"When litigation is the only way to justice..."

 

 

Discrimination

Despite popular belief, it is perfectly legal for am employer to discriminate against employees based on a wide variety of characteristics. In order to have a legal claim for discrimination, you must have suffered some type of adverse employment action (not being hired, being fired, passed over for promotion, given a bad shift or assignment, etc) based on your age, ancestry, national origin, race, religion, color, disability, marital status, gender, sexual orientation, pregnancy, certain medical conditions, or because you reported some illegal or unsafe working conditions. It you are fired for a illegal discriminatory reason, typically, it is called a wrongful termination suit. A discrimination lawsuit, however, can be filed even if you are not terminated.

Basics legal discrimination

The first thing that you need to determine is whether you were illegally discriminated against. That is, it is perfectly legal for an employer to treat its employees differently than each other. The dictionary definition of discrimination is simply the "treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit." As such, any time an employer makes a decision based on anything other than pure merit, it is likely a case of legal discrimination. That is, an employer can promote someone else because they smile more than you even if you do a better job, make more sales, work harder, and work more hours. An employer can promote someone else because they are a Los Angeles Lakers fan and you like the New York Knicks. An employer can treat the employees of one department differently than it treats employees in different department. That is, it can give all employees of the Sales department a yearly bonus while at the same time telling the Production department that the company has no money to pay bonuses.

Simply because a company lies to you does not automatically make it illegal discrimination. That is, the boss can tell you that "You didn't get the promotion because your sales were just not high enough" when in fact you were the top sales person in the company. This will be perfectly legal if the real reason you didn't get the promotion is because it was given to the boss' golfing buddy. On the other hand, it will be illegal if the real reason you didn't get the promotion was that you over 55 years old and the company wanted a much younger person in the position. As such, a company typically lies when it is discriminating against an employee, but this does not mean that every time a company lies to an employee that it is a case of illegal discrimination.

Illegal Discrimination

Illegal discrimination only occurs when the real reason for the disparate treatment is because of your age, ancestry, national origin, race, religion, color, disability, marital status, gender, sexual orientation, pregnancy, certain medical conditions, or because you reported some illegal or unsafe working conditions. These attributes are referred to as "protected characteristics" and people who are subject to protection are known as members of a "protected class." Of course, these words are used in the context of the type of discrimination at issue in the case because everyone is a member of one "protested class" or another. That is, it is just as illegal to demote and employee because she is an 55 year old lesbian female diagnosed with cancer as it is to demote an employee because he is a healthy 30 year old Caucasian male. It is simply that there are very few lawsuit for the latter, so young white heterosexual males are not traditionally thought of as being members of a "protected class." However, this type of reverse discrimination is just as illegal as any other type of discrimination.

 

   
This website only provides general information about legal services and overtime laws in California and is not meant to be legal advice and does not serve to establish an attorney-client relationship. Any statements, on this page or elsewhere, are not guarantees of any outcome. Michael Tracy is a licensed attorney only in California.