“This was a transformative year for our agency. We received an unprecedented number of inquiries from the public, began enforcement of new civil rights laws, and expanded our outreach efforts to new issues and communities.”
- Director Mónica Palacio
OHR's fiscal year 2015 was marked by the enforcement of new laws, a substantial increase in the number of discrimination cases docketed and innovative policy and outreach work. with The agency saw a 113 percent increase in the number of discrimination cases docketed, mostly attributable to our enforcement of the Fair Criminal Record Screening Amendment Act ("ban the box") beginning in December 2014. Our Highlights of Fiscal Year 2015 report provides details of these cases and others, and looks into the proactive work of the agency. Highlights include:
- OHR docketed 1,075 cases, with 633 alleging a violation of the Human Rights Act, 365 a violation of the Fair Criminal Record Screening Amendment Act, 68 a violation of the DC Family and Medical Leave Act, and nine a violation of the Language Access Act;
- Disability, race and sex were the most commonly listed protected traits of our docketed cases;
- 48 percent of cases we mediated were settled successfully at that stage;
- $3.69 million was awarded to complainants through settlements via mediation;
- 84 reports of non-compliant single-stall gendered bathrooms were reported through our #SafeBathroomsDC campaign;
- Our Qualified and Transgender testing report found 48 percent of businesses tested appeared to prefer a less-qualified cisgender applicant over a more qualified transgender or gender non-conforming applicant;
- More than 1700 participants including employees from 46 businesses registered for our "End the Awkward: Focus on the Person, Not the Disability" campaign;
- 1,325 District government employees were trained by our Language Access team; and
- More than 200 people participated in train-the-trainer sessions using our "Bullying Prevention & Intervention in DC Educational Institutions" training toolkit.
We are proud to share these numbers - and our Highlights of Fiscal Year 2015 report - with you. We appreciate your support of our work, and will continue to fight to end discrimination in the District.
Download the report: