Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

The most basic antidiscrimination law in employment is in Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964. The key prohibited discrimination is that based on race, but Congress also included sex, religion, national origin, and color as prohibited bases for hiring, promotion, layoff, and discharge decisions. To put the Civil Rights Act in its proper context, a short history of racial discrimination in the United States follows.

The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the culmination of a long history that dated back to slavery, the founding of the US legal system, the Civil War, and many historical and political developments over the ninety-nine years from the end of the Civil War to the passage of the act. The years prior to 1964 had seen a remarkable rise of civil disobedience, led by many in the civil rights movement but most prominently by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Peaceful civil disobedience was sometimes met with violence, and television cameras were there to record most of it.

While the Civil War had addressed slavery and the secession of Southern states, the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, ratified just after the war, provided for equal protection under the law, guaranteed citizenship, and protected the right to vote for African Americans. The amendments also allowed Congress to enforce these provisions by enacting appropriate, specific legislation.

But during the Reconstruction Era, many of the Southern states resisted the laws that were passed in Washington, DC, to bolster civil rights. To a significant extent, decisions rendered by the US Supreme Court in this era—such as Plessy v. Ferguson, condoning “separate but equal” facilities for different races—restricted the utility of these new federal laws. The states effectively controlled the public treatment of African Americans, and a period of neglect set in that lasted until after World War II. The state laws essentially mandated segregated facilities (restaurants, hotels, schools, water fountains, public bathrooms) that were usually inferior for blacks.

Along with these Jim Crow laws in the South, the Ku Klux Klan was very strong, and lynchings (hangings without any sort of public due process) by the Klan and others were designed to limit the civil and economic rights of the former slaves. The hatred of blacks from that era by many whites in America has only gradually softened since 1964. Even as the civil rights bill was being debated in Congress in 1964, some Young Americans for Freedom in the right wing of the GOP would clandestinely chant “Be a man, join the Klan” and sing “We will hang Earl Warren from a sour apple tree,” to the tune of “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” in anger over the Chief Justice’s presiding over Brown v. Board of Education, which reversed Plessy v. Ferguson.

But just a few years earlier, the public service and heroism of many black military units and individuals in World War II had created a perceptual shift in US society; men of many races who had served together in the war against the Axis powers (fascism in Europe and the Japanese emperor’s rule in the Pacific) began to understand their common humanity. Major migrations of blacks from the South to industrial cities of the North also gave impetus to the civil rights movement.

Bills introduced in Congress regarding employment policy brought the issue of civil rights to the attention of representatives and senators. In 1945, 1947, and 1949, the House of Representatives voted to abolish the poll tax. The poll tax was a method used in many states to confine voting rights to those who could pay a tax, and often, blacks could not. The Senate did not go along, but these bills signaled a growing interest in protecting civil rights through federal action. The executive branch of government, by presidential order, likewise became active by ending discrimination in the nation’s military forces and in federal employment and work done under government contract.

The Supreme Court gave impetus to the civil rights movement in its reversal of the “separate but equal” doctrine in the Brown v. Board of Education decision. In its 1954 decision, the Court said, “To separate black children from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way never to be undone.…We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of separate but equal has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”

This decision meant that white and black children could not be forced to attend separate public schools. By itself, however, this decision did not create immediate gains, either in public school desegregation or in the desegregation of other public facilities. There were memorable standoffs between federal agents and state officials in Little Rock, Arkansas, for example; the Democratic governor of Arkansas personally blocked young black students from entering Little Rock’s Central High School, and it was only President Eisenhower’s order to have federal marshals accompany the students that forced integration. The year was 1957.

But resistance to public school integration was widespread, and other public facilities were not governed by the Brown ruling. Restaurants, hotels, and other public facilities were still largely segregated. Segregation kept blacks from using public city buses, park facilities, and restrooms on an equal basis with whites. Along with inferior schools, workplace practices throughout the South and also in many Northern cities sharply limited African Americans’ ability to advance economically. Civil disobedience began to grow.

The bus protests in Montgomery, Alabama, were particularly effective. Planned by civil rights leaders, Rosa Parks’s refusal to give up her seat to a white person and sit at the back of the public bus led to a boycott of the Montgomery bus system by blacks and, later, a boycott of white businesses in Montgomery. There were months of confrontation and some violence; finally, the city agreed to end its long-standing rules on segregated seating on buses.

