Republicans manipulating election rules to suppress the vote? No, it's not Florida 2000, this time its the battleground state of Ohio, where the Ohio Republican Party has challenged 35,000 voter-registration applications. On Monday more than 1,000 people marched to Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell's office to protest what they believe is voter suppression.

Mike Brown, spokesperson for Columbus mayor Michael Coleman.

[Brown1] "They're lobbing people off the voting rolls - causing all kinds of confusion for boards of elections. Changing the rules in the middle of the game and there's a lot of concern in our state that they're trying to make it diffucult for people to vote on election day."

Workers at the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission are deeply concerned that EEOC administration is on a 'self-destruction' course - a reorganization that will make it impossible for workers to have their discrimination cases fairly heard. Gabriel Martin, President of EEOC Local 216 says workers facing discrimination nationwide will be squeezed by the three step reorganization now in the works.

[Gabriel Martin] : "EEOC is the only agency out there that Congress says you are to enforce civil rights in employment. And so if we're not here they have nowhere else to go. Nowhere else to get the cases investigated.

Jack in the Box restaurants across the country will no longer reject deaf applicants. The chain dropped a nationwide policy that discriminated against hiring deaf employees after a lawsuit was filed on behalf of a deaf Texas teenager. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued Jack in the Box last May after Alfonso Cruz was rejected for a cooking position because he was deaf and could not speak. The agency says the policy violates the Americans with Disabilities Act. The hiring manager for Jack in the Box said the food-making system was too complex for someone who couldn't hear, but three weeks after being denied the job, Cruz proved he could handle the position by landing a job at a McDonald's.

Workers at a New York Times printing plant are raising allegations that they have been subjected to racial and religious discrimination. The lawsuit was filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for workers at the paper's Addison, New Jersey plant. The lawsuit says the Hispanic, black and Jewish employees were denied overtime assignments, seniority rights and promotions. They also claim that supervisors at the plant used derogatory racial and religious terms. The suit claims that the Times has long been aware of the incidents but has done nothing to correct the behavior. The New York Times management has declined to answer reporters questions concerning the incidents.

Three men have been given the go-ahead by a federal court to sue American Airlines for withdrawing flight attendant job offers after it was revealed they were HIV-poitive. According to the court's ruling, the airline must wait until all background checks have been completed and a job has been offered before requesting medical information. In this case the court says the airline requested the information prematurely. The men had not disclosed they were HIV-positive, but after they gave blood tests that suggested they may be using anti-HIV medication, they revealed their status. Shortly thereaft

More than $420 million was collected for workers last year through the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The EEOC got more than 79,000 discrimination complaints against private employers and state and local governments last year. That¹s down from the all-time high number of more than 85,000 complaints in 2002. The $420 million is the highest amount of money ever recovered for workers in discrimination cases in a single year by the EEOC. The federal agency says while progress has been made in ending employment discrimination, much work remains to really deliver on the promise of equal employment opportunity for all American workers. Race and sex discrimination cases were the most numerous ­ race accounted for more than 27,000 complaints, sex discrimination in employment was cited in over 24,000 cases last year. The new budget proposed by President Bush slightly increases the budget for the EEOC to a total of a little over $331 million a year.

Attorney's suing Wal-Mart on behalf of thousands of female employees are alleging that the company made false assertions in an effort to stop the class-action lawsuit. In court filings on on Wednesday, the attorneys say the world's largest retailer used a discredited survey that falsley claimed there was no difference in pay between 90 percent of their male and female employees. The attorney's say that a nanlysis of company payroll records shows women on average earn at least five percent less than men across the board. Oral arguments are set to begin early next year.

The path has been cleared for a judge to hear a class-action sexual discrimination complaint filed by female employees at the U.S. Mint. Filed by 32 female employees, the complaint alleges that managers at the Denver based mint used discrimination when considering job assignments, discipline, promotions and terminations. In addition, the suit says women were subjected to a hostile working environment of sexual harassment. Damages for emotional abuse are expected to reach nearly $300,000 per employee. The Treasury Department filed for an appeal that was denied by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Monday.

Wal-Mart has snagged ³Grinch of The Year² in a national online poll by Jobs With Justice. The labor group says Wal-Mart deserves it¹s title of Grinch of The Year for paying very low wages, creating barriers to health care benefit for its workers and other transgressions. Jobs With Justice says Wal-Mart has also admitted routinely locking overnight workers in its stores and was sued this year in the largest sex-discrimination suit in history ­ a class action on behalf of roughly 1.6 million current and former employees. The national poll was held December 6th through the 22nd by Jobs With justice.

