Civil Rights Act of 1964

 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a law that prohibits, or is supposed to prohibit, discrimination based on race, religion, sex, or national origin. The act specifically highlighted 4 specific areas: employment, public accommodations, federally funded programs, as well as voting rights.

The official verbiage around employment in the act reads as follows, “It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer: (1) to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; or (2) to limit, segregate, or classify his employees or applicants for employment in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” This act applies to employers with 15 or more employees, employment agencies, labor organizations, and joint labor management committees.

The next topic that the act addressed was that of public accommodations. The act reads as follows, “all persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, and privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodation, without discrimination or segregation on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin.” The act defines public accommodations as lodging places, restaurants and lunch counters, gas stations, places of entertainment, and retail establishments. The law was meant to stop discrimination in forms of refusing service, segregating or treating customers differently, and applying different terms or conditions of service to certain patrons. The language used in this section of the act was specifically broad in order to address most types of business that are considered “open to the public”.

Title VI of the act states: “No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” This applies to any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance making sure that they are to apply equal access and treatment for all individuals. This was a gigantic deal because this part of the act explicitly deals with schools, hospitals, universities, as well as state and local government agencies.

Key verbiage around voting rights in this act goes as follows: “No person acting under color of law shall fail or refuse to permit any person to vote who is entitled to vote under any provision of federal, state, or local law, nor shall any such person willfully fail or refuse to fully count and report such person’s vote.” The section then goes on to state, “Whenever any person has engaged or there are reasonable grounds to believe that any person is about to engage in any act or practice which would deprive any other person is about to engage in any act or practice which would deprive any other person of any right or privilege secured by section 2,000a-1a or 2,000a-2a of this title, the Attorney General may institute for the United States, or in the name of the United States, a civil action in the appropriate district court of the United States…” The reason for this part of the Civil Rights act is to address the prohibition of preventing qualified individuals from voting, the requirement to now count as well as report all legal votes, as well as addressing the power of the Attorney General to take legal action against voting discrimination. Again, just like in the last section, the verbiage in this section of the act is relatively broad deliberately, in order to prevent various forms of voter suppression.