Sweeping Civil Rights Legislation Reaches Capitol Hill
Feature Story by civilrights.org staff - 2/10/2004
In a historic year for the civil rights movement, with celebrations commemorating the 40th anniversary of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, and what would have been the 75th birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., legislators today introduced FAIRNESS: The Civil Rights Act of 2004.Sponsored by Senator Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Reps. John Lewis, D-Ga., George Miller, D-Calif., and John Conyers, D-Mich., in the House, the FAIRNESS Act is an effort to counteract the potentially devastating impact of several U.S. Supreme Court decisions regarding civil rights protections. The Court, which recently has ruled against plaintiffs seeking remedies to civil rights violations in schools and in the work place, has made it more difficult for victims of discrimination to gain redress through the courts.
The bill has the support of a myriad of civil rights and social justice organizations, including the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR).
"In America, our individual rights are supposed to be guaranteed by the Constitution, but in case after case, the courts are taking those rights away and that's just not right," LCCR Executive Director Henderson said. "The FAIRNESS Act sends a strong and clear message to the courts – trampling on the civil rights of the elderly, workers, women, the disabled, and the poor is not what America is about."
Among other remedies, the FAIRNESS Act guarantees equal access to publicly funded services, protection for older workers and workers returning from military service, viable remedies for on-the-job discrimination, and equal pay for women in the workforce. Recently published fact sheets by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund assess the recent Court rulings mentioned in the legislation.
The last sweeping civil rights legislation to pass Congress was in 1991, when the Civil Rights Act of 1991 reversed the Supreme Court's 1989 decisions that narrowly interpreted job discrimination laws. The Civil Rights Act of 1991 provided, for the first time, money damages to compensate victims of intentional job discrimination and to deter future employer wrongdoing.
"Treating some of us as second-class when it comes to rights guaranteed by the Constitution is neither moral nor just and hardly a beacon for the rest of the world. If we are to be that 'shining city on a hill,' then the Civil Rights Act of 2004 must become the law of the land," said Henderson.