Even though Massachusetts recognizes the legality of gay marriages, some employers have refused to extend health benefits to the spouses of gay workers - opting instead to follow guidelines in the federal 'Defense of Marriage' Act. Signed into law by President Clinton, the act defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman. General Dynamics, FedEx and Caritas Christi Health Care are among the companies refusing to grant equal health care coverage. Gay and lesbian advocacy groups plan to challenge the action in court.

The New York Times has shined a national spotlight on a possible case of racial profiling and workplace discrimination. Two Shiite Muslims, Aliakbar Afshari and Shahla Afshari were fired for national security reasons that remain secret.

The Afshari's moved to the US from Iran 18 years ago and both were employees of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, a federal agency that studies workplace hazards.

Allan Karlin is the lawyer representing Mr. and Mrs. Afshari.

[Karlin1] "Suddenly one day earlier this year they were called in and fired. Told only that they had failed a background check that they didn't even know they were being checked out on."

Workers at a New York Times printing plant are raising allegations that they have been subjected to racial and religious discrimination. The lawsuit was filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for workers at the paper's Addison, New Jersey plant. The lawsuit says the Hispanic, black and Jewish employees were denied overtime assignments, seniority rights and promotions. They also claim that supervisors at the plant used derogatory racial and religious terms. The suit claims that the Times has long been aware of the incidents but has done nothing to correct the behavior. The New York Times management has declined to answer reporters questions concerning the incidents.

Pop quiz, nearly a century after women received the right to vote, how many states have elminated the wage gap between sexes? According to a study released by the Institute for Women's Policy Research on November 16th - ZERO. Nationwide the median wages for women compared to men is 76 percent. That's a small change from 1989 when it was 69 percent. Washington, D.C. leads the country in wage equality with women earning 92 cents for every dollar men earn. The widest is Wyoming, where a woman on average earns 66 percent less than a man. In Louisiana, black women earn 29 percent of what white men

Clothing retailer Abercrombie and Fitch has settled a race and sex discrimination suit for forty million dollars. The settlement will be set aside to pay thousands of minority and female plaintiffs. The company has agreed to hire diversity recruiters in an attempt to make their hiring better reflect the applicant pool.

German owned T-Mobile has been accused of discriminating against union workers in the United States. When the FCC required Cingular to sell a portion of its California network to T-Mobile, 100 unionized workers were fired. In order to get their jobs back, these workers must apply through a hiring agency, which makes them ineligible for union membership and employment benefits. No legal charges have yet been filed. International protests against the treatment have been voiced by Union Network International, an organization that represents more than 15 million workers worldwide. Stateside, the Communication Workers of America have filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to review four discrimination cases that resulted in judgments where workers received thousands of dollars. The employers say that the decisions should have been determined by a jury, not judges. The four Massachusetts companies were trying to determine the constitutionality of a state law that allows workers to choose between a judge or a jury when presenting discrimination claims. It does not give employers the same right and they claim it is not equal protection. The appeal to the Supreme Court was filed by Stonehill College, Wilfert Brothers Realty Company, Keyland Corp., and Massachusetts Bay Transportation Company.

The recent recession has created a massive wealth gap between white families and black and Hispanics. The study, released on Monday by the Pew Hispanic Center, says that white households had a median net worth greater than $88,000 in 2002, 11 times more than Hispanics and 14 times more than blacks. Net worth accounts for the values of cars, bank accounts and stocks minus debts such as car loans and credit card bills. Nearly one-third of black families and 26 percent of Hispanic families were in debt or had no assets. That's compared to 11 percent of white families. According to Roberto Suto, director for the Pew Hispanic Center, accumulation of wealth allows low-income families to rise into the middle class. He added that Hispanics made some gains in terms of employment in lower-paid, lower-skilled areas. Blacks were hit hard by job loss, finding themselves victims of last hired, first fired policies.

On the heels of a record setting sex discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart, the lawyers in that case have filed a second discrimination suit, this time against Costco Wholesale Corporation. The suit, filed on Tuesday, alleges that the company kept women out of top store management posts. According to the complainant, women make up half of the companies workforce, but fewer than one in six of Costco's top store managers are women. Costco's annual staff turnover is under 23-percent among hourly workers, while Wal-Mart's is 50-percent. The company has been criticized by stockholder's because it offers better pay and benefits than Wal-Mart, creating higher costs.