united-states discrimination prosecutorial-discretion sex-discrimination
Can a discrimination act be a charge filed by a prosecutor?
<p>Can a discrimination, e.g. based on gender, race or age, charge be filed by a prosecutor or a prosecutor's office in the US?</p>

<p>&quot;Charge&quot; conventionally refers to a formal accusation of an offense which leads to criminal prosecution. It is a prosecutor who would file such a charge. The next question is whether there are criminal offenses subsumed under the rubric of anti-discrimination laws. There are a lot of anti-discrimination laws: numerous types at the federal, state and municipal level and different domains of discrimination (employment, public accommodation, education, voting...). Anti-discrimination laws generally describe civil consequences resulting from impermissible discrimination, not criminal penalties. <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/52/10308" rel="nofollow noreferrer">52 USC 10308a</a>, part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, provides criminal penalties for anyone who (attempts to)
deprive any person of any right secured by section 10301-10304 or 10306. 10301 is the provision that people cannot be denied the right to vote on the basis of race of color. That is an example of a form of discrimination that can result in criminal charges, which are filed by a prosecutor. There is a broad class of criminal laws, the <a href="https://www.justice.gov/crt/hate-crime-laws" rel="nofollow noreferrer">hate crime laws</a>, for example  it a crime to (threaten to) use force to interfere with housing rights based on race, color, religion, sex, disability, familial status, or national origin: but not age (it would be a different, non-federal crime). In all of these cases, it not bare discrimination, but discrimination in committing a crime.</p>
<p>Civil actions based on violation of anti-discrimination laws are often undertaken by the city attorney, attorney general of a state, or US Department of Justice. They may have various names such as &quot;District Attorney&quot;, &quot;State's Attorney&quot;, &quot;County Prosecutor&quot;, and there isn't a strict segregation between the attorneys who prosecute criminal cases for the government and those who do other kinds of legal work. So a prosecutor would be the lawyer who files a discrimination action against someone.</p>
