Stepman’s full testimony can be found HERE.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Independent Women’s Forum (IWF) today announced that Inez Stepman, senior policy and legal analyst at IWF, will testify before the House Oversight Committee on Title VII employment issues and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) oversight.
The hearing, entitled, “Standing up for the Rule of Law: Ending Illegal Racial Discrimination and Protecting Men and Women in U.S. Employment Practices” examines the three major factors that contributed to the subversion of Title VII’s goal of a “colorblind workplace” according to Stepman.
In her testimony, Stepman writes, in part, that “unintended consequences of changes to the Civil Rights Act in 1991, combined with politically selective under-and over-enforcement of Title VII by the EEOC and bureaucratic redefinitions of the basic words of Title VII itself, have created the legal conditions in which the admirable moral imperative of the civil rights era has been inverted and undermined.”
Stepman highlights three policies previously implemented with the goal of ending discrimination in the workplace, which have instead imposed adverse effects on employment practices and perpetuated division, including:
- “The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which is tasked with being the first line of enforcement of Title VII, both over-and under-enforcing its mandates;
- The EEOC’s decision to follow the Biden administration’s Department of Education in its condemnable Title IX redefinition of the word ‘sex’ to include gender identity, which in the Title VII context destroys women’s rights to have single-sex spaces that protect their privacy and safety in the workplace;
- Revisions in the 1990s and some Supreme Court precedents, which have lent themselves to interpretations of the Civil Rights Act that have created perverse incentives in enforcement, and undermined the law’s most fundamental protections against race and sex discrimination.”
Stepman concludes her testimony with the reminder that, “American workers want to be judged by their employers on the basis of the quality of their credentials and work, not their skin color, sex organs, or other protected characteristics.” She argues that “returning Title VII to its worthy, original, and textual purpose” will establish this goal by reigning in “out-of-control interpretations contrary to the plain text of the law.”
Details:
WHAT: U.S. House Oversight Committee hearing, “Standing up for the Rule of Law: Ending Illegal Racial Discrimination and Protecting Men and Women in U.S. Employment Practices”
WHEN: Thursday, June 27, 2024 at 10 a.m. ET
WHERE: 2154 Rayburn
Media inquiries: [email protected]
Stepman’s full testimony will be available HERE after the hearing.
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