In case you have not seen it, the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission (PHRC) has filed suit against Wells Fargo Bank. The PHRC, which is responsible for enforcing Pennsylvania's anti-discrimination laws, has alleged that Wells Fargo systematically 'reverse redlined' Philadelphia neighborhoods, by concentrating expensive, abusive loans in Philadelphia neighborhoods that have a high percentage of African-American residents.

PHRC Wells Fargo Complaint

Among other things, the Complaint alleges that:

• Respondents underwrite adjustable rate loans for African Americans and Philadelphia’s African American neighborhoods that those borrowers cannot afford.
• Respondents’ pricing sheets show that it targets homes that are more likely to be located in African American neighborhoods for an interest rate increase, and lowers rates for homes that are disproportionately located in white neighborhoods.
• Respondents originate unfair and predatory mortgage loans to African Americans and African American neighborhoods in Philadelphia.
• Publicly available Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data shows that respondents’ high-cost loans are disproportionately provided to African Americans and are located in African American neighborhoods in Philadelphia
• Respondents’ loan officers were given substantial discretion to increase the costliness of mortgage loans and they regularly used this discretion at the expense of African Americans borrowers and borrowers in African American neighborhoods.

This is, of course, a very big deal, and my guess is that will be hearing a lot more about it in the coming months.

Last Monday, some 70,000 Philadelphians participated in the local day of service for Martin Luther King’s. The day- bigger in Philly than anywhere else- is great, because it honors Dr. King by putting people to work in their communities. Of course, in modern times, Dr. King has not only become lionized, but Disney-fied. The” I Have a Dream” speech is now a speech for all people and all political views, including those who have goals directly opposite to King. Are you in pursuit of economic justice? Dr. King is for you! Are you against affirmative action, and school desegregation. Dr. King is for you?

The un-Disneyfied reality is that Dr. King’s last years were pretty rough, as he confronted both the Vietnam War, and general economic oppression. Those battles, he knew, were (and still are) a lot harder to fight than simple de jure segregation. And, those same entrenched issues, including war and the economic devastation of so many neighborhoods and towns in our country, remain.

Today, deprivation still reigns in much of our city and country. In some neighborhoods, unemployment can reach thirty percent or higher. Wait times to see doctors at City Health Centers only increase. Our public schools perform at failing levels. And the statistics for incarceration for communities of color are stunning:

The Department of Justice estimates that the lifetime chance of a Black male going to prison is 32.6%. The lifetime chance for an Hispanic male is 17.2%. By contrast the respective rate for White males is 5.9%.

The rate of incarceration in state prisons and local jails is higher for Blacks than Whites in every single state.

Making matters worse is the reality of what happens on the ground once someone gets a criminal record. In the information age, the vast majority of employers run background checks, and if they see a criminal record, regardless of whether it is has anything to do with the job, regardless of whether the record is a future indicator of anything, they simply turn down the applicant. Forget education. Forget jobs skills. If you have a criminal record, a large, large number of employers simply will not hire you. It is a scarlet letter for life, and it is carried around by a stunning amount of our fellow citizens.

In response to these realities, and the disproportionate effect this has on communities of color, the federal body for anti-discrimination matters- the EEOC- issued a policy statement, which states that turning away job applicants because of a blanket policy about criminal records is “unlawful under Title VII in the absence of a justifying business necessity.” In other words, you cannot simply say “we will not hire people with criminal records,” because to do so has a disproportionate impact on communities of color, who are disproportionately incarcerated.

While that federal policy is good- the reality is that most of the anti-discrimination employment issues in Philly and Pennsylvania do not go through the EEOC. Instead, they go through our state anti-discrimination body, the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission (PHRC). So, doing its part, the PHRC has released a proposed policy guidance (still available for comment) that will deal with this all head on.

In effect, the PHRC is proposing that if you simply use criminal records to turn people away, without a bonafide reason for using that blanket policy, you will be presumed to be carrying out a policy that has a disparate impact on communities of color. In the world of discrimination law, an employer could still then beat that presumption, but, the burden would be on the employer, not on the person turned away for the job. This is hugely important stuff, because it would mean that instead of using that scarlet letter to shut off avenues to jobs for such a big part of our population, they would have to really consider whether such a broad brush policy is sensible. It would, without question, curtail the use of those internet background checks (which are often wrong) as a first step screening tool.

People dealing with criminal records is one of the bigger civil rights issues of our generation. The fact is that if you are born with a certain skin color, you are far more likely to go to jail. (And get a poor education.) And that record, and everything that comes with it, has become an impossible barrier for far too many people. Mayor Nutter understood this when he created an Office of Re-entry. I know Seth Williams knows this, given everything he has campaigned on. But, when employers have blanket exclusions on hiring, and that exclusion hits on such large parts of our population, they are swimming against the tide. That is why I think it is so important that the PHRC is proposing to do its part too.

We all have to take responsibility for the deprivation, the discrimination, the poor education and the incarceration that falls so heavily on certain segments of our population. This is one hugely important step.