There were also protests at lunch counters and other protests on public buses, where groups of Northern protesters—Freedom Riders—sometimes met with violence. In 1962, James Meredith’s attempt to enroll as the first African American at the University of Mississippi generated extreme hostility; two people were killed and 375 were injured as the state resisted Meredith’s admission. The murders of civil rights workers Medgar Evers and William L. Moore added to the inflamed sentiments, and whites in Birmingham, Alabama, killed four young black girls who were attending Sunday school when their church was bombed.

These events were all covered by the nation’s news media, whose photos showed beatings of protesters and the use of fire hoses on peaceful protesters. Social tensions were reaching a postwar high by 1964. According to the government, there were nearly one thousand civil rights demonstrations in 209 cities in a three-month period beginning May 1963. Representatives and senators could not ignore the impact of social protest. But the complicated political history of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 also tells us that the legislative result was anything but a foregone conclusion.See CongressLink, “Major Features of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” at http://www.congresslink.org/print_basics_histmats_civilrights64text.htm.

In Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Congress for the first time outlawed discrimination in employment based on race, religion, sex, or national origin:. Title VII declares: “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 of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” Title VII applies to (1) employers with fifteen or more employees whose business affects interstate commerce, (2) all employment agencies, (3) labor unions with fifteen or more members, (4) state and local governments and their agencies, and (5) most federal government employment.

In 1984, the Supreme Court said that Title VII applies to partnerships as well as corporations when ruling that it is illegal to discriminatorily refuse to promote a female lawyer to partnership status in a law firm. This applies, by implication, to other fields, such as accounting.Hishon v. King & Spalding, 467 U.S. 69 (1984). The remedy for unlawful discrimination is back pay and hiring, reinstatement, or promotion.

Title VII established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to investigate violations of the act. A victim of discrimination who wishes to file suit must first file a complaint with the EEOC to permit that agency to attempt conciliation of the dispute. The EEOC has filed a number of lawsuits to prove statistically that a company has systematically discriminated on one of the forbidden bases. The EEOC has received perennial criticism for its extreme slowness in filing suits and for failure to handle the huge backlog of complaints with which it has had to wrestle.

The courts have come to recognize two major types of Title VII cases:

1. Cases of disparate treatmentA form of employment discrimination that results when an employer intentionally discriminates against employees who are members of protected classes.

   • In this type of lawsuit, the plaintiff asserts that because of race, sex, religion, or national origin, he or she has been treated less favorably than others within the organization. To prevail in a disparate treatment suit, the plaintiff must show that the company intended to discriminate because of one of the factors the law forbids to be considered. Thus in McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, the Supreme Court held that the plaintiff had shown that the company intended to discriminate by refusing to rehire him because of his race.McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792 (1973). In general, there are two types of disparate treatment cases: (1) pattern-and-practice cases, in which the employee asserts that the employer systematically discriminates on the grounds of race, religion, sex, or national origin; and (2) reprisal or retaliation cases, in which the employee must show that the employer discriminated against him or her because that employee asserted his or her Title VII rights.

2. Cases of disparate impactA form of employment discrimination resulting from employer practices that appear to be neutral but that have a discriminatory impact on protected classes.

   • In this second type of Title VII case, the employee need not show that the employer intended to discriminate but only that the effect, or impact, of the employer’s action was discriminatory. Usually, this impact will be upon an entire class of employees. The plaintiff must demonstrate that the reason for the employer’s conduct (such as refusal to promote) was not job related. Disparate impact cases often arise out of practices that appear to be neutral or nondiscriminatory on the surface, such as educational requirements and tests administered to help the employer choose the most qualified candidate. In the seminal case of Griggs v. Duke Power Co., the Supreme Court held that under Title VII, an employer is not free to use any test it pleases; the test must bear a genuine relationship to job performance.Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424 (1971). Griggs stands for the proposition that Title VII “prohibits employment practices that have discriminatory effects as well as those that are intended to discriminate.”

Exceptions to Title VII

The Age Discrimination in Employment Act

The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) of 1967 (amended in 1978 and again in 1986) prohibits discrimination based on age, and recourse to this law has been growing at a faster rate than any other federal antibias employment law. In particular, the act protects workers over forty years of age and prohibits forced retirement in most jobs because of age. Until 1987, federal law had permitted mandatory retirement at age seventy, but the 1986 amendments that took effect January 1, 1987, abolished the age ceiling except for a few jobs, such as firefighters, police officers, tenured university professors, and executives with annual pensions exceeding $44,000. Like Title VII, the law has a BFOQ exception—for example, employers may set reasonable age limitations on certain high-stress jobs requiring peak physical condition.

