Why does the law address protected class?
Legislators at the federal or state level have established safeguards against discrimination and retaliation for certain groups of people, known as protected classes. While laws concerning everything from elections to work attempt to forbid discrimination against protected classes, the idea of a protected class is most frequently encountered in situations involving constitutional law and civil rights legislation.
There are a number of federal and state statutes that define protected classes. One example is the Civil Rights Act of 1964’s Title VII, which makes it illegal to discriminate against an individual in the workplace because of their race, religion, color, sex, or national origin. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) also provides protections for those with disabilities. In order to stop unfairly keeping people from voting, New York’s Election Law § 17-204 describes a protected class as a class of eligible voters belonging to a color, race, or language minority population.
The idea of a protected class is not the same as the idea of a suspect group, which comes from the Equal Protection Clause. A protected class is one that is specifically protected by law, even though there may be some overlap with a suspect classification.
