Ann Marie Olivarius | |
|---|---|
 Olivarius in 2017 | |
| Born | 19 February 1955 |
| Education | Yale University (BA, JD, MBA) Somerville College, Oxford (DPhil) |
| Occupation(s) | Chair of the Executive Committee, McAllister Olivarius |
| Years active | 1986–present |
| Spouse | Jef McAllister (married 1981) |
| Children | 2 daughters, 1 son |
| Website | www |
Ann Olivarius OBE KC (born 19 February 1955) is an American-British lawyer who specializes in cases of civil litigation, sexual discrimination, and sexual harassment, assault, and abuse.
Ann Olivarius grew up in New Jersey, the eldest of five daughters [1] of Kenneth and Ann Olivarius. [2] She was educated at Yale University, where she was a founding member of the Yale Undergraduate Women's Caucus during the mid-1970s. [3] Her junior year, she worked for the Office of the Administrative Assistant to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Warren E. Burger. [2]
Olivarius graduated summa cum laude from Yale in 1977 and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. [2] She received a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University in 1978, the second year the program admitted women. [4] At Oxford, Olivarius pursued a D.Phil. in economics at Somerville College, [5] [6] [7] where her thesis was entitled Working Democracy: Analysis and prospects of British worker co-operatives. [8] In 1981, she married Jef McAllister, whom she had met at Yale. [2] [9] In 1986, Olivarius graduated from Yale with a combined MBA and JD [10] which she finished in three years, completing her final year while pregnant. [1]
During her senior year as an undergraduate, she was asked by the Yale Corp. to survey women at Yale on their experiences, which led her to hear repeated stories about women who were pressured by professors into having sex. [11] [9] As a result, Olivarius sued the school as a part of Alexander v. Yale alongside other students and a professor for what The New Yorker describes as "quid-pro-quo sexual harassment by professors, a hostile environment, and a lack of reporting procedures." [12] The case was eventually dismissed [12] due to lack of standing since, by the time the judge ruled, most of the plaintiffs had graduated. [11] However, Yale still created sexual harassment protections as a result, and the case was the first to hold that it was illegal for universities to ignore sexual harassment of students. [11] Olivarius helped coin the phrase "date rape" during the process, [13] which she publicized through a series of talks at the college and elsewhere in the US and England. [14] [15]
Olivarius is a co-founder of the trans-Atlantic law firm [16] AO Advocates, which represents victims of childhood sexual abuse, [17] and chair of the executive committee and senior partner at McAllister Olivarius. [18] As a lawyer, she is known for representing victims of sexual harassment and sexual assault. [19] This has included representing victims of nonconsensual pornography and other internet-based privacy violations, such as a precedent-setting case representing YouTube personality Chrissy Chambers. [20] Olivarius represented a group of professors and students at the University of Rochester, of which two plaintiffs, Celeste Kidd and Jessica Cantlon, were named "Persons of the Year" by Time magazine in its cover story "Silence Breakers" in 2017. [21]
Olivarius has represented victims of other forms of discrimination. In 2017, she represented a British Sikh couple, who were turned away from an adoption agency because only white children were available, in a case against The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead that was supported by the Equality and Human Rights Commission. [18] In 2019, she filed a lawsuit on behalf of plaintiffs against Mount Sinai Medical School alleging age and sex discrimination. [22]
In 2017, the British academic journal Nature named Olivarius as one of "Nature’s 10" people who mattered in science because of her work fighting sexual harassment at universities. [23] That year she also became a Donaldson Fellow [24] at the Yale School of Management, citing her as "a groundbreaking civil rights litigator". [25]
Olivarius established The Rhodes Project [26] to study the lives and careers of Rhodes Scholars. In 2012, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) included her in its list of nine most influential people in the history of Title IX. [27] She received the Yale Women Lifetime Achievement Award from the Yale Alumni Association in 2019. [28] Nelson Mandela praised Olivarius as “a lawyer who has advised me well and who has courageously advanced the cause of justice, and improved life opportunities, for hundreds of millions of women, blacks and disadvantaged, worldwide.” [29] She has served on the boards of openDemocracy, Autistica, and Women Moving Millions [30] and is a founding member of the UK Women's Equality Party. [31]
In December 2022, Olivarius was approved as Honorary King’s Counsel for her “leading role in the fields of women’s rights, sexual harassment and sexual abuse. [32] On 31 December 2022, she was awarded Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2023 New Year Honours for services to justice and to women and equality. [33] [34]
Olivarius' spouse and law partner, Jef McAllister previously served as the Diplomatic Correspondent, White House Correspondent and London Bureau Chief for TIME Magazine. [35]
Title IX is a landmark federal civil rights law in the United States that was enacted as part of the Education Amendments of 1972. It prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or any other education program that receives funding from the federal government. This is Public Law No. 92‑318, 86 Stat. 235, codified at 20 U.S.C. §§ 1681–1688.
Sexual harassment is a type of harassment involving the use of explicit or implicit sexual overtones, including the unwelcome and inappropriate promises of rewards in exchange for sexual favors. Sexual harassment can be physical and/or a demand or request for sexual favors, making sexually colored remarks, showing pornography, and any other unwelcome physical, verbal, or non-verbal conduct of a sexual nature. Sexual harassment includes a range of actions from verbal transgressions to sexual abuse or assault. Harassment can occur in many different social settings such as the workplace, the home, school, or religious institutions. Harassers or victims can be of any gender.
Catharine Alice MacKinnon is an American feminist legal scholar, activist, and author. She is the Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, where she has been tenured since 1990, and the James Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. From 2008 to 2012, she was the special gender adviser to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.
