Racial discrimination in the Indiana workplace could happen at any point during the relationship between employer and employee. Any time that an employer makes a decision based not on merit but on race, this constitutes a possible violation of federal and Indiana state law. This could even include offenses that happen before an employee is even hired.
Specifically, some employers engage in discriminatory hiring practices. This is a complicated area of employment and civil rights law. The rest of this article should serve as a brief introduction.
Many of the laws on employment discrimination are at the federal level. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission offers the full text of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, one of the most important pieces of anti-discrimination legislation. This act specifically regulates an employer’s refusal to hire a prospective employee.
Indiana enforces these laws and the related state laws through a special commission. According to the Indiana Civil Rights Commission website, this agency investigates claims of civil rights violations and educates the States citizens on their obligations to act fairly towards all people.
The ICRC handles questions from the general public, but those with discrimination questions may want to pursue a less official method first. Additionally, some of the commission’s bureaucratic channels may not be particularly easy to navigate. Therefore, many people perform individual investigations and get advice before submitting evidence of discrimination to the ICRC. This way, the report is more likely to show enough evidence to establish a pattern of race, age or sex discrimination.