Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that answer the question.
Query: What was the first US law concerning employment discrimination?
The Equal Pay Act amended the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1963. It is enforced by the Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor. [12] The Equal Pay Act prohibits employers and unions from paying different wages based on sex. It does not prohibit other discriminatory practices in hiring. It provides that where workers perform equal work in the corner requiring "equal skill, effort, and responsibility and performed under similar working conditions," they should be provided equal pay.[2] The Fair Labor Standards Act applies to employers engaged in some aspect of interstate commerce, or all of an employer's workers if the enterprise is engaged as a whole in a significant amount of interstate commerce.
Equal employment opportunity is equal opportunity in employment. Examples of legislation to foster it or to protect it from eroding include the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which was established by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to assist in the protection of United States employees from discrimination. The law was the first federal law designed to protect most US employees from employment discrimination based upon that employee's (or applicant's) race, color, religion, sex, or national origin (Public Law 88-352, July 2, 1964, 78 Stat. 253, 42 U.S.C. Sec. 2000e et. seq.). Employment discrimination entails areas such as firing, hiring, promotions, transfer or wage practices and it is also illegal to discriminate in advertising, referral of job applicants, or classification. The Title is pertinent in companies affecting commerce that have fifteen or more employees. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is section 705 of the title.
Laws restricting employment discrimination for persons who have been convicted of criminal offenses vary significantly by state. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has issued guidelines for employers, intended to prevent criminal record discrimination from being used as a proxy to effect unlawful racial discrimination.
Since 2004, Cyprus has implemented an anti-discrimination law (the "Equal Treatment in Employment and Occupation Law 2004") that explicitly forbids discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in employment. The law was designed to comply with the European Union's Employment Framework Directive of 2000.
Employment discrimination law in the United States derives from the common law, and is codified in numerous state and federal laws, particularly the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as well as in the ordinances of counties and municipalities. These laws prohibit discrimination based on certain characteristics or protected categories. The United States Constitution also prohibits discrimination by federal and state governments against their public employees. Discrimination in the private sector is not directly constrained by the Constitution, but has become subject to a growing body of federal and state law. Federal law prohibits discrimination in a number of areas, including recruiting, hiring, job evaluations, promotion policies, training, compensation and disciplinary action. State laws often extend protection to additional categories or employers.
The Regulations follow a very similar structure to existing legislation concerning sex, race, and religion. They provide a broad justification defence and a wide range of exceptions which have been criticised for undermining the concept of discrimination law by providing too many compromises on what would otherwise be unlawful.
The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA; to ) is a US labor law that forbids employment discrimination against anyone at least 40 years of age in the United States (see ). In 1967, the bill was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The ADEA prevents age discrimination and provides equal employment opportunity under conditions that were not explicitly covered in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It also applies to the standards for pensions and benefits provided by employers, and requires that information concerning the needs of older workers be provided to the general public. 
State bans on local anti-discrimination laws in the United States are anti-LGBT state laws that prohibit local cities and counties from enacting, with the exception of public employment, anti-discrimination laws that are not covered by statewide anti-discrimination laws. The first state to enact such a law was Tennessee in 2011.
Social media use in hiring refers to the examination by employers of job applicants' social media profiles as part of the hiring assessment. Some employers use social media as a tool to screen prospective employees. 
This issue raises many ethical questions that some consider an employer's right and others consider discrimination. Except in the states of California, Maryland, and Illinois, there are no laws that prohibit employers from using social media profiles as a basis of whether or not someone should be hired. Title VII also prohibits discrimination during any aspect of employment including hiring or firing, recruitment, or testing. Social media has been integrating into the workplace and this has led to conflicts within employees and employers. Particularly, Facebook has been seen as a popular platform for employers to investigate in order to learn more about potential employees. This conflict first started in Maryland when an employer requested and received an employee's Facebook username and password. State lawmakers first introduced legislation in 2012 to prohibit employers from requesting passwords to personal social accounts in order to get a job or to keep a job. This led to Canada, Germany, the U.S. Congress and 11 U.S. states to pass or propose legislation that prevents employers' access to private social accounts of employees.
If pre-hire tools are used inappropriately, their use could violate federal anti-discrimination laws if an employer intentionally uses them to discriminate based on race, color, sex, national origin, religion, disability, or age (40 or older). The use of tests violate anti-discrimination laws if they disproportionately exclude people in protected groups like race, sex, age, or other factor, unless the employer can justify the test or procedure under the law.
