Here's a look at some of the key battles in the states over the past week.

As Women’s History Month continues, it’s important to highlight the often unsung heroes doing great work that continues to push the union movement forward, like domestic workers and groups advocating on their behalf. For many of us, domestic workers are the backbone of our household, providing general family care, housekeeping and home health care. They are responsible for some of the most vital and intimate work in our nation, and yet the law does not guarantee them the same protections they guarantee our families.

Overcoming a four-year struggle to gain union representation, Missouri home health care workers celebrated a victory this week when the state’s Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal to a lower court decision upholding a 2010 election in which the workers voted to form a union.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is constitutional “is only beginning of the next phase of health care reform,” said the AFL-CIO Executive Council in a statement from its August meeting in Washington, D.C., this week.

The path forward should be clear: First, we must move full speed ahead to implement the ACA; second, we must firmly reject efforts to undo the progress that already has been made with the ACA, Medicaid and Medicare; and third, we must build upon the ACA, Medicaid and Medicare to achieve our goal of quality health care for all.

Home care  workers will have a measure of justice if a rule proposed by the Dept. of Labor goes into effect.