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Full-Text Articles in Insurance Law
Nondiscrimination In Insurance: The Next Chapter, Mary L. Heen
Nondiscrimination In Insurance: The Next Chapter, Mary L. Heen
Law Faculty Publications
Modern federal civil rights legislation prohibits race and gender discrimination in many important sectors of the American economy, including employment, education, public accommodations, housing, and credit. No comparable comprehensive federal civil rights legislation bans race and gender discrimination in the business of insurance-a business at the core of legal and social organization, culture, and finance. Why not?
Equally Insured? Lasting Insurance Industry Reform Came Only With A Rethinking Of Race, Mary L. Heen
Equally Insured? Lasting Insurance Industry Reform Came Only With A Rethinking Of Race, Mary L. Heen
Law Faculty Publications
Earlier this decade, some of America’s best-known life insurance companies quietly settled multimillion-dollar civil rights lawsuits challenging race-based life insurance rates and benefits. As a result, those companies closed a chapter of American economic history that began after the Civil War with the door-to-door marketing of small individual life insurance policies to poor workers, including former slaves, and their families. The closing of this chapter in history also marked the end of a form of Jim Crow race discrimination largely invisible to the American public.
Ending Jim Crow Life Insurance Rates, Mary L. Heen
Ending Jim Crow Life Insurance Rates, Mary L. Heen
Law Faculty Publications
This Article tells the story of the rise and fall of explicit race-based pricing practices as American life insurance companies responded to changes in the social, economic, and legal status of former slaves. The role of law in that story, from the Civil War to the beginning of this century, illustrates the complex interaction between civil rights reform and private commercial markets. Despite early laws prohibiting race-based life insurance rates, racial discrimination persisted in various forms for over a century due to the strength of the underlying racial ideologies, the rhetorical power of actuarial language, and the structure and regulation …