There are important differences between the ADEA and Title VII, as Gross v. FBL Financial Services, Inc. (Section 30.4.3 “Age Discrimination: Burden of Persuasion”) makes clear. It is now more difficult to prove an age discrimination claim than a claim under Title VII.

Disabilities: Discrimination against the Handicapped

The 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) prohibits employers from discriminating on the basis of disability. A disabled person is someone with a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits a major life activity or someone who is regarded as having such an impairment. This definition includes people with mental illness, epilepsy, visual impairment, dyslexia, and AIDS. It also covers anyone who has recovered from alcoholism or drug addiction. It specifically does not cover people with sexual disorders, pyromania, kleptomania, exhibitionism, or compulsive gambling.

Employers cannot disqualify an employee or job applicant because of disability as long as he or she can perform the essential functions of the job, with reasonable accommodation. Reasonable accommodation might include installing ramps for a wheelchair, establishing more flexible working hours, creating or modifying job assignments, and the like.

Reasonable accommodation means that there is no undue hardship for the employer. The law does not offer uniform standards for identifying what may be an undue hardship other than the imposition on the employer of a “significant difficulty or expense.” Cases will differ: the resources and situation of each particular employer relative to the cost or difficulty of providing the accommodation will be considered; relative cost, rather than some definite dollar amount, will be the issue.

As with other areas of employment discrimination, job interviewers cannot ask questions about an applicant’s disabilities before making a job offer; the interviewer may only ask whether the applicant can perform the work. Requirements for a medical exam are a violation of the ADA unless the exam is job related and required of all applicants for similar jobs. Employers may, however, use drug testing, although public employers are to some extent limited by the Fourth Amendment requirements of reasonableness.

The ADA’s definition of disability is very broad. However, the Supreme Court has issued several important decisions that narrow the definition of what constitutes a disability under the act.

Two kinds of narrowing decisions stand out: one deals with “correctable conditions,” and the other deals with repetitive stress injuries. In 1999, the Supreme Court reviewed a case that raised an issue of whether severe nearsightedness (which can be corrected with lenses) qualifies as a disability under the ADA.Sutton v. United Airlines, Inc., 527 U.S. 471 (1999). The Supreme Court ruled that disability under the ADA will be measured according to how a person functions with corrective drugs or devices and not how the person functions without them. In Orr v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., a federal appellate court held that a pharmacist who suffered from diabetes did not have a cause of action against Wal-Mart under the ADA as long as the condition could be corrected by insulin.Orr v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 297 F.3d 720 (8th Cir. 2002).

The other narrowing decision deals with repetitive stress injuries. For example, carpal tunnel syndrome—or any other repetitive stress injury—could constitute a disability under the ADA. By compressing a nerve in the wrist through repetitive use, carpal tunnel syndrome causes pain and weakness in the hand. In 2002, the Supreme Court determined that while an employee with carpal tunnel syndrome could not perform all the manual tasks assigned to her, her condition did not constitute a disability under the ADA because it did not “extensively limit” her major life activities. (See Section 30.4.4 “Disability Discrimination”.)

Equal Pay Act

The Equal Pay Act of 1963 protects both men and women from pay discrimination based on sex. The act covers all levels of private sector employees and state and local government employees but not federal workers. The act prohibits disparity in pay for jobs that require equal skill and equal effort. Equal skill means equal experience, and equal effort means comparable mental and/or physical exertion. The act prohibits disparity in pay for jobs that require equal responsibility, such as equal supervision and accountability, or similar working conditions.

In making their determinations, courts will look at the stated requirements of a job as well as the actual requirements of the job. If two jobs are judged to be equal and similar, the employer cannot pay disparate wages to members of different sexes. Along with the EEOC enforcement, employees can also bring private causes of action against an employer for violating this act. There are four criteria that can be used as defenses in justifying differentials in wages: seniority, merit, quantity or quality of product, and any factor other than sex. The employer will bear the burden of proving any of these defenses.

A defense based on merit will require that there is some clearly measurable standard that justifies the differential. In terms of quantity or quality of product, there may be a commission structure, piecework structure, or quality-control-based payment system that will be permitted. Factors “other than sex” do not include so-called market forces. In Glenn v. General Motors Corp., the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit rejected General Motor’s argument that it was justified in paying three women less than their male counterparts on the basis of “the market force theory” that women will work for less than a man.Glenn v. General Motors Corp., 841 F.2d 1567 (1988).

