Law Commons^™

Antidiscriminatory Algorithms, Stephanie Bornstein

UF Law Faculty Publications

Can algorithms be used to advance equality goals in the workplace? A handful of legal scholars have raised concerns that the use of big data at work may lead to protected class discrimination that could fall outside the reach of current antidiscrimination law. Existing scholarship suggests that, because algorithms are “facially neutral,” they pose no problem of unequal treatment. As a result, algorithmic discrimination cannot be challenged using a disparate treatment theory of liability under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII). Instead, it presents a problem of unequal outcomes, subject to challenge using Title VII’s …

Equal Work, Stephanie Bornstein

UF Law Faculty Publications

Most Americans have heard of the gender pay gap and the statistic that, today, women earn on average eighty cents to every dollar men earn. Far less discussed, there is an even greater racial pay gap. Black and Latino men average only seventy-one cents to the dollar of white men. Compounding these gaps is the “polluting” impact of status characteristics on pay: as women and racial minorities enter occupations formerly dominated by white men, the pay for those occupations goes down. Improvement in the gender pay gap has been stalled for nearly two decades; the racial pay gap is actually …

Factless Jurisprudence, Darren Lenard Hutchinson

UF Law Faculty Publications

Professor Terry Smith has written a very important work on the inadequacy of juridical approaches to antidiscrimination law in the context of Title VII litigation. Smith argues that the anti-retaliation provisions of Title VII can serve more broadly as a mechanism for protecting workers of color from prohibited racial discrimination. Smith contends that contemporary equality jurisprudence, however, impedes the protective scope of the anti-retaliation provision because courts fail to appreciate the broader context of racial antagonism in which persons of color live. Particularly, courts often misinterpret lawful racial protest in the workplace as disruptive and appropriately regulated to the detriment …

Agency, Equality, And Antidiscrimination Law, Tracy E. Higgins, Laura A. Rosenbury

UF Law Faculty Publications

Some commentators, perhaps a minority, have argued that the Equal Protection Clause should be read to require the use of race-conscious policies when necessary to eradicate or remedy the most serious consequences of racial inequality. Others have argued that such policies, though not required, should be permitted when duly adopted by the majority of the populace to promote the interests of an historically oppressed minority. Still others, including now a majority of the Supreme Court, take the view that the Constitution forbids virtually all explicit uses of race by the state.

In this Essay, we do not enter this debate …

The Metamorphosis Of Comparable Worth, Nancy E. Dowd

UF Law Faculty Publications

The concept of comparable worth has as its factual predicate two typical characteristics of women's employment: occupational concentration or segregation and significantly lower wages compared to those paid to men. What continues to be most troubling about this employment pattern is its stubborn persistence, despite the increased presence of women in the workforce and the existence for over two decades of legislation prohibiting sex discrimination in employment.

The concept of comparable worth has provoked an outpouring of emotional rhetoric and scholarly analysis debating the concept’s viability and desirability. Rather than add to that debate, Professor Dowd traces the evolution of …