether the Supreme Court should be stepping in to upend the way that Congress has operated since the enactment of the 16th Amendment, or whether they should recognize that this kind of income that’s realized at the corporate level is the kind of income that is contemplated by the 16th Amendment and has long been taxed.

J. Craig Williams:

Well, that makes sense, but it wouldn’t be the first time the Supreme Court has stepped in and upended something Congress has done.

Amy Royce:

That’s very true. That’s very true. So based on oral arguments, it seems that they are inclined to uphold the tax and side with the government in this instance. And it seems that they’re really cognizant in this case of all of the chaos that they could sow if they were to take another path. So we’re waiting to see what comes down.

J. Craig Williams:

Right. Well, it seems like you’ve come by your application here, kind of honestly, former Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, her early advocacy was regarding tax issues, right?

Amy Royce:

Yeah, that’s right. I don’t know if it’s one of her best known cases, but when she was an attorney before she was a justice, she argued a case called Moritz versus Commissioner of the IRS, which was a case where a man who was taking care of his elderly mother was not entitled to a tax deduction for caregiving expenses because the law was written in such a way that you could only claim it if you are a woman or a widower. And so since he was neither of those, he was a never married man. He couldn’t claim the tax benefit, and it was one of the first cases that she put forward to argue this is really facially discriminatory on the basis of sex and we should strike it down.

J. Craig Williams:

And

Amy Royce:

She won. Oh, good. And she won. And the project of that case were cases like Reed versus Reed and ultimately the protection of sex as a protected class under the 14th Amendment.

J. Craig Williams:

So since we’re in Women’s History Month, who were your other female heroes in the law or outside the law for that matter?

Amy Royce:

One thing that’s fun at our office is that we’ve actually named the conference room after our heroes, our legal heroes. So obviously all of our conference room around here are named after different women who have been influential in the law, but give us some names. So one of them that I really love is Pauly Murray, who I think is a little bit lesser known, but was an incredibly important legal figure in the early civil rights movement. So she was a legal scholar who put forward the architecture that was ultimately adopted, was ultimately successful to tear down separate equal as a legal theory. And she was also very influential in the early gender justice movement. And her scholarship was influential to Justice Ginsburg in saying that sex should be a protected class. I think she’s a very underappreciated legal figure, but she really put forward a lot of the foundational scholarship that those cases were based on. And one of my favorite facts about her is that she wrote to then President Nixon when there was an open Supreme Court seat and put forward herself as a nominee, listing all of her qualifications and accomplishments. And she said that she did that to dispel the notion that there were no qualified women who could have this Supreme Court seat

J. Craig Williams:

Could and your other conference rooms names.

Amy Royce:

So I feel like I’m going to forget one, but we have Bell Hooks. We have Dolores Huerta, who was a founder of the Farm Worker Movement, a labor activist Ida B. Wells, of course, the pioneering journalist and anti-lynching advocate. So many legal heroes.

J. Craig Williams:

That’s amazing. Some names I’ve not heard before, but thank you for that and the background. Well, Amy, it’s time for us to take another quick break to hear a word from our sponsors. We’ll be right back and welcome back to lawyer, lawyer. I’m back with attorney Amy Royce. We have an upcoming presidential election. You think that we’re going to see a lot of women turning out for this, advocating some of the issues and policy things that are concerning in the NWLC?

Amy Royce:

Yeah, I think so. And I think people can see that. That’s what we have been seeing is that as these issues come up, people are coming out to vote and they are standing up for the things that they believe in. And I would expect we’ll continue to see that.

J. Craig Williams:

Right. Beyond this tax issue, what other policy issues are at the forefront of the National Women’s Law Center that other advocates are working on?

Amy Royce:

If you don’t mind, I have one more tax issue that I would love to make, which is the child tax credit. So it’s been in the news and people may be aware that there is an expansion to the child tax credit that is pending in Congress right now. So it passed the house with an overwhelming bipartisan majority, and it’s currently being considered in the Senate. And that expansion to the child tax credit we see as an important gender justice priority because it would extend the credit to more low income families and it would raise an estimated half a million children out of poverty. So during the pandemic, the child tax credit was expanded to be made much larger and was given to families on a monthly basis. And we saw a huge benefit to women and families from those monthly payments that went out that people may remember. So this expansion that is pending right now is much more modest, but we think it’s important that that credit be boosted up to help as many people as possible

J. Craig Williams:

What will be the individual credit for low income people.

Amy Royce:

So, so it’s not an expansion to the amount of the credit technical changes to the way the credit is phased in and how the income for the credit is calculated. So the actual provision is extremely complicated, but the bottom line is that we think roughly 16 million children in families with low incomes would benefit, and more than 90% of the benefit of the proposed tax change would go to families with income of less than $50,000.

J. Craig Williams:

How does it change total tax revenue?

Amy Royce:

The package as a whole is a combination of this child tax credit expansion that I was just describing and some business tax provisions that had already expired. So altogether, I believe the total size of the package is about $80 million. Excuse me, 78 billion.

J. Craig Williams:

That’s pretty sizable.

Amy Royce:

Yeah.

J. Craig Williams:

Let me kind of ask an off the wall question here. And it’s one kind of far out there theory I’ve seen proposed, and that kind of stems from the Alabama IVF ruling, assuming now that there is at least one state that is interpreting frozen embryos as persons, do they qualify as dependents?

