Court's Central Role in Implementing Equal Employment Opportunity

Abstract

FIRST PARAGRAPH(S)|During this century we have seen a near evisceration of the old common law doctrine of at will employment and a concomitant development of a broad panoply of statutory protections of employees' rights in the American workplace. The nondiscrimination principle first articulated in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which protects employees and applicants from discrimination on the bases of race, religion, color, national origin and sex, was subsequently extended, in 1967, to protect workers overage forty from age discrimination, and later, in 1990, to protect all Americans with disabilities who are qualified to work. While the progress toward recognizing and protecting human and civil rights in the workplace has been uneven, it is clear that the impetus to these reforms has arisen from our most fundamental constitutional principles and that Congress has regarded the national policy against discrimination to be of the "highest priority." As one congressman said in 1964, the Civil Rights Act was intended to conform "[t]he practice of American democracy ... to the spirit which motivated the Founding Fathers of this nation - the ideals of freedom, equality, justice, and opportunity." The Supreme Court has referred to Title VII as a "complex legislative design directed at an historic evil of national proportions," and to the age discrimination act as "part of an ongoing congressional effort to eradicate discrimination in the workplace" that "reflects a societal condemnation of invidious bias in employment decisions." When the Americans with Disabilities Act was enacted, the President remarked that "the American people have once again given clear expression to our most basic ideals of freedom and equality"...