Fight Employment Discrimination with Employment Discrimination Lawyers
No matter how it shows up or what quality, characteristic, or status is making you a target, employment discrimination is unlawful.
So are the retaliatory and punishing consequences that many employment discrimination victims face when they attempt to put an end to it.
At Consumer Justice Law Firm, we don’t just help enforce your legal rights to end employment discrimination, we help you protect your career and reputation, fight for fair compensation for any harm you suffered, and reclaim your personal power.
Fairness, equity, and justice start here.
In This Guide…
What Is Employment Discrimination?
Employment discrimination is a workplace situation in which someone with decision-making authority or supervisory authority mistreats you based on protected traits or statuses unrelated to your job responsibilities, skills, experience, or performance.
This includes things like age, race, sex, gender, religion, disability status (ADA status), sexual orientation (LGBTQ status), military or veteran status, marital status, pregnancy status, mental health status, medical status, and others.
This mistreatment can include direct, targeted harassment or seemingly neutral policies that have an unfair impact on a single group of people who share certain traits or statuses.
8 Types of Employment Discrimination
Unfortunately, there is a seemingly endless variety of ways that employment discrimination can show up in the workplace. These eight are the most common:
- Direct Harassment. An employer or supervisor targets an employee with mistreatment, exploitation, or abuse due to a trait or status unrelated to job ability or performance.
- A persistent, repetitive pattern of harassment is known as a Hostile Work Environment.
- Permissive Harassment. An employer or supervisor allows colleague, client, customer, or other person to target an employee with mistreatment, exploitation, or abuse due to a trait or status unrelated to job ability or performance.
- Unfair Hiring, Firing, or Promotion Opportunities. An employer or supervisor makes key decisions based on factors unrelated to work performance, experience, outcomes, or similar.
- Unfair Disciplinary Actions. Subjected an employee from a certain group or demographic to harsher penalties and more severe consequences for similar disciplinary matters.
- Sexual Harassment. An employer or supervisor targets an employee with sexual demands, comments, and hostilities. Permitting someone else to engage in sexual harassment is also unlawful. See our Workplace Sexual Harassment page for more info.
- Failure to Provide Reasonable Accommodations. Employees with a qualified disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) have a right to reasonable accommodations in the workplace. Denying or ignoring this right is unlawful.
- Unequal Pay. Equally qualified and capable employees with equivalent positions, responsibilities, or seniority should be paid comparable salaries. Paying someone less due to a status unrelated to work performance is unlawful.
- Retaliation. An employer or supervisor targets an employee with abusive practices for questioning, complaining about, or pursuing help for discriminatory behavior.
Whether you can establish a Hostile Work Environment claim or you were subjected to even one truly outrageous incident, you may have a case. If you’re being abused or mistreated, it is worth getting a legal opinion form an employment discrimination lawyer to see if you have a case and to discuss what to keep an eye out for going forward.
Check out The Consumer Justice Blog for more articles and information about different topics impacting employment discrimination.
8 Ways Employment Discrimination Harms You
The law is very clear that employment discrimination is unlawful, but that doesn’t prevent it from happening. Despite how it shows up, discrimination typically leads to tremendous harm, including:
- Financial Loss or Hardship. It doesn’t matter how hard you work if you’re not getting raises, bonuses, and prime positions due to reasons unrelated to your performance.
- Mental and Emotional Distress. When you’re subject to discrimination and harassment your mental well-being plummets. This can show up as anxiety, depression, sleeplessness, physical ailments, family stress, and more.
- Hiring Denials or Job Loss. At any phase of your career, unjust hiring and firing decisions can completely derail you.
- Promotion Denials. Whether you’re in line for a promotion, security clearance, transfer, or much-deserved assignment, being turned down for unjust reasons is not ok.
- Career Stagnation. Whether your employer unfairly denies you growth opportunities, being forced into a career dead zone is life altering.
- Employer Retaliation or Targeting. When you stand up for yourself and insist on equitable treatment, it can be like adding fuel to the fire of mistreatment, making things worse.
