Increased funding for EEOC key to anti-discrimination and inequality – state and federal action key

[Danyelle, Connor Maxwell, Abril Castro, “Systematic Inequality and Economic Opportunity,” CAP – Center for American Progress, August 7, 2019, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/systematic-inequality-economic-opportunity/, accessed July 7, 2023, GDS-LL]

The underfunding and limited scope of anti-discrimination agencies perpetuate inequality

In the 1960s, Black activists secured landmark civil rights legislation that created new federal agencies charged with holding people and institutions accountable for engaging in discrimination.45 Federal laws were followed by dozens of state statutes designed to protect people of color from discrimination in the workplace.46 These new laws marked a symbolic turning point in American race relations and finally promised to expand access to opportunity to all people. However, lawmakers never fully funded these agencies and even provided exemptions, allowing many employers to continue to discriminate with little culpability, so long as they did not have many employees.47 As a result, millions of workers of color continue to experience racial discrimination in employment and wages.48

Created in 1965, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is charged with enforcing federal laws that make it illegal to discriminate against job applicants and employees based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, or genetic information.49 Every year, the EEOC receives hundreds of thousands of calls and inquiries, but it lacks the funding and staff necessary to fully ensure that bad actors are held accountable.50

From 1980 through mid-2018, the U.S. population grew by 44 percent—from 227 million to 327 million.51 Today, more than 5.6 million employers employ more than 125 million workers.52 Despite this growth, Congress has refused to significantly increase the agency’s inflation-adjusted budget over this period and has actually reduced the number of employees charged with carrying out the agency’s mission.53 (see Figure 3) In 2018, the EEOC secured $505 million for victims of discrimination, but the agency’s lack of resources has created a substantial and persistent backlog of nearly 50,000 charges.54

While Congress should dramatically expand the EEOC’s budget, the federal government should not be alone in the fight against employment discrimination. States possess the resources and expertise necessary to enact and fully enforce their own civil rights statutes to protect workers of color. Unfortunately, few states provide their anti-discrimination agencies with sufficient resources to tackle this systemic problem, and some states lack enforcement agencies altogether. State anti-discrimination agencies often have large mandates with multiple covered populations and the responsibility to tackle discrimination in both employment and housing. However, none of the 10 states with the highest percentage of Black residents provide these agencies with annual funding of more than 70 cents per resident per year. (see Figure 4) By comparison, in 2015, each of these 10 states had state and local policing expenditures of more than $230 per resident per year—at least 328 times more than what each state spends on enforcing anti-discrimination laws.55 In some states, such as Louisiana, more taxpayer dollars are spent on the governor’s salary than on protecting millions of residents from employment discrimination.56

Lawmakers have also limited the scope of anti-discrimination enforcement by establishing a minimum employee threshold for covered companies. For instance, only companies with 15 or more employees are covered by the EEOC’s racial discrimination laws.57 More than two-thirds of states, including those with the highest percentages of Black residents, also have minimum employee thresholds for employment discrimination laws to take effect.58 These thresholds jeopardize the economic well-being of people of color who work for smaller employers, such as domestic workers, service workers, and some agricultural workers.

While legislation alone cannot prevent bias, the persistent underfunding of enforcement agencies and exemptions for small companies result in limited accountability for employers that abuse and exploit their workers based on race. Ample evidence demonstrates that racial discrimination in employment and wages remains rampant more than 50 years after the passage of landmark civil rights legislation. In fact, studies show that hiring discrimination against Black people has not declined in decades.59 White applicants are far more likely to be offered interviews than Black and Latinx applicants, regardless of educational attainment, gender, or labor market conditions.60 Full names often attributed to white Americans are estimated to provide the equivalent advantage of eight years of experience.61 Surveys show that more than half of African Americans, 1 in 3 Native Americans, 1 in 4 Asian Americans, and more than 1 in 5 Latinos report experiencing racial discrimination in hiring, compensation, and promotion considerations.62

Employment discrimination perpetuates inequality in economic well-being, especially for Black people. Over the past 40 years, Black workers have consistently endured an unemployment rate approximately twice that of their white counterparts.63 Black households have also experienced 25 percent to 45 percent lower median incomes than their white counterparts, and these disparities persist regardless of educational attainment and household structure.64 In 2017 alone, the median income for Black and Latinx households was $40,258, compared with $68,145 for white households.65 In fact, in 99 percent of U.S. counties, Black boys will go on to make less in adulthood than their white neighbors with comparable backgrounds.66