Creating A Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair Act of 2022
Floor Speech
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Mr. JORDAN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Joe Biden inherited a relatively stable and calm world, and in 14 months, we have complete chaos.
Think about last summer. Think about that video last summer where you had people trying to jump on the wheel of the plane as it was taking off in Afghanistan, that situation there, the debacle that was the exit from Afghanistan. Think about what is going on in Ukraine today.
Here at home, in 14 months, we went from a secure border to complete chaos, over 2 million illegal immigrants coming into this country in 1 year.
We went from relatively safe streets to record levels of crime in every major urban area in the country. We went from stable prices to record-high inflation, 40-year-high inflation. We went from energy independence to $5 a gallon gas and the President of the United States begging Iran and Venezuela to increase production. In 14 months, from stability to chaos.
Today, what are the Democrats bringing to the floor? A bill that is titled Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair Act of 2022. That is what we are focused on today.
How about a world where gas prices aren't $5 a gallon? How about a world where you can actually walk safely on your streets and not have record levels of crime? How about a world where inflation isn't at a 40-year high? How about a world where we are actually energy independent? Those are the issues we should be focused on.
But Democrats today, Friday, March 18, 2022, with chaos all over the place, this is what they are focused on.
Madam Speaker, as the chairman of the Judiciary Committee just said, we have civil rights laws that cover any kind of discrimination. It is covered. It is wrong if it happens. But this is what the Democrats are focused on. Fourteen months of chaos, and we are doing a bill on hair.
I think the American people expect more from their Congress, expect more from their elected Representatives, and I hope we can actually focus on the things that matter to the American people.
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Mr. JORDAN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Speaker, the majority leader just said that the bill is not about hair; the bill is about discrimination.
I would say he is wrong on both counts because disparate treatment cannot be based on race, color, national origin. That is already the law. That is constitutional.
So, he is wrong on that statement, and the bill is definitely about hair. Here is the title of the bill: Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair. So, he is wrong on both counts. So, the bill is about hair.
What the bill is not about is dealing with the crazy energy situation we find ourselves in today. The bill is not about opening up ANWR. The bill is not about increasing domestic production of energy so we don't have $5 gas.
The bill is not about dealing with the inflation problem, the 40-year high inflation problem that this country faces, the problem that is impacting moms and dads and families across this country every single day. The bill is not about that.
It is definitely about hair. It is not about that.
It is not about dealing with the border situation, the 165,000 illegal encounters on the border last month alone. It is not about that. It is not about that.
The majority leader was wrong when he said this bill was not about hair. That is all it is about.
I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Bishop), my friend and a member of the Judiciary Committee.
Mr. BISHOP of North Carolina. Madam Speaker, to Mr. Jordan's point, we are beset with problems.
Two of the most significant are that the Producer Price Index is at 10 percent. We face a cost environment that is unsustainable, and that affects every American's livelihood every time they visit a gas pump or go to the store. We face an employment environment where Americans have been disincentivized to work.
Every time I speak to people in my district--well, it may be different in the last couple of weeks and the latest catastrophes we have seen. But certainly, until then, the leading concern is the availability of people who are inclined to work in order to fulfill job opportunities.
The Judiciary Committee's report on this legislation points out that I and Representative Cliff Bentz from Oregon raised a question about this legislation in the markup, that it may prevent employers from regulating hairstyles for workplace safety reasons.
One of the cases involved, I believe, was about long dreadlocks that could become ensnared in machinery on a workplace floor.
Let me tell you what the Judiciary Committee's report by the majority says is the answer to that problem. They say that concern is misplaced because under the longstanding burden-shifting scheme applied by courts in title VII cases, an employer may defeat a discrimination claim by asserting that workplace safety was a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for taking an adverse employment action against an employee, with the burden then shifting to the employee to prove that the asserted reason was a pretext for discrimination.
Assuming the employee cannot demonstrate that the employer's assertion of workplace safety was pretextual, the employer would prevail against an employment discrimination claim. How extraordinarily comforting.
So, if an employee wants to wear dreadlocks, and an employer is legitimately concerned for the health and safety of the employee, that his scalp might be ripped off by a machine, then the employer can enter into the litigation.
It certainly couldn't be arbitrated. We took care of that yesterday right on the floor of the House. We have to have litigation. We will have expensive lawyers.
We will start, get the complaint filed, the answer filed. Maybe there will be a motion to dismiss that will be denied. We will get into the discovery process. We will send out the interrogatories and the document requests. We will ask for the other occasions where somebody has been fired, examine the processes and the practices of the employer for the last decade.
We will get some experts in. We have got to have some experts to come in and testify to the likelihood that long dreadlocks are going to get caught in the machinery. We will have conflicting experts on each side. They will disagree. Then the court will receive a motion for summary judgment, say if there is enough evidence to submit the case to trial, and the judge will have a 130-page opinion that will examine the burden-shifting scheme and the initial burden, and then the response burden, and the burden shifts to the employee to show pretext.
And the inflation rate creeps higher, and the folks willing to enter into jobs seem to be less and less, and the catastrophes keep coming. But this is the top priority.
I don't think we need to drive lawsuits between Americans. I think, in the main, Americans well understand the rules of the road. As the Judiciary Committee itself reports, courts have generally even recognized that hairstyle, to the extent it is associated with race, as a basis for decisions on employment or the like, is already unlawful. The EEOC's own manual says that discriminating on the basis of, for example, Afros is unlawful.