The common law has not traditionally provided effective protection against discrimination, refusing to find that slavery in the colonies was contrary to public policy and not interpreting the word "person" to include women. Due to the inadequacies of the common law in this area, Parliament enacted the Race Relations Act 1965 and Race Relations Act 1968. The Sex Discrimination Act 1975 was the first legislation to protect against discrimination on the grounds of sex or marital status, while dismissal for pregnancy-related reasons is qualified as automatically unfair dismissal under the Employment Rights Act 1996. The principle of equal pay was brought in under the Equal Pay Act 1970. Racial discrimination was prohibited by the Race Relations Act 1976 and disability discrimination by the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. Discrimination on the grounds of religion and belief in the workplace and tertiary education was first regulated by the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003, sexual orientation discrimination in the workplace by the Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2003 and age discrimination in employment by the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006.
Employment Non-Discrimination Act LGBT employment discrimination in the United States Employment discrimination against persons with criminal records in the United States Racial wage gap in the United States Gender pay gap in the United States
Genetic discrimination is illegal in the U.S. after passage of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) on May 21, 2008. It was signed into law by President George W. Bush, and passed in the US Senate by a vote of 49-0 and in the House of Representatives by 414-1. The legislation bars employers from using individuals’ genetic information when making hiring, firing, job placement, or promotion decisions. GINA also protects individuals from genetic discrimination in healthcare, however, GINA itself does not define what genetic information is, leaving it up for debate.
For example, some State civil rights laws offer protection from employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity or political affiliation, even though such forms of discrimination are not yet covered in federal civil rights laws.
Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, 490 U.S. 228 (1989), was an important decision by the United States Supreme Court on the issues of prescriptive sex discrimination and employer liability for sex discrimination. The employee, Ann Hopkins, sued her former employer, the accounting firm Price Waterhouse. She argued that the firm denied her partnership because she didn't fit the partners' idea of what a female employee should look like and act like. The employer failed to prove that it would have denied her partnership anyway, and the Court held that constituted sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The significance of the Supreme Court's ruling was twofold. First, it established that gender stereotyping is actionable as sex discrimination. Second, it established the mixed-motive framework that enables employees to prove discrimination when other, lawful reasons for the adverse employment action exist alongside discriminatory motivations or reasons.
Since the Civil Rights Act of 1964, all employing entities and labor unions have a duty to treat employees equally, without discrimination based on "race, color, religion, sex, or national origin." There are separate rules for sex discrimination in pay under the Equal Pay Act of 1963. Additional groups with "protected status" were added by the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. There is no federal law banning all sexual orientation or identity discrimination, but 22 states had passed laws by 2016. These equality laws generally prevent discrimination in hiring, terms of employment, and make discharge because of a protected characteristic unlawful. There is no federal law against unjust discharge, and most states also have no law with full protection against wrongful termination of employment. Collective agreements made by labor unions and some individual contracts require people are only discharged for a "just cause". The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act of 1988 requires employing entities give 60 days notice if more than 50 or one third of the workforce may lose their jobs. Federal law has aimed to reach full employment through monetary policy and spending on infrastructure. Trade policy has attempted to put labor rights in international agreements, to ensure open markets in a global economy do not undermine fair and full employment.
Discrimination law in Northern Ireland has evolved somewhat separately to discrimination law elsewhere in the United Kingdom. Most notably, Northern Ireland history of legislation on religious and political discrimination. The Government of Ireland Act 1920 prohibited religious discrimination in legislation. In 1976 the UK Parliament passed the Fair Employment (Northern Ireland) Act which prohibited religious and political discrimination in employment. The Fair Employment (Northern Ireland) Act 1989 creates a system to monitor the religious composition of the workforce so as to promote fair participation.
There are federal laws addressing fair employment practices, and this also concerns performance appraisal (PA). Discrimination can occur within predictions of performance and evaluations of job behaviors. The revision of many court cases has revealed the involvement of alleged discrimination which was often linked to the assessment of the employee's job performance. Some of the laws which protect individuals against discrimination are "the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Civil Rights Act of 1991, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)." Lawsuits may also results from charges of an employer's negligence, defamation, and/or misrepresentation. A few appraisal criteria to keep in mind for a legally sound PA is to keep the content of the appraisal objective, job-related, behavior-based, within the control of the ratee, and related to specific functions rather than a global assessment. Some appraisal procedure suggestions for a legally sound PA is to standardize operations, communicate formally with employees, provide information of performance deficits and give opportunities to employees to correct those deficits, give employees access to appraisal results, provide written instructions for the training of raters, and use multiple, diverse and unbiased raters. These are valuable but not exhaustive lists of recommendations for PAs.
The Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) guidelines apply to any selection procedure that is used for making employment decisions, not only for hiring, but also for promotion, demotion, transfer, layoff, discharge, or early retirement. Therefore, employment appraisal procedures must be validated like tests or any other selection device. Employers who base their personnel decisions on the results of a well-designed performance review program that includes formal appraisal interviews are much more likely to be successful in defending themselves against claims of discrimination.
The law provides for a Conciliation Commission to arbitrate disputes between women and their employers, along with placing specific legal protections into law. The law also establishes what equal opportunities are legally expected of employers. The law has been revised twice since its passage, once in 1997, and once in 2005-2006. The 1997 revisions target discrimination in specific areas of promotion, recruitment, and hiring, while the 2005-6 revisions focus on making employers responsible for eradicating sexual harassment in the workplace.
Currently, legislation pertaining to the use of genetic information and genetic discrimination at the state level varies by state. The first state laws regarding genetic information were typically designed to prohibit genetic discrimination, including prohibiting employers from demanding workers and applicants to provide genetic information as a condition of their employment. More recent laws have permitted individuals to undergo genetic testing when that individual is filing a compensation claim or has requested the test to demonstrate susceptibility to potentially toxic substances.
In the United States, smoker protection laws are state statutes that prevent employers from discriminating against employees for using tobacco products. Currently twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia have such laws. Although laws vary from state to state, employers are generally prohibited from either refusing to hire or firing an employee for using any type of tobacco product during non-working hours and off of the employer's property. In four states (California, Colorado, New York, and North Carolina) there is no specific law related to employee tobacco use but smokers are protected under broader state statutes that prohibit employers from discriminating against any employee who engages in a lawful activity. California also has a law that protects employees who engage in lawful activity, but it has been interpreted by the courts as not creating any new substantive rights but instead set forth a process to pursue claims for violation of existing Labor Code protections before the state Division of Labor Standards Enforcement. 
There were also two important advances in equal opportunity employment for transgender people at this time. In 2012 the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission expanded upon these individual court cases by ruling that Title VII (of the Civil Rights Act of 1964) does prohibit gender identity-based employment discrimination as sex discrimination. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission declared, "intentional discrimination against a transgender individual because that person is transgender is, by definition, discrimination 'based on ... sex' and such discrimination ... violates Title VII". This ruling was for a discrimination complaint filed by the Transgender Law Center on behalf of openly transgender woman Mia Macy, who had been denied a job due to her gender identity. The ruling opens the door for any transgender employees or potential employees who have been discriminated against by a business hiring 15 or more people in the US based on their gender identity to file a claim with the EEOC for sex discrimination. Then in 2013 the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled in favor of an openly transgender woman (name not made public) who was subjected to physical and verbal harassment at her job with a federal contractor in Maryland. This, according to the LGBT rights organization Freedom to Work, is the first time in history that the EEOC has investigated allegations of anti-transgender harassment and ruled for the transgender employee.
The Islamic Society of North America expressed concern at the potential for the law to create employment discrimination against Muslims. In a media release, ISNA stated that they welcome laws to protect an individual's right to free exercise of religion, but expressed "serious concerns about the extension of those rights to corporations as well as the protections against civil liability for discrimination by protected corporations against individuals." They stated that "If a corporation refused to hire a person because they were a Muslim and their religious beliefs did not permit them to hire Muslims" then lawsuits alleging discrimination could not succeed because the law is a defense to liability." The Sikh Coalition, the Central Conference of American Rabbis and the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism and the Disciples of Christ expressed concern about discrimination against religious and sexual minorities.
Barbora Bukovská is a Czech-Slovak human rights attorney and activist, known for her work on racial discrimination of Romani people in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Before anti-discrimination laws were adopted, she initiated the first Czech strategic litigation cases concerning discrimination against Romani people in access to public services, housing, employment and within the criminal justice system, and used the courts to bring a change in the law.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the first major development in anti-discrimination law in the US, though prior civil rights legislation (such as the Civil Rights Act of 1957) addressed some forms of discrimination, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was much broader, providing protections for race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in the areas of voting, education, employment, and public accommodations. This landmark legislation led the way for other federal legislation, which expanded upon the protected classes and forms of discrimination prohibited under federal legislation, such as the Fair Housing Act or the Americans with Disabilities Act. These protections have also been expanded through the courts interpretation of these pieces of legislation. For example, the 7th and 2nd circuit courts have both ruled that employment discrimination based on sexual orientation is a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. In addition to federal legislation, there are numerous state and local laws that address discrimination that is not covered by these laws.