Discharging an Employee for Refusing to Violate a Law

Some employers will not want employees to testify truthfully at trial. In one case, a nurse refused a doctor’s order to administer a certain anesthetic when she believed it was wrong for that particular patient; the doctor, angry at the nurse for refusing to obey him, then administered the anesthetic himself. The patient soon stopped breathing. The doctor and others could not resuscitate him soon enough, and he suffered permanent brain damage. When the patient’s family sued the hospital, the hospital told the nurse she would be in trouble if she testified. She did testify according to her oath in the court of law (i.e., truthfully), and after several months of harassment, was finally fired on a pretext. The hospital was held liable for the tort of wrongful discharge. As a general rule, you should not fire an employee for refusing to break the law.

Discharging an Employee for Exercising a Legal Right

Suppose Bob Berkowitz files a claim for workers’ compensation for an accident at Pacific Gas & Electric, where he works and where the accident that injured him took place. He is fired for doing so, because the employer does not want to have its workers’ comp premiums increased. In this case, the right exercised by Berkowitz is supported by public policy: he has a legal right to file the claim, and if he can establish that his discharge was caused by his filing the claim, he will prove the tort of wrongful discharge.

Discharging an Employee for Performing a Legal Duty

Courts have long held that an employee may not be fired for serving on a jury. This is so even though courts do recognize that many employers have difficulty replacing employees called for jury duty. Jury duty is an important civic obligation, and employers are not permitted to undermine it.

Discharging an Employee in a Way That Violates Public Policy

This is probably the most controversial basis for a tort of wrongful discharge. There is an inherent vagueness in the phrase “basic social rights, duties, or responsibilities.” This is similar to the exception in contract law: the courts will not enforce contract provisions that violate public policy. (For the most part, public policy is found in statutes and in cases.) But what constitutes public policy is an important decision for state courts. In Wagenseller v. Scottsdale Memorial Hospital,Wagenseller v. Scottsdale Memorial Hospital, 147 Ariz. 370; 710 P.2d 1025 (1085). for example, a nurse who refused to “play along” with her coworkers on a rafting trip was discharged. The group of coworkers had socialized at night, drinking alcohol; when the partying was near its peak, the plaintiff refused to be part of a group that bared their buttocks to the tune of “Moon River” (a composition by Henry Mancini that was popular in the 1970s). The court, at great length, considered that “mooning” was a misdemeanor under Arizona law and that therefore her employer could not discharge her for refusing to violate a state law.

Other courts have gone so far as to include professional oaths and codes as part of public policy. In Rocky Mountain Hospital and Medical Services v. Diane Mariani, the Colorado Supreme Court reviewed a trial court decision to refuse relief to a certified public accountant who was discharged when she refused to violate her professional code.Rocky Mountain Hospital and Medical Services v. Diane Mariani, 916 P.2d 519 (Colo. 1996). (Her employer had repeatedly required her to come up with numbers and results that did not reflect the true situation, using processes that were not in accord with her training and the code.) The court of appeals had reversed the trial court, and the Supreme Court had to decide if the professional code of Colorado accountants could be considered to be part of public policy. Given that accountants were licensed by the state on behalf of the public, and that the Board of Accountancy had published a code for accounting professionals and required an oath before licensing, the court noted the following:

The Colorado State Board of Accountancy is established pursuant to section 12-2-103, 5A C.R.S. (1991). The Board has responsibility for making appropriate rules of professional conduct, in order to establish and maintain a high standard of integrity in the profession of public accounting. § 12-2-104, 5A C.R.S. (1991). These rules of professional conduct govern every person practicing as a certified public accountant. Id. Failure to abide by these rules may result in professional discipline. § 12-2-123, 5A C.R.S. (1991). The rules of professional conduct for accountants have an important public purpose. They ensure the accurate reporting of financial information to the public. They allow the public and the business community to rely with confidence on financial reporting. Rule 7.1, 3 C.C.R. 705-1 (1991). In addition, they ensure that financial information will be reported consistently across many businesses. The legislature has endorsed these goals in section 12-2-101, 5A C.R.S.

The court went on to note that the stated purpose of the licensing and registration of certified public accountants was to “provide for the maintenance of high standards of professional conduct by those so licensed and registered as certified public accountants.” Further, the specific purpose of Rule 7.1 provided a clear mandate to support an action for wrongful discharge. Rule 7.1 is entitled “Integrity and Objectivity” and states, “A certificate holder shall not in the performance of professional services knowingly misrepresent facts, nor subordinate his judgment to others.” The fact that Mariani’s employer asked her to knowingly misrepresent facts was a sufficient basis in public policy to make her discharge wrongful.

