Showing posts with label EMPLOYMENT DISCRIMINATION. Show all posts
Showing posts with label EMPLOYMENT DISCRIMINATION. Show all posts

Thursday, August 14, 2014

DEPUTY AG KAPPELHOFF'S OPENING STATEMENT AT CONVENTION ON ELIMINATION OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION

FROM:  U.S. JUSTICE DEPARTMENT 
Deputy Assistant Attorney General Mark Kappelhoff Delivers Opening Statement at the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
Geneva, Switzerland ~ Wednesday, August 13, 2014
Remarks as Prepared for Delivery

Mr. Chairperson, distinguished Members of the committee, and representatives of civil society.   My name is Mark Kappelhoff and I serve as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.   It is an honor to be a member of the U.S. delegation and to share with you some of the Justice Department’s work to address racial discrimination and to fulfill our obligations under the convention.  

Since our founding, the people of the United States have strived to realize our Constitution’s promise of equal opportunity and equal justice for all.   Last month, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a landmark law that relegated the age of legal segregation to the history books.   As President Lyndon B. Johnson said, the act’s purpose was to ensure that all people are “equal in the polling booths, in the classrooms, in the factories, and in hotels, restaurants, movie theaters, and other places that provide service to the public.”

Our nation has made great progress over the last five decades, but the journey is not yet complete.   Our dialogue with this committee allows us to reflect on the great advances we have made as a nation to realize equality and to express our commitment to address the challenges that remain.   Three basic principles guide the Justice Department’s work in realizing the noble goals of our Constitution and laws: expanding opportunity for all; safeguarding the infrastructure of our democracy; and protecting the most vulnerable among us.   Our ceaseless efforts to advance these principles directly enhance our country’s implementation of its convention obligations.

The right to vote is one of the most fundamental promises of our democracy.   Among our highest priorities is ensuring equal access to the ballot box,   and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has been our most powerful tool in this effort.   While the U.S. Supreme Court recently invalidated a part of this cornerstone civil rights law, we continue to use every legal tool available to take swift action against jurisdictions that have hindered equal access to the franchise.   For example, the Civil Rights Division is currently challenging discriminatory state election laws in North Carolina and Texas.   Attorney General Holder also is taking steps to ensure that American Indians and Alaska Natives have meaningful access to the polls.

The division continues its work to dismantle racial discrimination in our nation’s schools to ensure that school districts fulfill their legal obligation to provide equal educational opportunity for all students.   We also have targeted racial disparities in school discipline in an effort to end the “school to prison pipeline.”   Working with our partners at the Department of Education, we issued guidance to inform schools nationwide of their responsibility to establish nondiscriminatory policies and practices aimed at keeping young people in the classroom and out of the criminal justice system.   This is just one of many examples the committee will hear during our dialogue of how federal agencies work with state and local officials to advance our implementation of the convention.

The Civil Rights Division and our federal partner agencies continue to handle a large volume of housing and employment discrimination complaints.   This is a stark reminder that, despite the end to legal segregation, our work to combat unfair treatment must persist.   Our robust enforcement efforts have produced tangible results for people’s lives.   Just a few months ago, we obtained our largest-ever settlement in an employment discrimination case involving the discriminatory hiring practices of the New York City Fire Department, which brought jobs to some 290 eligible claimants and $98 million in monetary damages.   And, in 2013, the division collected record civil penalties in resolving employment claims based on citizenship status or national origin under the Immigration and Nationality Act.

The division responded forcefully to the housing and foreclosure crisis in the U.S., which hit African-American and Latino families especially hard.   They paid more for loans because of their race or national origin, or were steered to more expensive and riskier subprime loans.   Consistent with our convention obligations, the U.S. brought legal action to remedy these abuses, which has resulted in the three largest residential lending discrimination settlements in the Justice Department’s history.  

We know that law enforcement is dangerous work and most officers are dedicated public servants.   With this in mind, the division has worked hard to produce sustainable models for effective, nondiscriminatory and constitutional policing and prison systems.   Over the last five years, we have achieved 14 ground-breaking reform agreements with police departments all across the United States to address excessive use of force and racial profiling.   We also criminally prosecuted 337 officers for misconduct.   And we are working to improve conditions in America’s prisons — examining, for example, the overuse of solitary confinement—and to safeguard the rights of youth in the juvenile justice system.

The Justice Department also is aggressively prosecuting hate crimes.   As a long-time federal prosecutor, I can tell you first-hand that the devastation caused by a single act of hate can reverberate through families, communities and the entire nation.   No one should have to sleep less easily at night or live in fear that they too might be attacked simply because of their skin color, the country they were born in, their faith or whom they love.

In 2009, we gained a powerful prosecution tool to combat hate crimes when President Barack Obama signed into law the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.   Armed with this new tool, Justice Department prosecutors over the last five years have convicted over 160 defendants on hate crimes charges – amounting to nearly a 50 percent increase over the previous five years.

I have described for you just some of the Justice Department’s work advancing the promise in America’s founding documents of equality under the law.   We are proud to stand with our fellow agencies in our collective responsibility to fulfill our nation’s obligations under the convention, as well in our shared moral responsibility to eradicate discrimination and ensure equal justice for all.

It is my pleasure now to introduce our next speaker, Catherine Lhamon, Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education.

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

DOJ FILES SEX DISCRIMINATION LAWSUIT AGAINST COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA AND STATE POLICE

FROM:  U.S. JUSTICE DEPARTMENT 
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Justice Department Files Lawsuit Alleging Sex Discrimination Against the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania State Police

The Justice Department announced the filing of a lawsuit today against the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania State Police, alleging that the defendants are engaged in a pattern or practice of employment discrimination against women in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.   Specifically, the lawsuit challenges the state police’s use of two physical fitness tests to screen and select entry-level state troopers.

