[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 123 (Friday, July 31, 2015)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1202]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             RECOGNIZING THE PASSING OF ALFRED W. BLUMROSEN

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON

                      of the district of columbia

                    in the house of representatives

                         Friday, July 31, 2015

  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I rise to ask the House of Representatives 
to join me in honoring Alfred W. Blumrosen, Thomas A. Cowan Professor 
of Law Emeritus, Rutgers School of Law Law School, who died this month, 
for his pioneering work in the development of the nation's equal 
opportunity laws and for his frontier role in the shaping of the Equal 
Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which celebrated its 50th 
year of operation on July 2, 2015.
  The nation is fortunate that Professor Blumrosen's dedication to 
equal rights led him to choose a brand new field of law, equal 
employment law, to which to devote his brilliant mind. When Professor 
Blumrosen was born, in 1928, there were no laws requiring equal 
treatment in the United States. His legacy is work that was 
instrumental in laying the groundwork for modern anti-discrimination 
law.
  Professor Blumrosen inspired generations of law students at Rutgers 
School of Law for almost 50 years. As a public intellectual, his steady 
stream of publications in discrimination and labor law, were matched by 
his work on the ground helping to put new anti-discrimination laws in 
action. Blumrosen's work in both these worlds was cited just last month 
in a dissent in a housing discrimination case, Texas Department of 
Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, by 
Justice Clarence Thomas, who gave Professor Blumrosen credit for the 
development of disparate-impact theory, the most powerful tool used in 
equal opportunity legal work.
  ``Alfred Blumrosen, one of the principal creators of disparate-impact 
liability at EEOC, rejected what he described as a ``defeatist view of 
Title VII'' that saw the statute as a ``compromise'' with a limited 
scope. A. Blumrosen, Black Employment and the Law 57-58 (1971). 
Blumrosen ``felt that most of the problems confronting the EEOC could 
be solved by creative interpretation of Title VII which would be upheld 
by the courts, partly out of deference to the administrators. . . . 
EEOC's guidelines from those years are a case study in Blumrosen's 
`creative interpretation.' Although EEOC lacked substantive rulemaking 
authority it repeatedly issued guidelines on the subject of disparate 
impact.'' . . . EEOC's strategy paid off. The Court embraced EEOC's 
theory of disparate impact, concluding that the agency's position was 
``entitled to great deference.'' See Griggs 401 U.S., at 433-434.
  Professor Blumrosen began his leadership in developing anti-
discrimination law and the EEOC itself as soon as Title VII, the 
employment equal rights section of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, was 
enacted. He was the EEOC's first chief of conciliations, where early 
Title VII law was often made by securing negotiated agreements with 
employers. He was director of federal-state relations, guiding state 
and local anti-discrimination agencies in applying this burgeoning new 
area of law. Although Blumrosen's work in anti-discrimination law was 
particularly prominent at the EEOC, his work with other agencies was 
also important, particularly with the Office of Federal Contract 
Compliance, including his research with that agency to show that so-
called reverse discrimination was uncommon in affirmative action cases. 
He served as special attorney in the Civil Rights Division of U.S. 
Department of Justice. Blumrosen was always generous in lending his 
brilliant mind to develop equal employment law--as counsel to Kaye, 
Scholer, Fierman, Hays and Handler, a New York law firm, and as counsel 
to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 
among others.
  Mr. Speaker, when I chaired the EEOC, Professor Blumrosen was a 
principal advisor on much of my most important work. He was 
particularly instrumental in helping us develop our guidelines on 
Employee Selection Procedures as well as our affirmative action 
guidelines to motivate employers to correct discriminatory patterns 
before they led to liability. Al was on the front lines with me in the 
total reorganization of EEOC operations nationwide to eliminate its 
huge backlog while significantly increasing remedies for complainants 
using negotiated agreements.
  Notwithstanding his groundbreaking law development work in the public 
sector, Professor Blumrosen remained a prolific scholar, whose efforts 
in the field often informed his scholarship. For his essay ``Six 
Conditions for Meaningful Self-Regulation'', he received the Ross Prize 
from the American Bar Association.
  I was fortunate to write the introduction to one of his books, 
coauthored by his late wife, the late Ruth Gerber Blumrosen, Slave 
Nation: How Slavery United the Colonies and Sparked the American 
Revolution. Ruth Blumrosen, a professor of business and an adjunct 
professor of law at Rutgers, often collaborated with her husband. 
Together, they were a formidable team of scholars. Not surprisingly, 
their work in the law also infected their two sons, Steven and 
Alexander, who are both attorneys and legal scholars.
  Mr. Speaker, Alfred Blumrosen spent his professional life as a leader 
on the development of equal opportunity law and in bringing equality to 
the workplace. It is rare that a lawyer or a professor has been able to 
be so influential simultaneously in law development and in 
implementation of one of the nation's most important laws.
  Alfred Blumrosen was fortunate to live to see the 50th anniversary of 
Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 50th anniversary of the 
opening of the EEOC itself just this past July 2. A fair share of both 
of these commemorations belongs to Professor Blumrosen.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask the House of Representatives to join me in 
honoring Alfred K. Blumrosen for a lifetime of productive trailblazing 
work that was instrumental in the creation of equal opportunity law, in 
the invention of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and in 
sparking scholarship in a new field of American law.

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