Contract Modification of Employment at Will

Contract law can modify employment at will. Oral promises made in the hiring process may be enforceable even though the promises are not approved by top management. Employee handbooks may create implied contracts that specify personnel processes and statements that the employees can be fired only for a “just cause” or only after various warnings, notice, hearing, or other procedures.

Good Faith and Fair Dealing Standard

A few states, among them Massachusetts and California, have modified the at-will doctrine in a far-reaching way by holding that every employer has entered into an implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing with its employees. That means, the courts in these states say, that it is “bad faith” and therefore unlawful to discharge employees to avoid paying commissions or pensions due them. Under this implied covenant of fair dealing, any discharge without good cause—such as incompetence, corruption, or habitual tardiness—is actionable. This is not the majority view, as the case in Section 30.4.4 “Disability Discrimination” makes clear.

The Federal Plant-Closing Act

A prime source of new jobs across the United States is the opening of new industrial plants—which accounted for millions of jobs a year during the 1970s and 1980s. But for every 110 jobs thus created, nearly 100 were lost annually in plant closings during that period. In the mid-1980s alone, 2.2 million plant jobs were lost each year. As serious as those losses were for the national economy, they were no less serious for the individuals who were let go. Surveys in the 1980s showed that large numbers of companies provided little or no notice to employees that their factories were to be shut down and their jobs eliminated. Nearly a quarter of businesses with more than 100 employees provided no specific notice to their employees that their particular work site would be closed or that they would suffer mass layoffs. More than half provided two weeks’ notice or less.

Because programs to support dislocated workers depend heavily on the giving of advance notice, a national debate on the issue in the late 1980s culminated in 1988 in Congress’s enactment of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, the formal name of the federal plant-closing act. Under this law, businesses with 100 or more employees must give employees or their local bargaining unit, along with the local city or county government, at least sixty days’ notice whenever (1) at least 50 employees in a single plant or office facility would lose their jobs or face long-term layoffs or a reduction of more than half their working hours as the result of a shutdown and (2) a shutdown would require long-term layoffs of 500 employees or at least a third of the workforce. An employer who violates the act is liable to employees for back pay that they would have received during the notice period and may be liable to other fines and penalties.

An employer is exempted from having to give notice if the closing is caused by business circumstances that were not reasonably foreseeable as of the time the notice would have been required. An employer is also exempted if the business is actively seeking capital or business that if obtained, would avoid or postpone the shutdown and the employer, in good faith, believes that giving notice would preclude the business from obtaining the needed capital or business.

The Employee Polygraph Protection Act

Studies calling into question the reliability of various forms of lie detectors have led at least half the states and, in 1988, Congress to legislate against their use by private businesses. The Employee Polygraph Protection Act forbids private employers from using lie detectors (including such devices as voice stress analyzers) for any reason. Neither employees nor applicants for jobs may be required or even asked to submit to them. (The act has some exceptions for public employers, defense and intelligence businesses, private companies in the security business, and manufacturers of controlled substances.)

Use of polygraphs, machines that record changes in the subject’s blood pressure, pulse, and other physiological phenomena, is strictly limited. They may be used in conjunction with an investigation into such crimes as theft, embezzlement, and industrial espionage, but in order to require the employee to submit to polygraph testing, the employer must have “reasonable suspicion” that the employee is involved in the crime, and there must be supporting evidence for the employer to discipline or discharge the employee either on the basis of the polygraph results or on the employee’s refusal to submit to testing. The federal polygraph law does not preempt state laws, so if a state law absolutely bars an employer from using one, the federal law’s limited authorization will be unavailable.

Occupational Safety and Health Act

In a heavily industrialized society, workplace safety is a major concern. Hundreds of studies for more than a century have documented the gruesome toll taken by hazardous working conditions in mines, on railroads, and in factories from tools, machines, treacherous surroundings, and toxic chemicals and other substances. Studies in the late 1960s showed that more than 14,000 workers were killed and 2.2 million were disabled annually—at a cost of more than $8 billion and a loss of more than 250 million worker days. Congress responded in 1970 with the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the primary aim of which is “to assure so far as possible every working man and woman in the Nation safe and healthful working conditions.”

