The BE HEARD in the Workplace Act is comprehensive workplace protection legislation that expands anti-discrimination and anti-harassment protections across federal employment law. The bill lowers the employer size threshold for discrimination protections from 15 employees to just 1 employee, extends protections to independent contractors, interns, and volunteers, and broadly defines workplace harassment to include conduct based on sex (including sexual orientation and gender identity), race, religion, national origin, disability, age, and other protected characteristics—allowing single incidents to qualify and requiring employers to be liable if they were negligent in allowing harassment. The legislation increases damages available to discrimination victims by removing caps on compensatory awards and extending the same remedies to age discrimination cases as other civil rights claims, while prohibiting mandatory arbitration agreements and nondisclosure clauses that prevent workers from reporting harassment or pursuing legal action. The bill also raises the minimum wage for tipped employees gradually to match the standard federal minimum wage, requires the EEOC to provide free compliance resources to small businesses within one year, establishes federal contractor compliance requirements including labor law disclosure, creates a federal worker advocacy system to investigate discrimination complaints, and authorizes funding for legal assistance grants to help low-income workers facing employment disputes.
Take Action
Your position
Add a comment
to comment on this bill.
Annotate the text
Highlight any passage on the Summary or Full Text tab to attach a note. Annotations appear on the Annotations tab.