Sex stereotyping & sexual discrimination under Title VII

The law today views these three hypothetical examples of sexual discrimination very differently. The first female attorney generally will be protected by Title VII, while the same may be argued for the second male attorney for comparable reasons, although no such case has ever been tested in the courts. Meanwhile, discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation clearly has not been seen as in violation of Title VII by the courts.

This research examines some of the history of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and charts how the federal law has been defined by the courts. The basis for distinguishing the application of Title VII between sexual stereotypes and sexual orientation will also be scrutinized.

Title VII was added to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by Representative Howard Smith of Virginia as a political tactic intended to defeat the amendment. Title VII provides, in part, that:

"(a) It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer:

. . .
against sexual orientation discrimination. It is certainly true that congressional intent is one valid indicator for the courts to consider when applying the law to concrete circumstances. Congressional intent has long been a useful device for the courts in interpreting laws. But in this situation, it can reasonably be argued that the principle of congressional intent is being taken to unjustifiable extremes. There are three reasons why the courts may have overstated congressional intent when it comes to the sex discrimination provision of Title VII. First, the only clearly evident record of congressional intent on the sex discrimination provision is that it was intended as a "joke," with the explicit purpose of leading to the defeat of Title VII. The author of the provision thought it would be absolutely preposterous to afford civil rights protections on the basis of gender. (The author made no mention of sexual orientation; he mentioned only women.) Despite the fact that the intention of the provision was to mock Title VII in its entirety with such an "absurd" civil rights protection, the courts have turned the intention of the author on its head and ruled that Congress intended to prohibit gender-based discrimination in serv
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2666
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)

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