On Title VII and Protected Classes

Welcome to AccelPro Employment Law, where we provide expert interviews and coaching to accelerate your professional development. Today we’re featuring a conversation about the 60th anniversary of the passage of Title VII and the past, present and future of protected classes in the workplace. Our guest is Hnin Khaing, the director of the Washington, D.C. Office of Human Rights.

Khaing sees the history of Title VII as a mixed bag. Our court and regulatory systems are still swamped with allegations of discrimination, so the problem of inequality remains firmly entrenched in American workplace culture. But at the same time, she says, it’s better than it was when Title VII was adopted in 1964.

Khaing says some states have jumped out ahead of the federal government, with more robust laws and a deeper set of protected classes. Washington, D.C., for example, protects employees against 18 kinds of discrimination, while Title VII covers only five. She forecasts more changes, and more public arguments about them, in the near future, foreseeing new laws covering hairstyle, domestic workers and the trans community.

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