The act imposes on each employer a general duty to furnish a place of employment free from recognized hazards likely to cause death or serious physical harm to employees. It also gives the secretary of labor the power to establish national health and safety standards. The standard-making power has been delegated to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), an agency within the US Department of Labor. The agency has the authority to inspect workplaces covered by the act whenever it receives complaints from employees or reports about fatal or multiple injuries. The agency may assess penalties and proceed administratively to enforce its standards. Criminal provisions of the act are enforced by the Justice Department.

During its first two decades, OSHA was criticized for not issuing standards very quickly: fewer than thirty national workplace safety standards were issued by 1990. But not all safety enforcement is in the hands of the federal government: although OSHA standards preempt similar state standards, under the act the secretary may permit the states to come up with standards equal to or better than federal standards and may make grants to the states to cover half the costs of enforcement of the state safety standards.

Employee Retirement Income Security Act

More than half the US workforce is covered by private pension plans for retirement. One 1988 estimate put the total held in pension funds at more than $1 trillion, costing the federal Treasury nearly $60 billion annually in tax write-offs. As the size of the private pension funds increased dramatically in the 1960s, Congress began to hear shocking stories of employees defrauded out of pension benefits, deprived of a lifetime’s savings through various ruses (e.g., by long vesting provisions and by discharges just before retirement). To put an end to such abuses, Congress, in 1974, enacted the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA).

In general, ERISA governs the vesting of employees’ pension rights and the funding of pension plans. Within five years of beginning employment, employees are entitled to vested interests in retirement benefits contributed on their behalf by individual employers. Multiemployer pension plans must vest their employees’ interests within ten years. A variety of pension plans must be insured through a federal agency, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, to which employers must pay annual premiums. The corporation may assume financial control of underfunded plans and may sue to require employers to make up deficiencies. The act also requires pension funds to disclose financial information to beneficiaries, permits employees to sue for benefits, governs the standards of conduct of fund administrators, and forbids employers from denying employees their rights to pensions. The act largely preempts state law governing employee benefits.

Fair Labor Standards Act

In the midst of the Depression, Congress enacted at President Roosevelt’s urging a national minimum wage law, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA). The act prohibits most forms of child labor and established a scale of minimum wages for the regular workweek and a higher scale for overtime. (The original hourly minimum was twenty-five cents, although the administrator of the Wage and Hour Division of the US Department of Labor, a position created by the act, could raise the minimum rate industry by industry.) The act originally was limited to certain types of work: that which was performed in transporting goods in interstate commerce or in producing goods for shipment in interstate commerce.

Employers quickly learned that they could limit the minimum wage by, for example, separating the interstate and intrastate components of their production. Within the next quarter century, the scope of the FLSA was considerably broadened, so that it now covers all workers in businesses that do a particular dollar-volume of goods that move in interstate commerce, regardless of whether a particular employee actually works in the interstate component of the business. It now covers between 80 and 90 percent of all persons privately employed outside of agriculture, and a lesser but substantial percentage of agricultural workers and state and local government employees. Violations of the act are investigated by the administrator of the Wage and Hour Division, who has authority to negotiate back pay on the employee’s behalf. If no settlement is reached, the Labor Department may sue on the employee’s behalf, or the employee, armed with a notice of the administrator’s calculations of back wages due, may sue in federal or state court for back pay. Under the FLSA, a successful employee will receive double the amount of back wages due.

Workers’ Compensation Laws

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, work-related injuries or illnesses have been covered under state workers’ compensation laws that provide a set amount of weekly compensation for disabilities caused by accidents and illnesses suffered on the job. The compensation plans also pay hospital and medical expenses necessary to treat workers who are injured by, or become ill from, their work. In assuring workers of compensation, the plans eliminate the hazards and uncertainties of lawsuits by eliminating the need to prove fault. Employers fund the compensation plans by paying into statewide plans or purchasing insurance.

Other State Laws

Although it may appear that most employment law is federal, employment discrimination is largely governed by state law because Congress has so declared it. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 tells federal courts to defer to state agencies to enforce antidiscrimination provisions of parallel state statutes with remedies similar to those of the federal law. Moreover, many states have gone beyond federal law in banning certain forms of discrimination. Thus well before enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act, more than forty states prohibited such discrimination in private employment. More than a dozen states ban employment discrimination based on marital status, a category not covered by federal law. Two states have laws that protect those that may be considered “overweight.” Two states and more than seventy counties or municipalities ban employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation; most large companies have offices or plants in at least one of these jurisdictions. By contrast, federal law has no statutory law dealing with sexual orientation.