Gloria Rachel Allred is an American attorney known for taking high-profile and often controversial cases, particularly those involving feminist causes. She has been inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
Jenson v. Eveleth Taconite Co., 130 F.3d 1287, was the first class-action sexual harassment lawsuit in the United States. It was filed in 1988 on behalf of Lois Jenson and other female workers at the Eveleth Taconite mine in Eveleth, Minnesota on the state's northern Mesabi Range, which is part of the Iron Range.
Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson, 477 U.S. 57 (1986), is a US labor law case, where the United States Supreme Court, in a 9–0 decision, recognized sexual harassment as a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The case was the first of its kind to reach the Supreme Court and would redefine sexual harassment in the workplace.
Alexander v. Yale, 631 F.2d 178, was the first use of Title IX of the United States Education Amendments of 1972 in charges of sexual harassment against an educational institution. It further established that sexual harassment of female students could be considered sex discrimination, and was thus illegal.
J.F.O. 'Jef' McAllister is an American journalist, author and lawyer. Formerly the London Bureau Chief of TIME Magazine, he is currently the Managing Partner of McAllister Olivarius, an international law firm headquartered in London. He is married to Ann Olivarius.
Catherine Mayer is an American-born British author and journalist, and the co-founder and President of the Women's Equality Party (WE) in the UK.
Marsha V. Kazarosian is an American attorney in Haverhill, Massachusetts notable for handling high-profile cases in the New England area. Her handling of a gender discrimination case involving a country club brought her national recognition. She represented one of the teenaged defendants in the 1990 murder of a young husband by his wife Pamela Smart, who conspired with her teenaged lover to murder her husband for insurance money; the story became the basis of the movie To Die For starring Nicole Kidman, and the television movie Murder in New Hampshire starring Helen Hunt. Her legal skill was the subject of a cover story entitled The Power of Marsha Kazarosian in a publication geared to the legal community.
The Prada Female Discrimination Case was a lawsuit filed in Japan by former Prada Senior Operations Manager, Rina Bovrisse and other female managers accusing Prada of sexual harassment and gender discrimination in the workplace. Prada denied all charges and countersued Bovrisse for defamation. In October 2012, Judge Reiko Morioka rejected by stating, “women with high compensation should accept certain level of sexual harassment.” In 2013, Prada Female Discrimination Case was filed at The United Nations High Commissions of Human Rights CEDAW. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has called for Japan's State party to introduce new regulations that would make sexual harassment in the workplace illegal.The UN StatementUN PressVogue
Elizabeth Broderick is an Australian lawyer, who was the Australian Sex Discrimination Commissioner for over eight years from 2007 to 2015 and has been a United Nations special rapporteur for Discrimination against Women and Girls since 2017. She is a former partner and head of legal technology at Ashurst Australia, a global commercial law firm.
Ellen Pao v. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers LLC and DOES 1-20 is a lawsuit filed in 2012 in San Francisco County Superior Court under the law of California by executive Ellen Pao for gender discrimination against her employer, the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. Overlapping with a number of studies condemning the representation of women in venture capital, the case was followed closely by reporters, advocacy groups and Silicon Valley executives. Given the tendency for similar cases to reach settlements out of court, coverage of Pao v. Kleiner Perkins described it as a landmark trial once it began in February 2015. On March 27, 2015 the jury found in favor of Kleiner Perkins on all counts.
Janet Merlo joined the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in 1991 and was transferred to British Columbia. In 2007, she filed a lawsuit against the RCMP for what she described as almost daily harassment. In 2010, she took a medical discharge from the police service. In 2012, after speaking publicly about gender based harassment in the RCMP, Merlo became the representative plaintiff in a proposed class action lawsuit against the force and the Solicitor General of Canada. The group of current and retired female police officers who have requested to join the class action has now grown to almost 400. In June, 2015, Merlo's lawyers presented arguments to the court in British Columbia asking for class action status, due to allegations of systemic sexual harassment and misconduct.
Rolena Adorno is an American humanities scholar, the Spanish Sterling Professor at Yale University and bestselling author.
Debra S. Katz is an American civil rights and employment lawyer and a founding partner of Katz Banks Kumin in Washington, D.C. She is best known for representing alleged victims of sexual assault and sexual harassment, notably Christine Blasey Ford, Charlotte Bennett, Vanessa Tyson, Chloe Caras, and accusers of Congressmen Pat Meehan and Eric Massa, and whistleblowers facing retaliation, including most recently Dr. Rick Bright. Katz's primary practice areas at her firm are employment and whistleblower law, where she represents victims of workplace discrimination and retaliation.
The 1752 Group is a UK-based research and lobby organisation working to end sexual misconduct in higher education.
Douglas Holden Wigdor is a founding partner of the law firm Wigdor LLP, and works as a litigator in New York City, specializing in anti-discrimination law. Wigdor is best known for representing seven victims of alleged sexual abuse by Harvey Weinstein, the hotel maid in the Dominique Strauss-Kahn sexual assault case, over twenty employees at Fox News in sexual harassment and discrimination cases, and NFL coaches Brian Flores, Steve Wilks, and Ray Horton in a 2022 class action lawsuit against the National Football League alleging racist and discriminatory practices against Black coaches.
Nadine Taub was an American lawyer who laid the essential groundwork for women's rights in the workplace, including defending and winning the first sexual harassment case in the US in 1977. Taub played a pivotal, but largely unrecognized, role in the development of sexual harassment law in the United States. As part of a group of young female lawyers in the 1970s, including Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Nancy Stearns and others, Taub made legal history by winning cases which argued that the Constitution protected women's rights.
McAllister Olivarius is an international law firm dual-headquartered in London and New York. It specializes in civil litigation and plaintiff work, particularly in education and employment law.