Washington, D.C. to Expand Antidiscrimination Protections to Include Independent Contractors and Homeless Individuals

Efficient October 1, 2022, an modification to the District of Columbia’s Human Rights Act (“the Act”) will develop the universe of employees protected below the Act, in addition to codify office harassment as an illegal discriminatory follow.

First, the modification expands the Act’s definition of a protected “worker” to now additionally embrace people “working or searching for work as an impartial contractor” in addition to unpaid interns. Nevertheless, the modification states that an impartial contractor for functions of the Act “doesn’t imply a service vendor who gives a discrete service to a person buyer.”

Subsequent, the modification provides “homeless standing” to the Act’s listing of protected courses in employment, in addition to with regard to public lodging, housing and different functions. As such, the amended Act will present that an employer might not “fail or refuse to rent, or to discharge, any particular person; or in any other case discriminate in opposition to any particular person, with respect to his or her compensation, phrases, situations, or privileges of employment” on the idea of an worker or applicant’s “precise or perceived” standing as homeless. For functions of the amended Act, homelessness is outlined in accordance with the town’s Homeless Service Reform Act as “a person or household that lacks a set, common, and ample nighttime residence.”

Lastly, the modification expressly gives that “[i]t shall be an illegal discriminatory follow to have interaction in harassment” on the idea of any protected attribute below the Act. The modification describes these modifications as “make clear[ing] and enhanc[ing] protections in opposition to office harassment.”

The modification defines harassment as “conduct, whether or not direct or oblique, verbal or nonverbal, that unreasonably alters a person’s phrases, situations, or privileges of employment, or has the aim or impact of making an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work setting.” The modification additionally features a listing of non-exhaustive components to be thought-about in figuring out whether or not challenged conduct constitutes illegal harassment, together with:

• the frequency of the conduct;

• the length of the conduct;

• the situation of the conduct;

• whether or not the conduct concerned threats, slurs, epithets, stereotypes, or humiliating or degrading conduct; and

• whether or not any get together to the conduct held a place of formal authority or casual energy relative to a different get together.

We are going to proceed to watch and report on additional developments relating to this modification as soon as it goes into impact. Within the meantime, D.C. employers ought to overview and, as needed, replace their present anti-discrimination insurance policies to make sure that they precisely mirror these expanded protections below the Act.