The Anatomy of Creating a New Legal Discipline in Which Intersectionality is Integral: Teaching Employers to Accept the Importance of Workplace Discrimination and Understanding the Connection Between the Intersectionality Messages We Receive and How

The Author created the first law course in the country for colleges of business that taught business students how to recognize and work to avoid the genesis of workplace discrimination legal claims that lawyers are then called upon to handle, many of which are firmly rooted in intersectionality. That is, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 violations and employer liability. This led to her creating the earliest iteration of what we now know as Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB). In doing so, she had to explore how workplace decisions are made, which led to the realization that it was inevitable that intersectionality would be an integral part of the course and DEIB presentations if students and training attendees were to know how to recognize and avoid costly liability for virtually totally avoidable violations of the law. So much so that the issue was not even up for discussion. She co‑authored the first employment law textbook that became an immediate discipline leader and thirty years later is in its 11th edition, and still number one in its field. The course became the basis of an academic discipline now taught around the world, with intersectionality underpinning it throughout.