Civil Rights Act 1964 Analysis

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Title VII 1 Running head: TITLE VII CIVIL RIGHT ACT 1964 Title VII Civil Right Act 1964 University of Phoenix Daphne Dobbs December 14,2008 Title VII 2 An analysis of the Scope and Application of Title VII Civil Right Act in the Workplace During history humanity humans have struggled to clearly describe the relationship between those who have a need to use the physical and mental efforts of others and those who work to generate goods and services at the direction of others empowered to control land, raw materials, intellectual property, and occasionally other human beings. Examples of…show more content…
As a result, President Kennedy in an exceptional message to Congress on February 28, 1963, declared “the democratic principle that no man should be deprived of employment commensurate with his abilities because of his race or creed or ancestry” (Dirksen Center, 2006). After over one year of debate in the U.S. Congress, on July 2, 1964, President Kennedy signed into the bill containing the Title VII provisions “defining unfair employment practices and providing for their prevention” (Vass, 1966). After the Act’s passage in 1964, subsequent amendments were added to further support the law such as the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA), the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 (PDA), the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), and the Civil Rights Act of 1991 (Apollo Library, 2008). All of these amendments acknowledged additional areas of workplace discrimination and empowered the EEOC to provide remedies to workers who had experienced workplace discrimination based on age, pregnancy, or disability while the Civil Rights Act of 1991 included provisions for jury trials, compensatory and punitive damages (Bennett-Alexander and Hartman, 2007). For example, the ADEA had employers from refusing to hire or discharge on the bases of age while the PDA prohibits employers from “using pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions” as a reason for treating an employee differently than other employees.…show more content…
There was once case in particularly where a male was sexually harassed at work and was awarded $1 million. It does not matter if the person being harassed is male or female; both genders are protected under the law. “ Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, but it was the mid-to late 1970s before courts began to seriously recognize sexual harassment as a form of gender discrimination.” (Bennett-Alexander, 2007) Employers have a responsibility to address sexual harassment or any other discriminatory acts in a timely manner or be held liable and face possible lawsuits. Every situation does not warrant sexual harassment; employers should ensure employees understand the consequences of any harassment and the course to follow to report harassment. According to EEOC guidelines, undesirable sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature compose sexual harassment when submission to such conduct is made either explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of an individual’s employment, submission to or denunciation of such conduct by an individual is used as the foundation for employment decisions affecting such individual, or such conduct has the purpose of effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual’s work performance or
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