jquery: when select list value is changes, date field is required

Question

I've got a form and when the status select list is changed, the status effective date needs to be a required field.

function checkStatuses(){    
   $('.status').each(function (){  
      thisStatus = $(this).val().toLowerCase();  
      thisOrig_status = $(this).next('.orig_status').val().toLowerCase();  
      target = $(this).parents('td').nextAll('td:first').find('.datepicker');  

      if ( thisStatus  == thisOrig_status  )  
      {  
         target.val('');  
      }  
      else if( thisStatus == 'production' || thisStatus == 'production w/o appl')
      {
         target.val('<cfoutput>#dateformat(now(), "mm/dd/yyyy")#</cfoutput>').focus();
         alert('The Status Effective Date is required.');
         return false;  
      }  
      else  
      {  
         target.val('<cfoutput>#dateformat(now(), "mm/dd/yyyy")#</cfoutput>');  
         return false;  
      }  
   });  
}

The return false is not preventing my form submitting anyway. The form above is being called by another function like such:

return checkStatuses();