Employment Discrimination Law

• Semester: Spring 2021
• Course ID: 368N
• Credit Hours: 3
• Unique: 29055

Description

This course will be taught entirely online via Zoom.

This course will focus primarily on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the landmark federal statute that prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. In addition to learning the doctrinal machinery of employment discrimination claims, students in this course will learn the competing theories of discrimination that are the heart of this area of the law. You will develop the conceptual tools to understand litigation not only under Title VII itself -- which now makes up a significant portion of the entire civil docket of the federal courts -- but also under related employment statutes that build on it such as the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) and state laws such as Chapter 21 of the Texas Labor Code. The course covers controversies among litigants, courts and legislatures about such questions as: what counts as intentional discrimination; how the law should treat discrimination that is not intentional; what a plaintiff ought to have to prove in order to make out a claim of discrimination; how the Constitution interacts with employment discrimination statutes; what actions employers are required or permitted to take in order to avoid discriminating; and affirmative action. We will also discuss the legal treatment of discrimination on the basis of pregnancy, national origin and language, sexual orientation and gender identity, and religion, as well as retaliation claims. We will supplement the case law with relevant secondary materials that provide perspectives from disciplines such as sociology and psychology.