Title 7 states that employers must eliminate discrimination in the workplace. If they receive a complaint and fail to side with the complainer, the complainer by complain to the government, who will look to see who was most likely right. Employers are not punished for firing the accused, but they can be severely punished for not firing the accused. The Obama administration was known to side with the accuser. So, employers learned to simply fire the accused unless they had a very strong case to prove innocence. The statute of limitations also is very long. Despite what looks like a powerful law to favor accusers, many accusers say they are afraid. Indeed, many lost their jobs if they complained. If you flip a coin, both sides are afraid of losing. Many want a government agency to take care of adjudication, so that employers don't have to be involved, and accusers can feel safe reporting to a non-biased agency. However, that agency likely will be appointed by the president. Politics will enter. Republican presidents will have agents who want proof, and Democratic presidents will appoint agents who will always convict the accused without any proof, breaking apart companies without their being able to keep their good employees. So what solution is best? Does Title 7 need to be re-examined? If so, how? Also, many states have laws that if an employee is fired because they are accused of sexual harassment, the employer must report it to the next one, and the next employer can be held responsible if that employee is accused of a new crime. But the employee does not have a right to a fair trial because the first employer is a private company. Their life is simply ruined, and the company covers their own butts. The employee could sue the government directly, saying that these laws have the effect of removing due process, which even though in a private setting, is the direct result of the government order. I wonder if that would win.
Change it so the accuser has to produce proof of their accusations, maybe even require companies to have review boards setup for this purpose. Any person accused of anything should not just summarily lose his job just from an accusation. Without requiring proof anyone can just come up and accuse someone they don't like of anything just to punish them because they don't like them.
Having it internal means the company is just covering itself from lawsuits. So it is easier to get rid of the complainers, aka victims, than it is to get rid of the ones who are doing the abuse. This is due to the dynamics of the situation. The abused is normally a minority. When you side with them it alienates all the people attacking them. As a company who wants to get a job done the easiest thing is to remove the offending person or not hire those who are offensive. Even if you are not particularly prejudice if your employee pool is mostly made up of bigots who do not like working with the occasional other then to get the job done you go with the desires of the bigots because the company 's worried about production not making the world better. So yes you need an outside force to monitor the situation because internal concerns are biased. If you want to make it safe for the others you have to regulate from the outside. You cannot allow the people who are potentially the bigots to be making the rules for employment. They are simply going to find ways to make it harder for the minority.
Title 7 is not the problem. Like you pointed out, the enforcement is the problem. The enforcement changes based on the party in control, but that allows the shift in the American people's political and social opinions to have effect without having to change laws. There are consequences for voting a particular party into power. If the American people vote for a conservative or liberal then they, as an extension of their vote, are agreeing to be governed in that way.
One of the amendments that came after the 10th explicitly gives Congress the authority to pass legislation against discrimination on the basis of race. Sex is not mentioned, but the federal government withholding payments from entities that don't enforce that too does not seem to have been challenged, at least not with a strong enough argument. Companies would have legal standing to challenge that, but they would be up against the rational basis test, which is hard to defeat. The interstate commerce clause does let the federal government regulate businesses that do interstate commerce, which has been interpreted very broadly. Since they only need a rational basis for their law to survive after showing it affects interstate commerce, that too can give the feds authority for Title 7, since it only affects businesses. The best shot at striking it down is to say that by coercing companies into denying due process to employees, the government is in effect denying the employees due process and thus acting unconstitutionally, even though the companies are private. The guy losing his job would likely be the only one with standing to make the lawsuit, and would have to sue the federal government directly over the constitutionality of how Title 7 is enforced. Each presidential administration provides different guidance, and Obama's would have been easiest to strike down. Specifically, the claim that the government will do their own investigation, and that if they think the guy is more likely than not guilty, the company will pay, but if they find him wrongly fired, the company does not pay. Obamas said they will use a preponderance standard to determine if the company was using a preponderance standard. That makes the company very biased against the accused, denying him an impartial trier of fact, and all due to the guidance around Title 7. However, what guy will sue the feds for a chance that once the guidance is changed, the company might rule differently? There are so many other weapons working against him that it would seem futile, which is part of why no one has bothered, even if they knew that is what they must do. I was hoping Bill Orielly would launch such a law suit, but even he would rather get on with his life, pay people off, and get back to making money. The Trump administration has not changed any of this. Even if he does, the next democrat will change it right back.
