Article by Joel Wm. Friedman
In 1964, Congress enacted an omnibus civil rights statute outlawing discrimination in several sectors of American society. Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits employment discrimination by private and public employers on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. While this federal law has served as the major vehicle for the vindication of equal employment opportunity rights, Congress did not intend for this enactment to preclude state legislatures from providing their own responses to the varied forms of employment discrimination. In fact, rather than diminishing the importance of state laws, Title VII specifically provided a prominent role for them by integrating them into its machinery for remedial enforcement.
Forty-three states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico have enacted their own comprehensive equal employment laws. Six other states have a patchwork of independent statutes, each of which proscribes a specific form of discrimination. Finally, one state, Alabama, has passed a very limited fair employment law that prohibits only discrimination against the physically handicapped in state employment.
Until 1983, Louisiana fell into the middle category, having independent statutes prohibiting employment discrimination on the basis of age or handicap. On the last day of its regular 1983 session, however, the Louisiana Legislature made its own attempt at enacting a broad-based equal employment opportunity law and passed a statute prohibiting intentional discrimination in employment on account of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
This article will evaluate the current state of Louisiana fair employment legislation, including the 1983 enactment, and will make specific recommendations as to the need for further legislative reform. The article begins with an examination and assessment of the general need for a comprehensive antidiscrimination statute. It then evaluates the 1983 statute in light of the perceived need for comprehensive legislation and concludes with some general recommendations for legislative reform. Part II seeks to implement these general recommendations by offering a proposed comprehensive antidiscrimination law as a substitute for the 1983 statute, as well as proposed amendments to the earlier statutes dealing with age and handicap discrimination. These specific proposals are then followed in Part III by a section-by-section analysis of the proposed legislation, which is intended to explain the meaning and underlying intent of each statutory provision.
About the Author
Joel Wm. Friedman. Professor of Law, Tulane University. B.S. 1972, Cornell University; J.D. 1975, Yale Law School. The research for this article was supported by a grant from the Joint Legislative Budget Committee of the Louisiana Legislature.
Citation
58 Tul. L. Rev. 444 (1983)