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Penn State Law students visit Supreme Court, meet with Justice Kagan

Accompanied by Professor Michael Foreman, students in Penn State Law's Civil Rights Appellate Clinic recently visited the U.S. Supreme Court to listen to two oral arguments and have a meeting with Justice Elena Kagan.
Penn State Law students met with Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Students in Penn State Law’s Civil Rights Appellate Clinic visited the U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 8 to meet with Justice Elena Kagan and listen to oral arguments in two cases.

Accompanied by Professor Michael Foreman, director of the Civil Rights Appellate Clinic, the five students met with Kagan following the morning’s oral arguments. They discussed Kagan’s career, how she decides cases, and the students’ experiences in law school.

“It was fascinating to listen to Justice Kagan talk about her career, including her time as a law school dean and U.S. solicitor general,” says third-year student Dwayne Wright. “It really puts things in perspective to think that, at one time, she was in our shoes as a law student. It’s inspiring to think about what we can accomplish when we graduate.”

Prior to the meeting with Kagan, the students observed two Supreme Court arguments, Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc. v. Busk and Warger v. Shauers.

In Integrity Staffing, the court must decide whether workers at Amazon.com warehouses in Nevada should have been paid for the roughly 25 minutes at the end of each shift when they were required to wait to be searched to ensure that they were not stealing merchandise. The case was brought by two Integrity Staffing Solutions employees, who argue that they should have been compensated for the time that they were required to be present for the security screenings. Their case was originally dismissed by a federal judge, but that decision was overturned by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and Integrity Staffing appealed to the Supreme Court.

The court will decide whether the time the employees spent in security constitutes compensable time under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The case relates directly to the work the students do in the Penn State Law Civil Rights Appellate Clinic, where they conduct research, draft briefs, develop legal positions, and plan appellate strategy in cases often involving the rights of employees.

Later this semester, the students in the clinic will have the opportunity to discuss the case further with counsel for both the employees and Integrity Staffing. Mark Thierman, founder of Thierman Law, argued the case on behalf of the employees and former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement argued his 75th case in front of the Supreme Court on behalf of Integrity Staffing. They will both meet with the clinic students via teleconference.

In 2011, the Supreme Court heard a case presented by the clinic, Coleman v. Maryland Court of Appeals. In that case, Daniel Coleman filed suit against the Maryland Court of Appeals and individual defendants for violations of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA).

Foreman, the clinic’s director, is immediate past deputy director of legal programs for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Law in Washington, where he was responsible for supervising all litigation in employment discrimination, housing, education, voting rights, and environmental justice areas.

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