Member-only story
The Agency Charged With Eliminating Discrimination Has Failed Us
An Open Letter to the California Fair Employment and Housing Council On the Failure To Fulfill Its Purpose[1]/
Previously, I wrote in a general sense Why Our Laws Against Discrimination Have Failed. Here is a version of an Open Letter I sent to the California Fair Employment Housing Council, describing in more detail how they have failed its mission to end discrimination. While this is addressed to the California agency, the same could be said of the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and similar agencies in other states.
Five years before the 1964 Civil Rights Act, California enacted its own “Fair Employment Practices Act” in which “the public policy of this State” is declared to be “to protect and safeguard the right and opportunity of all persons to seek, obtain, and hold employment without discrimination or abridgement on account of race, religious creed, color, national origin, or ancestry.” Stats 1959, ch. 121, § 1, formerly Labor Code § 1411. That Act created what is now known as the Department of Fair Employment and Housing (“Department”), charged “to provide effective remedies that will eliminate these discriminatory practices.” Gov. Code § 12920.