This bill is another solution to a problem that doesn't exist in any significant scope in this country, and the result being inflation that gets higher, more supply constriction that drives inflation higher, more animosity and obstacles between employees and employers, between merchants and customers to drive more lawsuits to pay more lawyers to make the quality of life in America so much better. That is where we are. That is where we are today on the floor of the House.
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Mr. JORDAN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I just want to point out, the majority leader just 3 minutes ago said the reason the bill is on the floor today is because of the minority. That can't happen. We don't schedule the floor. The reason the bill is on the floor today is because the majority is bringing it to the floor.
I would love to be able to have the power as the minority to bring legislation to the floor because if we could, I tell you what, it wouldn't be this bill. It would be a bill dealing with energy, a bill trying to bring down the price of gasoline, which is at $5 a gallon in some States. It would be a bill trying to deal with the border situation. I wish we could schedule the floor.
Let's hope the American people are going to make a change this fall and put us in a position where we can schedule the floor because if we do, if we get that power, we will focus on those kinds of issues.
The majority leader of the House of Representatives just said the reason the bill is on the floor today is because of the minority. That cannot happen. I wish it could, but it can't. Those are the kind of arguments we are getting.
We should be focused on the issues the American people want us to focus on right now. Families across this country, all families want us to focus on certain things. But not the Democrats. They are going to focus on the hair bill.
Madam Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Bishop).
Mr. BISHOP of North Carolina. Madam Speaker, to the point just made by Mr. Jordan, it does strike me that what is being described, by the majority leader or by the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, is that some courts in the hundreds of Federal courts that we have--I am not even sure they are all Federal they are describing, but I assume so-- have decided that this is not an issue that is covered under one or more of these laws.
But you know what usually happens is, the Congress waits for the court system to work this out to the United States Supreme Court; and when there is a decision there, if the decision is contrary to the intent of Congress, Congress responds.
So again, in terms of picking up something that is unnecessary, that is what the majority is doing. It is not Republicans who bring the bill to the floor. It is not Republicans who pick a fight over something that most wouldn't even disagree about except in circumstances of safety, and then the question becomes one of the degree of burden imposed on employers, whether you want to drive lawsuits.
I was thinking maybe, as Mr. Jordan was speaking, that it would be nice to bring, since the minority can get issues to the floor--I didn't know that. I have been here just since 2019, and we have been in the minority the whole time. I can think of a lot of things we should bring to the floor. We should bring a bill to unleash American energy independence. We really need that right now. Not just a bill cutting off imports from Russia, not just a bill driving prices higher so that Americans will not only be paying $4 and $5, thanks to Joe Biden, at the pump, but they will soon be paying $6, $7, $8 at the pump.
If the minority could bring a bill to the floor, we could bring a bill to the floor that would say let's open up the ability to drill, let's encourage the energy industry in America to produce the energy that the world needs so that prices will be low and that Americans across the board, not just a few who have these extraneous handful of cases out of the whole Federal court system in which the result has not turned out the way we would like it to have turned out, let's worry about the millions and millions of Americans who will soon have to pay $7 or $8 at the pump every day, while it is $4 or $5 now. That is what I would do if the minority could bring something to the floor.
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Mr. JORDAN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I would just--avoiding? It sounds to me like the Democrats are avoiding the issues the American people care about. That is our point. I am focused on what the families in the Fourth District of Ohio come to me and talk to me about. They are talking to me about $5 a gas; guarantee it. My guess it is the same in all your districts as well.
They are talking to me about the border, our southern border that has been complete chaos now for 14 months. They are definitely talking to me about the price of eggs, and milk, and butter, and food at the grocery store, about everything, because we are at a 40-year high inflation.
Avoidance? The people who are avoiding the issues the American people care about are on that side. And to get lectured and using that is so wrong, so out of touch with the American people. Avoiding. You have got to be kidding me. We want to focus on the issues the American people care about. That is the whole darn point.
Madam Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Bishop).
Mr. BISHOP of North Carolina. It is not a question of avoidance. It is a question of priority.
Here is a priority. In 2020, homicides across America increased 30 percent, from 16,500, roughly, to 21,500, an additional 5,000 homicides.
And even if you want to view it through a racial lens, since that seems to be the subject, 55 percent of homicides are suffered by Black Americans, even though they make up 13 percent of the population. Of the increase I just described, Black Americans suffer 65 percent.
So we could have--if the minority were capable of bringing a bill to the floor, we could bring a bill that would address the rising crime in America, the historically exceptional, historically unprecedented, I believe, at least I saw something since maybe 1900 or 1902--I don't know what the circumstances were then. But since then, the most, the highest increase of homicides in a single year in the history of the United States, grossly disproportionately borne by Black Americans. Driven by rhetoric about defunding police. We could prioritize that. That wouldn't be avoidance. And yet, we do not because, indeed, we are in the minority and the priorities are being set not by the minority but the majority.
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Mr. JORDAN. Madam Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. JORDAN. Madam Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. JORDAN. Madam Speaker, for all the reasons we have talked about and what we should be focused on here, I would urge a ``no'' vote on the legislation and hope my colleagues will do the same.
Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. JORDAN. Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
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