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| Also known as the Americans With Disabilities Act, the ADA prohibits an employers from discriminating against a qualified individual with a disability. Someone who is qualified for a job and is capable of performing the essential functions of a job with or without accomodation. In general though, the ADA prohibits discrimination against people on the basis of disabilities in regards to transportation and public accommodation in addition to employment status. |
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| The Age Discrimination in Employment Act was passed in 1967 and was amended in 1986. In a general sense, employeres must provide equal employment opportunities to individuals regardless of their age. This law was originally passed to prevent discrimination against employees over the age of 40 unless the employer can demonstrate that a certain age is a necessary trait to complete the job. |
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| Adverse impact discrimination occurs when identical standard or procedures supposedly are applied to everyone, despite the fact the fact they may either lead to or hinder different employment outcomes for members of a particular group. Another criterion for adverse impact is that standards in place are actually unrelated to success on the job. |
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| Affirmative action refers to the set of laws and initiatives put into place that are designed to help obliterate discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, or sexuality. |
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| Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody |
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| A Supreme Court ruling handed down in 1975 that essentially formed the basis for what job relevance actually is. The ruling determined that a job needs adequate job analysis in order to established what the job demands of a position are. The job also needs good measures to actually look at job performance. Also, predictor measures must achieve similar results in terms of predicting criterion job performance regardless of race. Cannot use intelligence testing jobs if it is unrelated to the job itself. |
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| Also known as the Standards for Education and Psychological Testing, it a listing of the recommended practices and other things that need to be taken into consideration when doing employment testing in the workplace. Generally, the APA standard recommend that uses of different selection measures investigate the differences of patterns of association between test scores and other variables for groups, ethnicity, disability status, and age. Essentially, it was put into place so that fair testing can be done across the board. |
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| A Sumpreme Court ruling in 1978 that decreed that a university's use of racial "quotas" in its admissions process was unconstitutional. However, a school could use affirmative action to accept more minority applicants in certain situations. These decisions can also be applied to employee selection in the workplace. |
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| BFOQ stands for bona fide occupational qualification. This qualification or attribute can allow for some discrimination in employment based on it. This can only be done if it is deemed reasonably necessary for the success of a particular business. The business must prove and justify the need in order for this to actually succeed. There needs to be absolute justification because courts typically interpret these situations quite narrowly. |
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| The burden of persuasion is a legal term that is composed of two elements: the facts a party must explain and prove in order to get across a particular grievance and how persuasively they actually get across those facts. |
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| Business necessity refers to a human resource management division's defense of an employee selection decision that is based on the genuine requirements of the particular company and is consistent with other decisions in the company. Often these decisions disproportionately affect a particular group. |
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| Comparable worth refers to an idea that people who possess similar skills, knowledge, and abilities should be paid equally regardless of their gender in a job. This typically goes for individuals who have the same job title. AKA pay equity. |
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| Compensatory damages refer to a particular sum of money awarded in a civil action as reparation for a loss, detriment, injury, slander, or other ill act as a result of the illegal actions of another person. Ex: money awarded in a class action lawsuit. |
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| In the Civil Rights Act of 164, there are several sections that deal with issues of equality. In particular, Title VII of the act is important for legal issues related to employment. Title VII says that employers cannot discriminate based on race, color, sex, or national origin. It goes on to further say that his will not be allowed in apprenticeship program or because an individual resisted an unlawful change or practice in the workplace. This law established the EEOC. |
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| The Civil Rights Act of 1991 was passed to overturn six Supreme Court decisions in 1989. This allowed for individuals who feel they are the victims of intentional discrimination based on race, gender, religion, or disability can ask for compensatory damages for their suffering. Also from the act, both party's obligations in adverse impact cases were clarified; CRA protection was also extended to workers employer at a foreign facility. Race-norming was also banned. |
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| Based on methods to attempt to reduce adverse impact towards particular groups, differential norming allows for different sets of group to have different norms established towards them. ie: Differences based on gender for standard in PE. |
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| A disability is any restriction or lack ability (based on impairment) to perform a certain activity as a normal human being would. Disabilities can be physical or cognitive in nature. They can range from being deaf to having cerebral palsy. |
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| Disparate impact is a legal theory used in looking at varieties of unlawful discrimination. Disparate impact is the idea that some employee practices have a greater impact on one group than another on the basis of statistics. Disparate impact may not be intentional because it is solely based on statistics. |
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| In a disparate treatment case, an employee is claiming that the employer treated them differently compared to another employee in a similar situation. Disparate treatment refers to situational differences and these can be legal or illegal depending on their basis. |
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| The DOL stands for the U.S Department of Labor. It is an executive branch department. Their mission as stated on their website is "to foster, promote, and develop the welfare of the wage earners, job seekers, and retirees of the United Stats; improve working conditions; advance opportunities for profitable employment; and assure work-related benefits and rights." |
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