FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 30, 2023
Contact: press@domesticworkers.org
WASHINGTON, D.C. — This week, the Supreme Court decisions to overrule a landmark affirmative action precedent in college admissions, weaken protections for LGBTQ+ people, and reject the Biden-Harris administration’s student loan forgiveness plan dealt severe blows to hard won rights, freedoms and progress for people of all walks of life across the nation.
In response, the National Domestic Workers Alliance – the leading non-profit organization for the nation’s 2.2 million domestic workers, who are majority women of color and immigrants and have long struggled to achieve equal protection and fairness within our legal frameworks – condemned the decisions. The decisions will undoubtedly impact the workers whose work to care for American families helps make all other work possible, and whose organizing has long contributed to the many social movements that have delivered progress and justice.
National Domestic Workers Alliance Executive Director Jenn Stowe released the following statement:
“We are heartbroken and incensed by the recent decisions made by the United States Supreme Court, which stand to roll back hard won progress, and harm the workers who – despite giving their all to this country’s families – will not be able to give their own families the fairness and opportunity they deserve. The Supreme Court is continuing its path to effectively uproot 50 years of progress with a handful of decisions. Make no mistake; this is backlash from the generations of progress made possible by social movements – from Civil Rights to labor – to build a future where equity and safety are accessible to all. Black women, women of color, and domestic workers have long led the fight for equal rights and protections, and despite these decisions, we are more determined than ever.
Domestic workers acutely understand the weight of systemic racism and discrimination because our workforce lives it every day, and has since slavery was legal, when enslaved Black folks – and especially Black women – did domestic labor for free. Today, domestic workers are the nannies, house cleaners, and home care workers who take care of what is most important – our children, homes, and our loved ones – yet continue to be undervalued and denied basic rights and benefits. From the overruling of landmark affirmative action precedent, which raises the walls that stand between our children and economic opportunity, to striking down student loan forgiveness that traps workers in cycles of poverty, to weakening equal access protections for LGBTQ+ people, these decisions will only further exacerbate the problems that the nation’s 2.2 million domestic workers and their families experience day in and day out.
But, domestic workers are no strangers to adversity. Our workforce knows what it means to provide the care and support that enable dignity and opportunity for millions, in the face of legal decisions and cultural narratives that attempt to take away that same dignity from them. It’s why we organize. And why we will continue to organize with our families and communities, recommitting to the fight to build a multi-racial, multi-cultural democracy that addresses its inequities, rather than hide behind them in ‘legal fiat,’ as Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted so powerfully in her dissent.”
