Legislation around transgressive behavior in California is consistent with the state’s overall cultural perspectives. New protected classifications are often added as legislators tune in to concerns within the culture at large about ways in which people may be treated unfairly. The general attitude on the West Coast, and especially in California, places a value on rugged individualism and the rights of self-expression and personal determination. That cultural perspective underlies a good deal of the workplace protections that the state enacts.

In contrast, US federal legislative standards around transgressive behavior reflect the lowest common denominator on which political representatives from most states can agree. Even though bills are regularly introduced in Congress to expand protections against various types of transgressive behavior at work, those proposals face fierce opposition. Partisan politics among legislators doesn’t help. As a result, the laws concerning transgressive behavior rarely change on the federal level.

Any changes generally occur as the federal courts expand the definition or understanding of a traditional category of protection. An example of this is the fairly recent expansion of a workplace protection based on “sex” to include pregnancy, sexual orientation, and gender identity.

As a result, legislation at the federal level mirrors the cultural perspectives of the more conservative states in the union. That is the reason, I believe, that much legislative activity impacting employment takes place on the state and local levels to fill a void on the federal level.

This piece features in IR Global‘s The Visionaries. Read the full publication here.