Employment Discrimination

Employment discrimination is an upsetting and confusing experience. People who have been discriminated against often feel isolated and powerless, and often assume that there is nothing that they can do about it. If you have been discriminated against by your employer, it is important to know that you are not alone, and you can take action. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reports that each year there are over seventy-five thousand discrimination charges filed against employers. So if you have suffered from employment discrimination, know that you are not alone, and you can take action.

Employment discrimination can take many forms, and can occur against many different types of people. In order to count as illegal, the discrimination must be on the basis of some characteristic or class protected by law. Protected classes include people with disabilities, people over 40, and people who have been treated differently because of their race or national origin, their sex, or their religion. Discrimination based on sexual orientation is sometimes also prohibited, depending on local and state laws.

Generally speaking, discrimination can be proven in two ways: disparate treatment, or disparate impact. Disparate treatment is what most people think of when they think of employment discrimination. It happens when an employer overtly mistreats an employee because of their membership in some protected group. If, for example, you are denied a promotion and told that it is because of your race, disparate treatment discrimination has occurred.

But discrimination does not have to be explicit to be illegal. Discrimination can also occur when employers adopt policies that simply result in certain groups of people not being hired or promoted, even if the policy itself does not mention those groups. Say, for example, that an employer requires a high school diploma for manual laborers, and that as a result, members of certain ethnic and racial groups are hired significantly less frequently. If there was no job-related reason to require the degree, then this would be illegal discrimination based on the disparate impact the requirement had on minorities.

If you believe that you have been discriminated against by your employer, it is important that you talk to a lawyer soon. The time for pursuing discrimination claims is very short; often action has to be taken within 180 days of the discriminatory incident. Click on the "Contact" button on the right of your screen so that we can help you protect your rights.