Tag: Workplace Discrimination

Blameless Ignorance? The Ledbetter Act and Limitations Periods for Title VII Pay Discrimination Claims

Jeremy A. Weinberg

In Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. a new act of discrimination occurred and a new limitations period arose each time an employer issued a paycheck to an employee that reflected… Read More »

A Formal Model of Passive Discrimination

Jonah Gelbach & Lesley Wexler & Jonathan Klick

In this Editorial, we present a basic, one-period microeconomic model in which equilibrium occurs in both perfectly competitive labor markets and goods markets. This piece is a companion to our earlier Legal Workshop Editorial, Passive Discrimination, which was posted on June 22, 2009. Because all hypothesized workers are equally productive,… Read More »

Protect Us, Lord, from Title VII: A Response to Gelbach, Klick, and Wexler

Richard A. Epstein - University of Chicago Law School

In their recent article, Passive Discrimination, Jonah Gelbach, Jonathan Klick, and Lesley Wexler (hereafter “GKW”) offer yet another way to pile additional liabilities on hapless employers for race or sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Their article is ingenious because it identifies a mechanism—previously discussed… Read More »

Passive Discrimination

Jonah Gelbach & Lesley Wexler & Jonathan Klick

In this Editorial, we present a distinct mechanism of employer discrimination largely ignored by scholars and regulators alike.  What we term “passive discrimination” involves an employer’s use of wage and benefits packages that exploit observed, systematic group-level preference heterogeneity in order to induce worker sorting such that members of a… Read More »