Recent Supreme Court decisions have eroded the protections from harassment and discrimination based on race, national origin, disability, age, and gender that have been enacted by Congress since the 1960s. These decisions have narrowed the safeguards that help to ensure that discrimination, unfair labor practices, and harassment do not prevent Americans from achieving and benefiting from a middle-class standard of living. The Civil Rights Act of 2008 restores these eroded protections. The legislation permits individuals to bring suit against federally funded programs that have an unjustified discriminatory effect, strengthens protections against harassment in schools that receive federal funds by allowing suits against schools that ignore harassment, and extends relief from unfair labor practices to all workers regardless of their immigration status. The legislation amends the Equal Pay Act (EPA) to require that any difference in pay between men and women be unrelated to gender, further legitimate business purposes, and be job-related. The legislation allows compensatory and monetary damages to be collected for violations of the EPA and permits punitive damages to be awarded to individuals excluded from programs funded with federal money in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The act expands state employees’ right to obtain relief for age discrimination and discrimination against members of the armed services and clarifies the standard of proof in cases alleging age discrimination.

The Civil Rights Act of 2008 prohibits employers from forcing potential employees to sign mandatory arbitration clauses in order to obtain work and allows plaintiffs to recover attorney and expert witness fees in civil rights cases in the absence of a court decision. Finally, the legislation would eliminate caps on damages for discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, religion, and national origin, and for violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act. A companion bill, S.2554, has been introduced in the Senate by Senator Edward Kennedy.