Yuppy-haven supermarket Whole Foods has always carefully maintained a public image of embracing diversity. That polished exterior was tarnished in August when the corporation caved to the Islamophobic rants of conservatives, and told all its U.S. stores not to promote Ramadan this year.

Now a former employee is suing Whole Foods, alleging that he was harassed and ultimately terminated because of his Islamic faith. Supervisors turned on him when they learned he was making the traditional Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, and the situation got so bad that 24-year-old Glenn Mack had to resort to praying by the dumpsters outside the store:

Mack said he had been well-respected at the Whole Foods store at 20th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue in Philadelphia.[...] Mack said his troubles started after his supervisors discovered that he was going to use his vacation time for the once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage many Muslims make to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, birthplace of the prophet Muhammad.

He said he requested time for the vacation months in advance of the November 2010 trip, and received approval. But shortly before leaving, he said, his supervisors gave him a choice of keeping his job or going on the trip.

He went on the trip. When he returned, he didn’t lose his job immediately, but he said, attitudes toward him had changed. Supervisors would follow him on his breaks to a back corner of the supply room where he typically went to pray. For privacy, Mack said he resorted to praying outside next to the Dumpster.

After Mack took his vacation, he was downgraded from full-time to seasonal status — although he was returned to full-time status after he complained to the company’s human-relations department that he felt he discriminated against because of his religion. He continued to be heckled and followed by supervisors even after he was reinstated, and three months later, he was fired.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is representing Mack, and has filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment Commission. CAIR-Philadelphia Civil Rights Director Amara Chaudhry. “We hope that a company eager to take the money of Muslim shoppers would also be similarly welcoming of Muslim employees,” Chaudhry said.

Whole Foods’ insistence that it strives to engage employees and support their rights is seriously undermined by its actions towards them. In 2009, a manager at a San Francisco store threatened employees that there would be retribution if they tried to form a union.

Today, Ohioans will decide on Issue 2, a referendum on GOP Gov. John Kasich’s deeply unpopular anti-labor law Senate Bill 5. In its print-version of a story on how voters “are set to roundly reject” his “signature achievement, Politico included a picture of the beleaguered Kasich stumping for his law at a Building A Better Ohio meeting. What’s striking about this image, however, is his shirt. It appears that Kasich decided to step out at a public event in a polo shirt bearing the logo of the Pine Valley Golf Club — an invitation-only, male-only country club:

Described as one of the “most exclusive” clubs in the world, Pine Valley Golf Club in Camden, New Jersey is “male-only membership” that is offered “by invitation from the board of directors only.” The membership list is “a closely guarded secret” and women wishing to play the course are permitted only on Sunday afternoons.

Indeed, when asked what was on his bucket list of golf courses, former President Bill Clinton noted that he was invited to to Pine Valley but never played because “I have a wife and daughter that don’t like the No Women policy.” Kasich, who has a wife and two daughters, seemingly does not share that same concern.

In the wake of HB 56, Alabama’s extreme immigration law, students have been bullied by their peers simply for looking Hispanic, and now even one teacher has singled out a student because she looked foreign — even though she is an American citizen.

The ACLU reports that a teacher gave Cineo Gonzales’ young daughter a pamphlet in Spanish about HB 56. When Gonzales, a Birmingham taxi driver, went to the school’s principal to ask why it was given to his daughter specifically, the principal told him that the school handed out the pamphlets to students “who looked like they weren’t from there”:

GONZALES: I asked her why they give this paper to my daughter. What was the reason they give this paper to my daughter, and her answer was that they give this paper to all the children that appear like they are not from here. [...]

Far as I can see and far as I can feel, my daughter is being singled out and racial profiled and discriminated because of her color and race and origin from where they think she is from.

Watch Gonzales’ interview with the ACLU:

Alabama’s anti-immigrant law, the most harmful in the nation, has opened the door for racial profiling like this by targeting those who look like undocumented immigrants. And the issue pushed its way into schools because the law required schools to ask the citizenship status of newly enrolled students, a provision which has since been blocked by a federal appeals court. Thousands of Hispanic students skipped school when the law went into effect, fearing that they or their parents could be deported just for going to school, and many are not returning to class even though the Eleventh circuit blocked the policy.

While students still avoid classrooms across Alabama and some of those who remain are racially profiled based solely on their appearance, state Attorney General Luther Strange is arguing that the Justice Department shouldn’t be able to ask Alabama school districts for data about the student absences since the state’s immigration law went into effect. He argued on Monday “that the Justice Department wants to make Alabama an example because of its history going back 50 to 60 years ago.”

But just as separate schools for black and white children were found to be unconstitutional almost 60 years ago, the Supreme Court also has ruled that it is unconstitutional to deny a student a public education because of their immigration status. If Strange is so concerned about Alabama’s past history, perhaps he should protect students from being racially profiled like Gonzales’ daughter and let the Justice Department verify that students are not being denied their right to an education.

When the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit announced two of the three judges who would hear a challenge to the Affordable Care Act — conservative icons Laurence Silberman and Brett Kavanaugh — the law’s supporters turned white. Silberman is a close ally of Justice Clarence Thomas, a former official in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan Administrations and the author of the lower court decision overturning the District of Columbia’s handgun ban. Kavanaugh is a former Associate Counsel under Clinton inquisitor Ken Starr and a leading attorney in the George W. Bush White House. If anyone would be sympathetic to the case against health reform, these two men were first on the list.

