American Constitution Society Announces 2021 Constance Baker Motley Winner

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Pablo Willis, pwillis@acslaw.org

Washington, DC – The American Constitution Society has selected Patrick Berning-O’Neill, a third-year law student at the University of Chicago Law School, as the winner of the 2021 Constance Baker Motley National Student Writing Competition.

The Constance Baker Motley National Student Writing Competition is hosted annually by the American Constitution Society (ACS) and the University of Pennsylvania Law School ACS Student Chapter in honor of Constance Baker Motley’s legacy. As a civil rights attorney, Motley was the first woman elected President of the Borough of Manhattan, and the first African American woman appointed to the federal bench. Her life-long commitment to equality for all inspires attorneys across the country to this day.

In its 16th year, this year’s competition garnered dozens of entries from law students across the country. Seven finalists were selected, out of which a distinguished and diverse panel of judges chose one winner and two runners-up.

Patrick Berning-O’Neill was selected as this year’s winner based on his paper, A Reasonably Comparable Evil: Expanding Intersectional Claims Under Title VII Using Existing Precedent. In the paper, he argues that courts can and should allow a broader interpretation of discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which flatly prohibits employment discrimination “because of” race, color, religion, sex or national origin. However, while many may assume that discrimination based on a combination of more than one of these protected classes is also not allowed, courts are currently split on whether to allow intersectional claims. Recognizing that unique forms of discrimination come from social attitudes towards specific combinations of identities, Berning-O’Neill argues that individuals can use existing Supreme Court precedent to claim that intersectional discrimination is a “reasonably comparable evil” to the single-basis discrimination Congress intended to prevent in 1964 and should therefore also be prohibited under Title VII.

Runners-up are Paige Britton, a second-year law student at Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law, for her paper, The Political Morality of Judicial Rhetoric: Bostock v. Clayton County Among Civil Rights Opinions; and Megan Hauptman, a third-year law student at Yale Law School, for her paper, Release as Remedy: The Availability of Habeas Corpus for Conditions-of-Confinement Challenges.

Each of the winners will receive a monetary award and Patrick Berning-O’Neill will be offered an opportunity to publish his paper in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law.

All three recipients also will be recognized at ACS’s 2021 National Convention, which has again been moved online due to the ongoing pandemic. To register for the convention and see the full schedule please visit the 2021 National Convention website.

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AMERICAN CONSTITUTION SOCIETY
ACS believes that the Constitution is “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” We interpret the Constitution based on its text and against the backdrop of history and lived experience. Through a diverse nationwide network of progressive lawyers, law students, judges, scholars, and many others, we work to uphold the Constitution in the 21st Century by ensuring that law is a force for protecting our democracy and the public interest and for improving people’s lives. For more information, visit us at www.acslaw.org or on Twitter @acslaw