This timely and controversial book presents powerful theoretical and empirical arguments for the repeal of the anti-discrimination laws within the workplace. Richard Epstein demonstrates that these laws set one group against another, impose limits on freedom of choice, unleash bureaucratic excesses, mandate inefficient employment practices, and cause far more invidious discrimination than they prevent. Epstein urges a return to the now-rejected common law principles of individual autonomy that permit all persons to improve their position through trade, contract, and bargain, free of government constraint.

"Epstein has convinced me…that the abuses of the anti-discrimination laws are so intimately connected with misconceptions in the laws themselves that any benefits from them will always be far outweighed by the harm they do." - Wall Street Journal

"Forbidden Grounds covers not only laws on racial discrimination but also sex discrimination, age discrimination and disability discrimination. Never has the whole range of anti-discrimination laws been subjected to such a thorough and penetrating critique. No one who writes on this subject again can be taken seriously if he [or she] does not confront the analysis presented here by Epstein." - Forbes