Barking and Biting: The Equal Opportunity Commission as an Enforcement Agency

Allen, Dominique

doi:10.1177/0067205x1604400206

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…124 This was one of the reasons the British equal opportunity agencies were not required to receive complaints and provide dispute resolution services when they were established in the 1970s. 125 To avoid this problem, this report recommends creating a separate enforcement agency, which is the model Britain and Northern Ireland use.…”

Section: Shifting the Burden Of Enforcing The Law Away From The Indiv...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Hearing and Judgment

Blackham¹

2022

Reforming Age Discrimination Law

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This chapter critically analyses the hearing and judgment stage of the individual enforcement of age discrimination law. Focusing on empirical case studies of enforcement in the United Kingdom (UK) and Australia, it draws on qualitative and quantitative content analysis of Australian case law and UK tribunal decisions on age discrimination in employment; statistics from tribunals and courts; qualitative expert interviews; and a survey of advocates, to consider doctrinal and jurisdictional hurdles to individual enforcement. It interrogates who is able to pursue a claim to hearing and judgment, and the issues that arise in advancing a claim to court. The chapter shows that age discrimination complaints are significantly less likely than all claims to be successful at hearing, and more likely to be withdrawn. It argues that barriers to claiming in a court or tribunal are disproportionately affecting women, young people, and claims that do not relate to dismissal. The chapter maps how the costs of claiming, barriers to success, and fear of adverse costs orders have undermined the individual enforcement of age discrimination law. It offers targeted reforms to address these barriers, focusing on the burden of proof, intersectionality, and the objective justification of direct age discrimination.

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Section: Shifting the Burden Of Enforcing The Law Away From The Indiv...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Hearing and Judgment

Blackham¹

2022

Reforming Age Discrimination Law

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“…It has been argued elsewhere that the absence of a regulator which can impose sanctions is a deficiency in the enforcement of equality laws (Smith 2006;Allen 2016). I do not revisit those arguments here.…”

Section: Resolving a Discrimination Complaintmentioning

confidence: 99%

Collecting, Sharing and Utilising Data to Inform Decision-making and Improve Equality

Allen

2021

LiC

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Although we live in an era in which government and private organisations collect large amounts of data, this has not filtered through to anti-discrimination and equality law in Australia. Government and its agencies have little incentive to collect information, nor does business. Neither group bears any obligation to tackle discrimination if they detect it. Yet the self-regulating enforcement model used in equality law is premised on the idea that information will be available to aid voluntary compliance. This article examines the nature of the data organisations that are currently required to collect and identify significant information gaps. It argues that it is not enough to simply fill those gaps with information; increased data collection needs to be accompanied by the obligation to address inequality if that is what the data reveals.

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“…In this backdrop, sexual harassment in the academic institutional context may be defined as "the use of authority to emphasize the sexuality or sexual identity of a student in a manner which prevents or impairs the student's full enjoyment of educational benefits, climate, or opportunities" (Till, 1980: 7). Courts tend to use the above definition in most contemporary workplace harassment cases, even those in educational settings (Allen, 2016). It is easier to apply it in cases involving a faculty member and their supervisor.…”

Section: Implications For Universitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Legal Aspects of Ethical Decision-Making in the Event of Sexual Harassment and Discrimination in the Workplace

George

2019

BEL

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Sexual harassment-related complaints in the workplaces have increased multifold in the recent past. It is unclear whether this is because of more frequent harassment incidents because victims feel more emboldened to report, or only because more media reports happen on these complaints these days. Regardless, employers have improved both preventive and recovery mechanisms in order to minimize the incidents, or if they happen, support the victims in the best possible manner and also to protect themselves from adverse judicial scrutiny. While courts do not necessarily consider the job related and psychological consequences of harassment cases, organizations also need to worry about these – even as they build lawsuit-proof systems. In this paper, we discuss five historically important US Supreme Court lawsuits that would later have major consequences for how sexual harassment complaints are dealt within our contemporary workplaces. The five pioneering cases that would be discussed are Meritor v. Vinson; Faragher v. City of Boca Raton; Burlington Industries v. Ellerth; Gebser et al. v. Lago Vista Independent School District; and, Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education. The paper specifically elaborates on the implications of the court decisions upon these cases for subordinate-supervisor and student-teacher relationships in the US universities. Most harassment cases in the university contexts are not between employees but between employees/faculty and customers/students and this makes straightforward interpretation of court rulings difficult. The resultant ambiguity, along with the interest of universities to protect their reputations by suppressing incidents, make pursuing harassment investigations difficult. While these cases did not succeed in providing a saturated sample for generating a cohesive or comprehensive set of guidelines, they nevertheless guided future court judgements and also organizational policies with respect to managing sexual harassment. In the conclusion section of this paper, the author offers a glimpse into newer forms of sexual harassment, particularly those mediated by social media technologies, and offers ways for organizations to deal with them. Keywords: business ethics, discrimination, sexual harassment, lawsuits, Civil Rights Act of 1964, Universities, Supreme Court, United States.

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Barking and Biting: The Equal Opportunity Commission as an Enforcement Agency

Cited by 5 publications

References 3 publications

Hearing and Judgment

Hearing and Judgment

Collecting, Sharing and Utilising Data to Inform Decision-making and Improve Equality

Legal Aspects of Ethical Decision-Making in the Event of Sexual Harassment and Discrimination in the Workplace

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