Cases

Alexander v. Sandoval, 532 U.S. 275, 121 S. Ct. 1511, 149 L. Ed. 2d 517 (2001)

The holding of this case held that there is no private right of action to enforce disparate-impact regulations promulgated under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. If we want economic equality between all races, we need to make sure that they are protected from racial discrimination. Although the statute mentions only intentional discrimination, unintentional discrimination needs to be taken into consideration as well. Since there are no private actions pursuant to this title of the Civil Rights Act, the government will need to mandate a required minimum wage to protect those employees in the secondary job market. I agree with this Court’s decision since they followed the words in the legislation, but I hope that our government works to properly enforce laws to protect minimum wage employees. Since the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007 was passed after this case was decided, it is safe to say that our government has at least made an attempt to rectify economic equality issues by raising the bar for the minimum wage. There was no bibliography for this case

Lees v. Case-Hoyt Corp., 779 F. Supp. 717 (W.D.N.Y. 1991)

The plaintiff in this case established a prima facie case of wage discrimination by showing that she was paid less than the employer’s other white employees with similar educational backgrounds performing similar jobs. This case showed that even as recently as twenty years ago, and probably still today, certain employers still show racism in the work place. By enacting a nationwide minimum wage, which is higher than the current standard, this would remove the possibility of employers paying employees different minimum wages based on race since there would be a mandatory floor. I agreed with the case holding that there was wage discrimination since the employer was shown to pay employees different amounts based on race. Besides raising the quality of life, a mandatory minimum wage of a higher amount would possibly alleviate racist tendencies of employers by removing their ability to pay certain races extremely low amounts of money well below what they deserve. There was no bibliography for this case