The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, alleges that the physical fitness tests used by the state police between 2003 and the present excluded qualified women from consideration for hire as entry-level state troopers by testing for physical skills that are not required to perform the job.  The department also alleges that, during the relevant time period, the defendants’ use of physical fitness tests as part of a multi-step employment selection process disproportionately screened out female applicants, resulting in a disparate impact against those applicants.

Title VII prohibits both intentional discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, national origin and religion as well as employment practices that result in a disparate impact upon a protected group, unless the practices are job-related and consistent with business necessity.   The department alleges that the defendants’ use of the challenged physical fitness tests violates Title VII because that use does not meet this standard and does not identify the best qualified applicants for entry-level state trooper jobs.

“The Department of Justice is deeply committed to eliminating artificial barriers that keep qualified women out of public safety work,” said Jocelyn Samuels, Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division.   “The Justice Department will continue to challenge discriminatory hiring practices that unnecessarily exclude qualified applicants on account of sex.”

In the lawsuit, the department seeks a court order that would require the Pennsylvania State Police to stop using the challenged physical fitness tests, develop hiring procedures that comply with Title VII and provide make-whole relief, including offers of hire, retroactive seniority, and back pay to individual women who have been harmed as a result of the defendants’ use of the challenged physical fitness tests.

Saturday, August 10, 2013

DOJ FILES LAWSUIT AGAINST BUS COMPANY FOR ALLEGED DISCRIMINATION AGAINST U.S. CITIZENS

FROM:  U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE 
Monday, August 5, 2013

Justice Department Files Lawsuit Against Texas Bus Company Alleging Employment Discrimination Against U.S. Citizens and Other Individuals
The Justice Department announced today the filing of a lawsuit with the Executive Office of Immigration Review’s Office of the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer (OCAHO), against Autobuses Ejecutivos LLC, d/b/a Omnibus Express, a bus company based in Houston.

The complaint alleges Omnibus Express violated the Immigration and Nationality Act’s (INA) anti-discrimination provision by preferring to hire temporary nonimmigrant visa holders over U.S. citizens, certain lawful permanent residents and other protected individuals for bus driver positions.  Specifically, the complaint states that from at least September 2012 to February 2013, Omnibus Express failed to consider the applications of many qualified U.S. citizens and other protected individuals, or actively discouraged them from pursuing their applications, while at the same time petitioning the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) for permission to hire up to 50 foreign workers on H-2B visas.  The H-2B program allows U.S. employers to bring foreign nationals to the United States to fill temporary nonagricultural jobs when there are not enough U.S. workers who are able, willing or qualified to do the temporary work.  The complaint further alleges that Omnibus Express hired 42 H-2B workers during this period, and in doing so, represented to the DOL and USCIS that there were not enough qualified workers in the United States to fill the 50 bus driver positions.  The complaint seeks an order prohibiting future discrimination by Omnibus Express, civil penalties, back pay for injured parties and injunctive relief. The INA’s anti-discrimination provision prohibits employers from discriminating in hiring against certain workers based on their citizenship status.

“The nation’s current immigration law protects individuals in the United States, such as U.S. citizens, certain lawful permanent residents, refugees and asylees, from unlawful discrimination in hiring based on their citizenship status,” said Jocelyn Samuels, Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “We are committed to enforcing the INA so that work-authorized individuals have equal access to employment in the United States.”

The Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices (OSC) is responsible for enforcing the anti-discrimination provision of the INA, which prohibits employers from discriminating against work-authorized individuals on the basis of citizenship status or national origin in hiring, firing, recruitment or referral for a fee.

Friday, September 14, 2012

U.S. JUSTICE DEPARTMENT FILES DISCRIMINATION LAWSUIT AGAINST FARM IN TEXAS

FROM: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Justice Department Files Lawsuit Alleging Employment Discrimination by Texas Farm

The Justice Department filed a motion to intervene today in a lawsuit against Jerry Estopy, d/b/a Estopy Farms, a sorghum and soy farm in McAllen, Tex., which also provides equipment and equipment operators for harvests at other farms. The Justice Department seeks to intervene in a lawsuit filed by two U.S. citizens against the farm. The department alleges that the company discriminated against one of the U.S. citizens when it refused to hire him based on his citizenship status. The Immigration and Nationality Act’s (INA) anti-discrimination provision prohibits employers from discriminating against workers based on national origin or citizenship status in the hiring or firing process.

According to the department’s complaint, the injured party, a U.S. citizen with over twelve years experience operating cotton combines and tractors, applied for a position with Estopy Farms as a cotton picker operator around June of 2010. The U.S. citizen was not hired, and Estopy Farms hired a number of seasonal foreign workers instead. The department found reasonable cause to believe that the company did not hire the U.S. citizen because it preferred to hire foreign workers under the H-2A visa program. The H-2A visa program allows foreign nationals into the U.S. for temporary or seasonal agricultural work. Employers that seek to participate in the program file an application with the U.S. Department of Labor certifying that they have actively tried to recruit U.S. workers for the jobs and that the temporary workers’ employment will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of similarly employed U.S. workers. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is charged with approving applications for the H-2A visas.

"The Justice Department will not tolerate discriminatory hiring practices," said Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Civil Rights Division. "While the department does not enforce the rules pertaining to the H-2A program, we will vigorously enforce the INA’s anti-discrimination provision, which protects U.S. workers against an employer’s illegal and discriminatory preferences."

Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid filed a lawsuit with the Office of the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer (OCAHO) within the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review on behalf of the two U.S. citizens on Nov. 14, 2011. Because a complaint has already been filed, the department seeks to intervene in the existing lawsuit. The Justice Department is represented by trial attorney Liza Zamd in this matter.

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