Statue and Case law Relationship

Essay by shanbananaA+, November 2006

download word file, 8 pages 5.0

Employment laws are created to protect both the employer and the employee. The employer has to follow specific guidelines when hiring and firing employees. This paper will identify five discrimination cases with a brief summary of each as well as identify the statute or regulation interpreted in the case. Lastly, this paper will examine how the statute and/or regulations have evolved through case interpretation and how the cases influence the employment environment.

Race

When foreigners were first coming to America, blacks were brought here for the purpose of being a slave to the white man. There were set in place what was called "slave codes." These prohibited blacks from being equal or superior to whites in any way. This slave code dictated the clothes they could wear, to where they could sit. Race has had a unique place in our history. Today the culture is still dealing with racial discrimination.

Title VII in the Civil Rights Act deals with racial discrimination within the work place. According to Bennett-Alexander and Hartman (2003), "for the most part, we are no longer dealing with the claims of obvious discrimination that predominated in the early 1970s when Title VII claims first became active"(p.23).

Today most cases are filed because of the ignorance of the employers, not knowing when they are being discriminatory. The rulings in the larger cases today help define and interpret title VII. One such case was the Chandler v. Fast Lane in 1994. Chandler was a white woman who was a manager a restaurant. She filed suite against her employers under the civil right act, title VII complaining that she was told to discriminate against the black people whom she managed. She stated that she was forced to leave her job because she was unwilling to hire and promote only whites.