Employment Discrimination

Discrimination in the Library Workforce

The LeRoy C. Merritt Humanitarian Fund was established in 1970 as a special trust in memory of Dr. LeRoy C. Merritt. It is devoted to the support, maintenance, medical care, and welfare of library workers who, in the Trustees’ opinion, are:

  • Denied employment rights or discriminated against on the basis of gender, sexual orientation, race, color, creed, age, disability, or place of national origin;
  • Denied employment rights because of defense of intellectual freedom; that is, threatened with loss of employment or discharged because of their stand for the cause of intellectual freedom, including promotion of freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and the freedom of librarians to select items for their collections from all the world’s written and recorded information.

The Merritt Fund is governed by a board of three trustees who are elected by donors of the Fund.  For more information, please visit the Merritt Fund website.

Additional Resources

The following list of resources was developed in conjunction with the panel "How Do I Know It's Discrimination", presented at ALA Annual Conference 2005 and hosted by the ALA Office for Diversity, Literacy and Outreach Services and the ALA-Allied Professional Association. Neither the ALA or the ALA-APA endorse the resources on this website.

General

  • General Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Inc.
    http://www.clccrul.org
    The Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Inc. is the public interest law consortium of Chicago's leading law firms. The Chicago Lawyers' Committee has four major projects: the Fair Housing Project, the Community Economic Development Law Project, the Employment Opportunity Project and the Project to Combat Bias Violence.
  • Commission on Human Relations (City of Chicago)
    https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/cchr.html
    The Commission on Human Relations (CCHR) investigates complaints to determine whether discrimination may have occurred within the city of Chicago in the areas of housing, employment, credit, bonding, and public accommodations.
  • LeRoy C. Merritt Humanitarian Fund (American Library Association)
    http://www.merrittfund.org/
    The LeRoy C. Merritt Humanitarian Fund was established in 1970 as a special trust in memory of Dr. LeRoy C. Merritt. It is devoted to the support, maintenance, medical
    care, and welfare of librarians who, in the Trustees’ opinion, are:
    - Denied employment rights or discriminated against on the basis of gender, sexual orientation, race, color, creed,age, disability, or place of national origin;
    - Denied employment rights because of defense of intellectual freedom
  • National Employment Lawyers Association
    http://www.nela.org
    The National Employment Lawyers Association advocates for employee rights and workplace fairness while promoting the highest standards of professionalism, ethics
    and judicial integrity. Its membership numbers 3000, and there is a search feature to find local lawyers with this specialty.
  • National Workrights Institute
    http://www.workrights.org/index.html
    The National Workrights Institute is a non-profit organization based in Princeton, NJ. We believe that all workers are entitled to their rights in the workplace. NWI is a member-supported organization.
  • Office of Civil Rights
    http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/aboutocr.html
    The Office for Civil Rights handles cases of discrimination in issues such as discipline, racial harassment, and denial of language services to national origin minority students who are English language learners. OCR enforces several Federal civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination in programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance from the Department of Education. Civil rights laws enforced by OCR extend to all state education agencies, elementary and secondary school systems, colleges and universities, vocational schools, proprietary schools, state vocational rehabilitation
    agencies, libraries, and museums that receive U.S. Department of Education funds.
  • The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
    http://www.eeoc.gov/
    The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) was established by the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and began operating on July 2, 1965.  The mission of the EEOC is to promote equal opportunity in employment through administrative and judicial enforcement of the federal civil rights laws and through
    education and technical assistance. The EEOC enforces the principal federal statutes prohibiting employment discrimination.

Workplace Fairness

  • http://www.workplacefairness.org
    This resource-rich site gives information about protected classes, as well as protection against language and marital status discrimination. It makes recommendations for how
    to determine if a case should be filed. The site gives state-specific instructions for filing and has a comprehensive directory of resources.

Age

  • AARP - Age Discrimination at Work
    http://www.aarp.org/
    AARP offers a complete guide to what to do and where to go for help for those who believe they have experienced age discrimination. Also features an outline of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), and a great list of related links, resources, and suggested reading.

Disabilities/Medical/Genetic

  • Americans With Disabilities Act
    https://www.ada.gov/
    This site features a full range of services including enforcement information, mediation, consultation and technical assistance.
  • American Association of People with Disabilities
    http://www.aapd.org/
    This is the largest national nonprofit cross-disability member organization in the United States. AAPD works in coalition with other disability organizations for the full implementation and enforcement of disability nondiscrimination laws, particularly the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

Sexual Orientation

  • Human Rights Campaign Foundation
    http://www.hrc.org/
    This site features the HRC Workplace Project that monitors and reports on federal, state and local legislative, judicial and corporate activities that affect equal rights for LGBTQ+ workers. Also features news on the LGBTQ+  employment front, interactive tools for information on specific state and regional policies, and frequently asked questions.

Gender

  • Legal Momentum: Advancing Women’s Rights (formerly National Organization for Women Legal Defense and Education Fund)
    http://www.legalmomentum.org/
    Legal Momentum pursues litigation and legislative reform to eliminate discrimination in employment and housing faced by victims of gender-based violence. We seek to protect and advance the constitutional and statutory rights of women under domestic law, and to expand those rights by incorporating principles embodied in international human rights laws; to educate judges, prosecutors and other justice personnel in order to end gender bias in the courts; to support qualified, unbiased judicial nominees and oppose those who fail to meet these fundamental criteria; and to improve access to justice and economic opportunity for immigrant women.
  • National Women’s Law Center
    http://www.nwlc.org/
    The Center uses the law in all its forms: getting new laws on the books and enforced; litigating ground-breaking cases in state and federal courts all the way to the Supreme
    Court; and educating the public about ways to make the law and public policies work for women and their families. We give special attention to the needs of low-income
    women and their families.

Unions

Wages

  • National Commission on Pay Equity
    http://www.pay-equity.org/
    The National Committee on Pay Equity (NCPE), founded in 1979, is a coalition of women's and civil rights organizations; labor unions; religious, professional, legal,
    and educational associations, commissions on women, state and local pay equity coalitions and individuals working to eliminate sex- and race-based wage discrimination and to achieve pay equity.

Legal and Human Resource Web Sites

 

For questions about information appearing on this web page or for more information on any of the Office for Diversity, Literacy and Outreach Services programs, please direct comments to diversity@ala.org!