Equal Rights Center

The ERC is a civil rights organization that identifies and seeks to eliminate unlawful and unfair discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodations in its home community of Greater Washington, D.C. and nationwide. The ERC’s core strategy for identifying unlawful and unfair discrimination is civil rights testing. When the ERC identifies discrimination, it seeks to eliminate it through the use of testing data to educate the public and business community, support policy advocacy, conduct compliance testing and training, and, if necessary, take enforcement action. The ERC began as the Fair Housing Council of Greater Washington in 1983. Joined by the Fair Employment Council of Greater Washington in the ERC expanded the scope of its programs to include discrimination in both the workplace as well as in public accommodations. In 2005, the ERC expanded again, joined by the Disability Rights Council and its membership, to grow its programs protecting the civil rights of persons with disabilities. Today, the ERC has thousands of members located in every state and the District of Columbia.