Stephanie Haven

Across the country, women, employers, insurers and health care advocates are trying to adjust to the new legal landscape created by the Supreme Court’s decision allowing some for-profit corporations to deny contraceptive coverage to employees, based on the owners’ religious faith.

Public employee unions suffered a bloody nose at the hands of the Supreme Court on Monday when it ruled that certain government employees don’t have to pay union dues even when their interests are being represented.

In an ideological split that undercuts the 2010 health care law, a narrowly divided Supreme Court ruled Monday that certain business owners can reject on religious grounds the law’s mandate to provide employees with birth control coverage.

In a hearing Thursday about campus sexual assault, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, promised to include military institutions under the scope of the Clery Act and Title IX, laws that, respectively, require the disclosure of campus crimes and prohibit sex discrimination at educational institutions.

The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously struck down a Massachusetts law establishing a 35-foot buffer zone outside abortion clinics, ruling that it violates the First Amendment.

A Senate subcommittee began discussion Tuesday of a bill with bipartisan support that would promote reducing discrimination and violence against women internationally, part of a years-long effort in Congress and, most recently, a response to terrorists’ kidnapping this spring of more than 200 schoolgirls in Nigeria.

It’s been seven years since Jennifer Ferris of Chapel Hill, N.C., had a full-time job. It’s also been seven years since Ferris had her first child.

The Obama administration criticizes the lack of paid parental leave in the United States, saying that changing family dynamics require modified policies.

House Republicans on Thursday recast their leadership, electing California’s Kevin McCarthy and Louisiana’s Steve Scalise to the second- and third-ranking positions.

Several North Carolina lawmakers are front-and-center _ but backstage _ in the effort to drum up votes for their preferred candidates in this week’s battle over a key spot on the House Republicans’ leadership team.

First lady Michelle Obama urged overhauling the nation’s immigration laws Wednesday while presiding over a naturalization ceremony for 50 new U.S. citizens at the National Archives.

First lady Michelle Obama Thursday defended her efforts to implement healthier nutrition guidelines while hosting elementary school students Thursday for a homegrown lunch at the White House.

Chelsea Barnes, 20, is a Native American working on Capitol Hill this summer for a government that doesn’t recognize her heritage.

Divided along mostly partisan lines, the Senate refused Wednesday to take up a Democrat-backed bill that would have enabled individuals to refinance existing student loans to the lower interest rate Congress approved last year for new borrowers.

In the wake of a shooting Tuesday morning at an Oregon high school, President Barack Obama spoke passionately about the need for gun control legislation while participating in a Tumblr question-and-answer session about college affordability.