Fifty Years Later: The Legacy of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

Abstract

This paper assesses the legacy of the Civil Rights Act over the past 50 years, reviewing its history, scope, and impact on wage, employment, and segregation outcomes of the Act's five protected classes. In addition to improving outcomes for protected classes, the Act launched a period of expanded civil rights legislation and established a framework that allows expansion of coverage through judicial interpretation without requiring passage of new laws. Applications include prohibiting sexual harassment as a form of sex discrimination and protection against color discrimination separately from race discrimination, which may be increasingly salient with increased immigration and with a multirace population.