The Hawaii Civil Rights Commission (“HCRC”) published its Annual Report for fiscal year 2018.  Highlights include:

• A total of 471 employment cases were accepted by the HCRC, a decrease from FY 2017 in which 502 employment complaints were filed.
  
  
• The primary bases[1] most cited were:
  • Disability – 111 cases (23.6%)
  • Age – 91 cases (19.3%)
  • Retaliation – 73 cases (15.5%)
  • Sex – 63 cases (13.4%)
    • 15 cases alleged sexual harassment as the primary basis
    • 18 cases were primarily based on pregnancy
  • Race – 50 cases (10.6%)
  • Ancestry/National Origin – 40 cases (8.5%)
  • Arrest and Court Record – 17 cases (3.6%)
  • Sexual Orientation – 6 cases (1.3%)
  • Religion – 5 cases (1.1%)
  • Domestic or Sexual Violence Victim Status – 1 case (.2%)

• 22 employment cases were brought forward for litigation because an investigation resulted in a recommendation that there was reasonable cause to believe discrimination had occurred.

[1] Although complaints may contain more than one basis for the alleged discriminatory conduct, for statistical purposes, each complaint is identified by only one designated “primary basis.”  For example, if a complaint alleges primarily age discrimination, but also retaliation, it was counted only as an age discrimination case.  Thus, the actual number of allegations is much higher than this data suggests.