And yet, both judges wrote opinions today rejecting an utterly meritless challenge to the Affordable Care Act — Judge Kavanaugh on the grounds that the court lacks jurisdiction to even hear the case, and Judge Silberman in a tour de force opinion that absolutely obliterates any suggestion that the ACA is not constitutional:

Since appellants cannot find real support for their proposed rule in either the text of the Constitution or Supreme Court precedent, they emphasize both the novelty of the mandate and the lack of a limiting principle. The novelty–assuming Wickard doesn’t encroach into that claim–is not irrelevant. The Supreme Court occasionally has treated a particular legislative device’s lack of historical pedigree as evidence that the device may exceed Congress’s constitutional bounds. But appellants’ proposed constitutional limitation is equally novel–one that only the Eleventh Circuit has recently–and only partially–endorsed. [...]

That a direct requirement for most Americans to purchase any product or service seems an intrusive exercise of legislative power surely explains why Congress has not used this authority before–but that seems to us a political judgment rather than a recognition of constitutional limitations. It certainly is an encroachment on individual liberty, but it is no more so than a command that restaurants or hotels are obliged to serve all customers regardless of race, that gravely ill individuals cannot use a substance their doctors described as the only effective palliative for excruciating pain, or that a farmer cannot grow enough wheat to support his own family. The right to be free from federal regulation is not absolute, and yields to the imperative that Congress be free to forge national solutions to national problems, no matter how local–or seemingly passive–their individual origins.

When a federal judge tells you that your argument has no basis in the text of the Constitution, it is a good sign you don’t belong in court. When he compares your argument to claims that the federal ban on whites-only lunch counters are unconstitutional, it’s an even better sign of how deeply radical your argument has become. When that judge is Judge Laurence Silberman, a man who has stood at the pinnacle of conservative judicial thinking for decades, it is about as good a sign as you can hope for that the Supreme Court is not going to like your argument either.

In September, the Supreme Court granted a temporary stay of execution to Duane Edward Buck so that it could have time consider whether to hear his case. Buck argued that he was unconstitutionally sentenced to die after a psychologist testified that African-Americans such as Buck are more likely to be violent.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court rejected his case. In a three-justice opinion explaining why they voted not to hear Buck’s case, Justice Altio wrote that while the racially offensive testimony “would provide a basis for reversal of [Buck's] sentence if the prosecution were responsible for presenting that testimony to the jury,” Buck right to a sentencing hearing free from racism doesn’t apply here because his own attorney’s actions led to the inappropriate comment about African-Americans.

Justice Sotomayor dissented in an opinion joined by Justice Kagan:

Today the Court denies review of a death sentence marred by racial overtones and a record compromised by misleading remarks and omissions made by the State of Texas in the federal habeas proceedings below. Because our criminal justice system should not tolerate either circumstance—especially in a capital case—I dissent and vote to grant the petition.

The practical effect of this decision is that Texas is likely now free to kill Buck without impediment.

HB 56, Alabama’s toughest-in-the-nation immigration law, already threatens undocumented immigrant’s ability to live in their own homes, access utilities in their homes, or even receive library cards. Children were terrified to go to school because of the law for fear their parents would be deported, and bullying against Hispanic children has been reported. A report outlined how Alabama’s immigration law already could hurt every person in the state, and depending on the interpretation of two sections of the law, that includes lawyers and their clients.

Sections 5 and 6 of Alabama’s law says “an officer of a court” cannot block the enforcement of immigration laws by “limiting communication between its officers and federal immigration officials.” Because the law interprets “an officer of a court” to include lawyers, attorneys worry this means officials could force them to turn over information about their clients despite the clients’ right to attorney-client privilege. Even if the state bar association promises to not “pursue ethical charges” against attorneys, it probably would not be enough:

[Lawyers] can either follow their ethical code or follow the law, but not both. Failure to follow the immigration law is a crime and can result in civil penalties of up to $5,000 per day. [...]

Susan Pace Hamill, an ethics professor at the University of Alabama School of Law, said reassurance that the state bar would not pursue ethical charges against lawyers for following the immigration law is little comfort.

“That doesn’t cut the mustard for an attorney with integrity,” Hamill said. “Without attorney-client confidentiality, there is no effective legal representation.”

The Alabama Rules of Professional Conduct generally prohibits lawyers from disclosing client information except “to prevent the client from committing a criminal act that the lawyer believes is likely to result in imminent death or substantial bodily harm.”

Attorneys should not have to choose between breaking the law or their ethical code simply to provide fair representation for their clients. Nick Roth, president of the Morgan Count Bar Association in Alabama, told the Decatur Daily that most lawyers would go against HB 56 and protect their clients. “There are many, many lawyers in the county who would want to challenge the law before they would be willing to violate a client’s privilege,” he said.

House Majority Leader Micky Hammon (R), the state House sponsor of Alabama’s extreme anti-immigrant law, said it had not occurred to him that attorneys could be included as officers of the court under the law. “I’m sure there will be several definitions that we will have to look at and clarify,” Hammon said. “We were expecting that.” Revisiting the language later might not be enough for those who could be affected. The challenges to HB 56 continue to work their way through the legal system, with one state judge suggesting that part of the law is unconstitutional and the Eleventh Circuit federal appeals court temporarily blocking other parts while waiting on a full hearing. In the meantime, undocumented immigrant clients will have to put their hopes in ethical lawyers to protect their right to attorney-client privilege.