Mo. House panel backs workplace discrimination law

Monday, January 23, 2012

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri House panel has endorsed legislation changing the legal standard for proving workplace discrimination and limiting the amount of damages victims could recover in lawsuits.

The measure would require a showing that discrimination was a “motivating factor” — not simply a contributing factor — in an employer’s action against an employee. It would also tie the maximum punitive damages a victim could recover in a lawsuit to the size of the employer.

Monday’s committee vote sends the bill to the full House. Senate leaders have indicated their chamber could take up a similar measure as early this week.

Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon vetoed similar legislation last year, saying it would have rolled back decades of civil rights progress.

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Workplace Discrimination bill is HB 1219

Online:

Missouri House: http://house.mo.gov

More like this story

hkchas 1 year, 4 months ago

That's good, then employers could discriminate against employees with no worries .....

JCLifer 1 year, 4 months ago

It is a business-friendly policy. Afterall, businesses put these people into office, not voters.

gofish 1 year, 4 months ago

The more our legislature guts out the value of the human being, the employee, the senior citizen, the disabled, the student, in favor of the elite, the closer I am to pulling up stakes and moving to a citizen friendly state. Missouri is pro-business and pro-corporate agriculture, but the average citizen that is the backbone is nothing more than a replaceable pawn. Other states may have higher taxes, but they also pay higher wages. I'm sick of living in this draconian environment where the average employee's life is stripped to the bone while greed and excess are the rule of the day for big business. This is what the occupy movement is about. People are sick of having corporate excess balanced on the backs of the common man. Meanwhile down at the capitol, legislators will be eating their free lunch, paid for by lobbyists.

asb 1 year, 4 months ago

You Go Fish, well said!

Gabrielle 1 year, 4 months ago

gofish: Do you equate 'the average citizen' and 'the common man' with individual?

gofish 1 year, 4 months ago

Yes. You, me, the collective individuals that make up the state. Governments and corporations are bureaucracies. They don't care, they don't feel, and they don't love. They are self serving entities whose sole mission is to further their own existence. This is almost always done at the expense of the individual.

Sequoia 1 year, 4 months ago

Not to nitpick (ok...to nitpick), only a government has bureaucracies. I think the word to describe both governments and corporations is "institutions."

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