Complaints filed by employees charging discrimination in the workplace continue to rise. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency charged with enforcing the nation's laws prohibiting employment discrimination, reports that workplace-discrimination lawsuits soared to an unprecedented level of 95,402 in 2008—a 15 percent increase from the previous fiscal year.

Most employers with at least 15 employees are covered by EEOC laws. For age-discrimination cases, the rules apply to employers with 20 or more employees.

The laws apply to all types of work situations, including hiring, firing, promotions, harassment, training, wages and benefits. Bob Gregg, a partner in Boardman Law Firm, writes a monthly column on diversity-related legal issues in DiversityInc magazine.

Here is a summary of major federal antidiscrimination statutes.

Civil Rights Act

The main federal antidiscrimination law is the Civil Rights Act of 1964, commonly referred to as Title VII, which was substantially amended by the Civil Rights Act of 1991.

Title VII prohibits an employee from being terminated or being subjected to "an adverse employment action" based on race, age, sex, national origin, religion or marital status. Sexual harassment is a form of sex discrimination and is prohibited by Title VII.

• The Equal Pay Act of 1963 (EPA) protects men and women who perform substantially equal work in the same establishment from sex-based wage discrimination
• The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA) protects workers who are 40 years of age or older
• Title I and Title V of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 prohibit employment discrimination against qualified individuals with disabilities in the private sector and in state and local governments
• Sections 501 and 505 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 prohibit discrimination against qualified individuals with disabilities who work in the federal government
• The Civil Rights Act of 1991 provides monetary damages in cases of intentional employment discrimination

On January 29, 2009, President Barack Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, which further amended the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to establish a new 180-day statute of limitations. The law was named for an Alabama woman who, at the end of a 19-year career as a supervisor in a tire factory, complained that she had been paid less than men in similar positions. The Supreme Court ruled against her, but Congress approved the new law expanding workers' rights to sue. Click here to read more articles on DiversityInc.com about civil rights.

Family & Medical Leave Act (FMLA)

FMLA was among the first acts signed into law by then-President Bill Clinton in 1993. It only applies to companies that employ 50 workers or more. Employees are eligible for family leave if they have worked a minimum of 1,250 hours within the preceding 12-month period. Under the rule, employees are entitled to 12 weeks of unpaid leave (broken up or continuous) in the event of the birth or adoption of a child or a serious illness on the part of the employee or a family member of the employee. In such an event, the employee is entitled to return to his or her original position, or a comparable position, without loss of pay or benefits. The Department of Labor enforces FMLA.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)

The ADA, signed in 1990, was the world's first comprehensive declaration of equality for people with disabilities. Specifically, Title I of the law prohibits employers with 15 or more employees from discriminating against individuals with disabilities when it comes to recruitment, hiring, promotions, training, pay, social activities and other privileges enjoyed by employees who don't have disabilities.

An individual with a disability is defined by the ADA as a person who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities; a person who has a history or record of such impairment; or a person who is perceived by others as having such impairment. The law also requires that employers make affirmative "reasonable accommodations" in the workplace to facilitate employment of a person with a disability, provided the accommodation does not result in an "undue hardship" on the employer. Click here to read more articles about the ADA and disability on DiversityInc.com.

The Pregnancy Discrimination Act

This law requires employers to treat pregnancy in the same manner as any other short-term disability. If an employer grants some combination of paid and unpaid leave to an employee with a short-term disability, that employee must extend the same benefits to a pregnant woman.

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act

Currently, federal law provides legal protection against employment discrimination on the basis of race, gender, religion, national origin, age and disability, but not sexual orientation or gender identity. In 29 states, it is still legal to fire someone based on his or her sexual orientation, and in 38 states, it is still legal to fire someone for being transgender.

Federal legislation known as the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) would address discrimination in the workplace by making it illegal to fire, refuse to hire or refuse to promote an employee based on the person's sexual orientation or gender identity at companies with 15 or more employees. The legislation was introduced in the U.S. Senate on Aug. 5, 2009; a House version was introduced on June 24 and the House Education and Labor Committee held a hearing on the measure on Sept. 23.

An estimated 87 percent of Fortune 500 companies currently include sexual orientation in their equal-employment policies, and more than one-third also include gender identity, according to the Human Rights Campaign. To view a list of the companies, visit www.HRC.org/workplace. See more articles in our Affirmative Action department.

Sonia Sotomayor & the Supreme Court

Whether the Supreme Court appointment of Sonia Sotomayor—the nation's first Latina to sit on the high court—influences how the top court interprets the constitutionality of laws regarding the rights and liberties of all Americans remains to be seen. President Barack Obama nominated Sotomayor to the Supreme Court in May 2009 to replace retired Justice David Souter. Sotomayor was officially confirmed by the U.S. Senate in August 2009 by a vote of 68 to 31.

Sotomayor, 54, is the court's 111th justice, the first Latina and only the third woman to ever sit on the nation's highest court. During her confirmation hearing, Sotomayor was roundly criticized for uttering her now-famous "wise Latina woman" line at a diversity conference in 2001 where she implied that "a wise Latina woman, with the richness of her experiences," would do more to improve judicial decision making than a comparably wise white-male judge.

Some of Sotomayor's best-known legal opinions during her 17 years as a federal judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit concern workplace-diversity issues and cases relating to racial matters, as well as those relating to students with disabilities.

The Supreme Court recently overturned a 2008 decision Sotomayor had once endorsed when she was a member of the three-judge appeals-court panel. The high-profile case, known as Ricci v. DeStefano, concerned racial discrimination in the workplace. White firefighters in New Haven, Conn., argued that they were the victims of reverse discrimination when the city tossed out the results of a promotion exam they passed because no Black firefighters scored high enough on the test to get promoted. Although New Haven city officials argued that they were afraid of getting sued by Black firefighters if they only promoted the white and Latino firefighters, the high court disagreed and reversed the decision.

In another high-profile case involving classroom discrimination, Sotomayor dissented from the opinion of her fellow appeals-court judges (Gant v. Wallingford Board of Education) and found that race discrimination had occurred when a school "unfairly" demoted a Black student from first grade to kindergarten. And in 2001, she ruled in favor of Marilyn Bartlett, a dyslexic woman who had failed the New York state bar exam five times. Sotomayor agreed that she should get four days instead of the usual two to take the test.