How Does The Civil Rights Act of 1991 Changes the Workplace Research Paper

How Does The Civil Rights Act of 1991 Changes the Workplace - Research Paper Example As noted by the US Congress, other than the unlawful harassments and intentional discriminations as reasons, there was a need to strengthen civil rights laws because the decision of the Supreme Court in Wards Cove Packing Co. v. Antonio, 490 U.S. 642 (1989) weakened the scope and effectiveness of Federal civil rights protection (US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission). To address other challenges in civil rights law, the Civil Rights Act codified the concepts of â€Å"business necessity† and â€Å"job-related† acts that can amount to discrimination (Section 3, Civil Rights Act of 1991). Further, the law confirmed the statutory authority as well as providing guidelines on the adjudication of suits under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Further, as a response to the Supreme Court decisions that emaciated the civil rights laws, the Civil Rights Act of 1991 expanded the scope of civil rights laws. Almost twenty years after the Civil Rights Act of 1991, it becomes possible to assess how the legislation contributed to the realization of non-discrimination in the workplaces. In this section, we assess employment figures for possible traces of discriminations in the workplace and interpret possible improvements in the workplaces as the achievements of the Civil Rights Act of 1991 even as we are aware that the legislation related to civil rights are not limited to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and 1991. Table 1 on the earlier page shows that whites in management, professional, and related occupations compose about 33.6% of these occupations. In contrast, Table 2 shows that the whites who are no Hispanics in the US population are roughly 65.1% as of 2010. The data indicate that discriminations based on race are no longer as strong during the time of Martin Luther King, Jr.