The Tribune’s Op-Ed page has carried several recent columns criticizing America’s civil rights laws, which protect workers against discrimination on account of sex, race, religion, age and handicap. The most recent of these was Clarence Page’s column “Is anti-bias law stretched too thin” (Aug. 11).
As a lawyer who represents employees who’ve suffered discrimination, let me report what I have seen in this area.
First, let us praise great statutes. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, passed under President Lyndon B. Johnson, recognized the rights of all of our nation’s people to share in the American Dream. The basic prohibition is simple: “It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer . . . to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions or privileges or employment because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex or national origin.”
Our nation has made progress in 30 years. We are well past the time when employers could flatly refuse all job applications from African-Americans, impose “no marriage” rules only on female employees or retire all 65-year-old employees. Our courts decide civil rights cases by the thousands every year. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), under Commissioner Gilbert Castellas, is clearing the backlog of charges against employers. The number of new cases is leveling off or declining.
Still, significant numbers of workers face discrimination. Here are five recent cases from the U.S. Court of Appeals of the Seventh Circuit (located in Chicago):
– A national retailer fired an employee because she requested not to work on her Sabbath.
– A children’s center engaged in a “long-term, ostrich-like failure” to prevent a co-worker from sexually harassing nine women employees.
– A discount store fired an African-American employee because she filed a charge of discrimination against the store with her state civil rights commission.
– A bottling plant refused a woman a promotion because, in her manager’s words, “they wanted men in these positions.”
– A prison did nothing to prevent a correctional officer from suffering a “relentless campaign” of harassment after she reported to the superintendent a co-worker who made regular, unwelcome sexual proposals to women staff.
Though the press reports the anecdotes about silly civil rights lawsuits, it seldom tells about strides being made to resolve real disputes. The EEOC brings eminent representatives of labor and management together to negotiate the terms of new regulations. Courts have learned to get involved in these cases more quickly and to insist on settlement negotiations sooner than in the past. Voluntary mediation–in which both sides of a case agree to find a neutral third person to referee a settlement–has blossomed recently.
Whatever further reform the civil rights laws may require should not be guided by exceptional cases, as the critics seek to exploit. It must be informed by real data, real history and the real (and persistent) predicament of workplace discrimination.
