For the moment Washington’s football team has decided to remain nameless. But some former employees are going on the record to blast its workplace culture. Will Hobson and Liz Clarke report in the Washington Post:
A few months after Emily Applegate started working for the Washington Redskins in 2014, she settled into a daily routine: She would meet a female co-worker in the bathroom during their lunch breaks, she said, to commiserate and cry about the frequent sexual harassment and verbal abuse they endured...
Applegate is one of 15 former female Redskins employees who told The Washington Post they were sexually harassed during their time at the club. The other 14 women spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing a fear of litigation because some signed nondisclosure agreements with the team that threaten legal retribution if they speak negatively about the club. The team declined a request from The Post to release former female employees from these agreements so they could speak on the record without fear of legal reprisal.
Among the most damning allegations comes from a woman who says she did not witness sexual harassment, but did witness a broken culture. Reports the Post:
“I have never been in a more hostile, manipulative, passive-aggressive environment … and I worked in politics,” said Julia Payne, former assistant press secretary in the Clinton administration who briefly served as vice president of communications for the team in 2003.
Saying the Washington football team’s office was at least as bad as a workplace overseen by Bill Clinton is a serious allegation.
In October of 2001, the Associated Press reported on events related to Mr. Clinton’s time as Arkansas governor and then President:
The Supreme Court ordered former President Clinton disbarred from practicing law before the high court.. In April, Clinton’s Arkansas law license was suspended for five years and he paid a $25,000 fine... Clinton agreed to the Arkansas fine and suspension Jan. 19, the day before he left office, as part of an understanding with Independent Counsel Robert Ray to end the Monica Lewinsky investigation.
The agreement also satisfied the legal effort by the Arkansas Supreme Court Committee on Professional Conduct to disbar Clinton for giving misleading testimony in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case...
Julia Payne, a spokeswoman for Clinton, referred calls to his lawyer, David Kendall, in Washington. Kendall didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment.
In a seemingly unrelated story from Washington, the Journal’s Jess Bravin reports:
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Friday she is being treated for liver cancer, but remains fully able to perform her work at the Supreme Court.
This column doesn’t much care for Justice Ginsburg’s jurisprudence but can’t help but admire her work ethic and toughness. Reports Mr. Bravin:
The 87-year-old jurist has overcome numerous health crises during her tenure, including four previous bouts with cancer. She was hospitalized earlier this week for an infection and in May was treated for gallstones. Those incidents were unrelated to the latest occurrence of cancer, she said...
“My most recent scan on July 7 indicated significant reduction of the liver lesions and no new disease. I am tolerating chemotherapy well and am encouraged by the success of my current treatment,” Justice Ginsburg said. “I will continue biweekly chemotherapy to keep my cancer at bay, and am able to maintain an active daily routine. Throughout, I have kept up with opinion writing and all other Court work.”
This column also admires Justice Ginsburg’s refusal to bend with the political winds. A year ago this column noted the justice’s warning to certain presidential candidates. National Public Radio’s Nina Totenberg reported at the time:
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in an interview Tuesday that she does not favor proposals put forth by some Democratic presidential candidates who have advocated changing the number of Supreme Court justices if the Democrats win the presidency... “Nine seems to be a good number. It’s been that way for a long time,” she said, adding, “I think it was a bad idea when President Franklin Roosevelt tried to pack the court.”
The liberal justice warned that such plans could make the court appear to be merely a political instrument for whichever party is in power and erode public trust in the independence of the judiciary. Ms. Totenberg’s report continued:
“The court has no troops at its command,” Ginsburg pointed out, “doesn’t have the power of the purse, and yet time and again, when the courts say something, people accept it.”
She recalled Bush v. Gore, the controversial case in which the Supreme Court stopped a Florida recount in the 2000 presidential election.
“I dissented from that decision,” Ginsburg said. “I thought it was unwise. A lot of people disagreed with it. And yet the day after the court rendered its decision, there were no riots in the streets. People adjusted to it. And life went on.”
Justice Ginsburg also noted that “the safeguards for judicial independence in this country, I think, are as great or greater than anyplace else in the world.”
If D.C.’s football team wants to definitively turn the page culturally while adopting a symbol of grit and fortitude, their new name seems obvious.
The Washington Bader Ginsburgs.
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In Other News
OK, Springfield’s Culture Also Has Room for Improvement
“Commonwealth Edison Company (‘ComEd’), the largest electric utility in Illinois, has agreed to pay $200 million to resolve a federal criminal investigation into a years-long bribery scheme, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago announced Friday.
“In doing so, ComEd admits it arranged jobs, vendor subcontracts, and monetary payments associated with those jobs and subcontracts, for various associates of ‘a high-level elected official for the state of Illinois,’ to influence and reward the official’s efforts to assist ComEd with respect to legislation concerning ComEd and its business, the U.S. Attorney’s office said in a release,” WBBM, July 17
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Your humble correspondent will be hosting “Wall Street Journal at Large” on Friday night at 9:30 p.m. ET on FOX Business Network.
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Mr. Freeman is the co-author of “Borrowed Time,” now available from HarperBusiness.
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