Amy Royce:

Oh, it’s quite a complicated case, isn’t it? And we think that ruling is very dangerous, as you may imagine, and we are very heartened to see the outpouring of people who agree that that ruling is very dangerous and the very quick reversal that Alabama has done to try to contain the damage from that ruling. But those kind of rulings are extremely disruptive and the implications can be wide ranging.

J. Craig Williams:

How does it affect individuals that live in Alabama? I mean, I think I’ve seen stories on the news that now all of these clinics are saying no more, we’re not touching this.

Amy Royce:

I think we haven’t yet seen how it’s going to play out on the ground. And some of my colleagues that work on reproductive rights and abortion issues are tracking that very closely.

J. Craig Williams:

What do you think the ultimate outcome is going to be? Are we going to see this ripple across the country in these conservative red states, these kind of rulings? Are these things going to continue?

Amy Royce:

Yeah, I mean, I think that’s unknown at this point. The uncertainty itself is pretty dangerous. I’m very proud to be working in an organization where I have colleagues that are working directly on those issues and are really paying attention to the impacts on the ground.

J. Craig Williams:

How can our listeners who want to support these efforts support you and your team in your efforts?

Amy Royce:

I mean, I think people can support us in however they see fit. You can find us, you can find our website n wlc.org, and you can learn more about our work. I think it’s important for people to be engaged with these issues and to really educate themselves about the realities that people are facing. And I am biased, but I think we have some of the best information that people can find if they want to get educated.

J. Craig Williams:

Great. What types of information’s available?

Amy Royce:

Our work in the organization is in public policy advocacy is in Litigation, but it’s also in sort of informative and narrative change work. So the ways that we engage the law include our legal briefs. You can find those, you can read those, you can dig into our legal arguments. But we also do things like testify before Congress. We also put forward, we try to really boil down legal topics in a way that people can understand. So we have information like blogs and fact sheets that we hope are more digestible, and we do things like this where we try to talk to the public about the issues that are important to us.

J. Craig Williams:

And from what I’ve seen, your team also works on incarcerated women and criminal justice concerns as well as voting rights and disability employment.

Amy Royce:

Oh, yeah. So I think you’re talking about some of the work that I previously did at the US Commission on Civil Rights, and I’d love to talk about that if that’s something that’s interesting, sort of my path to get to this job.

J. Craig Williams:

That would be great. We have the time. Yes.

Amy Royce:

Yeah. Awesome. I came to be interested in law and public policy because of a deep interest in the ways that our institutions can help people, especially people that have been historically marginalized. And that was really cemented for me doing direct service nonprofit work, where I was seeing the ripple effects in people’s lives of disinvestment and systemic discrimination and all the things that make things more difficult for people. So I went to law school with that lens of approaching learning about the law, and after law school found myself at the US Commission on Civil Rights, which is this really historic organization. So it’s an independent federal agency. It was part of the government, but it was foundational in laying the groundwork for the early civil rights statutes, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act, 1965, the A DA and the work of the commission continues today and its role is to highlight ongoing civil rights harms and create recommendations about a legislative action, executive action that could be put forward to redress them.

So it’s an extremely broad mandate, which meant that I got to work on a variety of different issues, which was amazing as a young lawyer. So some of them, as you mentioned, were a report that we did on the civil rights of incarcerated women who are an often overlooked population in the prison system. And we also did work on voting rights, particularly restrictions that were passed in the wake of the Shelby County decision that really suppressed the right to vote and the ways that decision allowed voting rights restrictions that would’ve otherwise been blocked by pre-clearance to go forward. We also did work on disability policy such as disability employment. There’s a provision in the Federal Minimum Wage Act, so there is an exception to the minimum wage that applies to people with disabilities. So they’re actually allowed to be paid less than the minimum wage. So we looked at that program and highlighted some of the harms that causes.

J. Craig Williams:

Wow, that just sounds like a fantastic background. Well, Amy, it looks like we’ve just about reached the end of our program. So at this time, I’d like you to provide your contact information or so our listeners can reach out to you.

Amy Royce:

Yeah, of course. As I said, you can find our website nwlc.org, and you can connect with me there or any of my other amazing colleagues if you’re interested in other gender justice issues.

J. Craig Williams:

Great. Thanks for being on the show today.

Amy Royce:

Thank you so much.

J. Craig Williams:

Well, here are a few of my thoughts about today’s subject. We have certainly seen a degradation of women’s rights that have been gained in the last year, in the last 50 years with the change in both Dobbs and in Roe versus Wade, a number of other women’s rights that are under attack from different sides of the political spectrum. There seems to be some women out there who are advocating for a thing called Rove, where women who are upset with the ruling in Roe versus Wade will come up and express their disgust and their frustration with these changes and vote accordingly. But so far, the primaries haven’t given us indication that women are storming the ballot box. So it looks like women have a long way to go, and you can check out the National Women’s Law Center where you can get involved if you disagree with these policies. Well, that’s it for Craig’s Ran on today’s topic. Let me know what you think. And if you like what you heard today, please rate us on Apple Podcasts through your favorite podcasting app. You can also visit [email protected], where you can sign up for our newsletter. I’m Craig Williams. Thanks for listening. Please join us next time for another great legal topic. Remember, when you want legal think Lawyer 2 Lawyer.

Speaker 2:

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