- Workplace Isolation. Whether it’s planned or simply the result of ongoing mistreatment, many workers experience isolation from colleagues, clients, and others.
- Unfair burdens. Being made to jump through hoops to prove yourself in a way that others aren’t or being denied reasonable accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) creates unfair burdens and roadblocks to success.
3 Steps to End Employment Discrimination
While it’s not likely to end overnight or without more than just a simple request, these three things will set you on a path to ending employment discrimination, fighting for justice, and repairing the damage that’s already been done.
Document Everything: From the first moment you realize that something isn’t right, start taking detailed notes. Include dates, names, summaries, quotes, witnesses, steps taken or promised, threats, etc. Print emails, pay statements, and other documents. If an employer wants you to sign anything after you’ve stood up or filed a complaint, talk to an employment discrimination lawyer first.
Talk to an Employment Discrimination Lawyer: The law upholds your right to a safe and fair workplace free from discrimination. But this doesn’t stop employers from misbehaving in big and brutal ways. An employment discrimination lawyer will clearly set out your rights, guide you through the legal process, and fight to get you money.
Enforce Your Legal Rights: If your employer directly or indirectly discriminates against you, never accept their nonsense, stories, or threats. They may not do the right thing when no one’s watching, but a lawsuit from an employment discrimination lawyer usually gets the job done.
What Does a Top Employment Discrimination Lawyer Do?
Knowing when, how, and who to sue is everything. Working with an experienced employment discrimination lawyer gives you the best shot at a full resolution and maximum compensation.
Here’s how an employment discrimination lawyer helps you:
- We know the law. Employment law can be complex, involving federal equal rights and non-discrimination laws, including the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Employment discrimination lawyers help navigate the laws.
- We know the problems. We’ve seen, heard, and handled every type of discrimination case, no matter how obvious the behavior or how subtle the policy, which lets us anticipate responses, reactions, and next moves.
- We know the tricks. We know the tactics used to cover up harm, downplay severity, shift blame, and avoid legal obligations. They’d rather threaten, punish, or ignore you. We outsmart their failed strategies.
- We provide legal guidance. We navigate the whole process with you, offering personalized guidance at every step. You’ll never have to guess what to do next or just hope you’re making the right decision.
- We file with the EEOC. If you need to file a formal regulatory complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, we guide you through the process, drafting comprehensive legal documents to support your claim.
- We file a lawsuit. Our employment discrimination lawyers file a lawsuit to hold all bad actors accountable for direct harassment, permissive practices, and more.
- We get you money. If you’ve suffered harmed and you’re entitled to compensation, our employment discrimination lawyers know how to maximize the money you get.
Direct vs. Indirect Employment Discrimination
Employment discrimination lawyers handle cases that fall into either of two broad categories, direct discrimination and indirect discrimination.
- Direct discrimination is when you, as an individual, are targeted with discriminatory treatment.
- Common examples of this are things like unjustified negative performance reviews, promotion denials, hiring denials, open hostility or harassment, raise denials, isolation, abuse, and other direct, immediate mistreatment that arises out of a trait or status unrelated to your job.
- Indirect discrimination is when you are part of a group or class of people with a similar trait or status that is targeted for mistreatment through policies or procedures unrelated to the needs of the business or job.
- Common examples of indirect discrimination are things like having policies that prevent employees from displaying or wearing religious items or having a no-beards policy.
- If these types of policies indirectly impact only employees of a certain religious, ethnic, or racial group and are wholly unrelated to the business or job, it is likely discrimination.
An employment discrimination lawyer will evaluate the nature of the job, your role within the business, and the claimed objective of the policy to determine if it counts as discrimination.
How Much Does An Employment Discrimination Lawyer Cost?
If you work with Consumer Justice Law Firm, the answer to this is simple: It costs you nothing out of pocket. From your FREE consultation all the way through to the resolution of your claim, whether it involves EEOC filings, lawsuits, or anything else, you don’t pay us a dime up front or out of pocket.
Check out our practice area page to see all of the ways that we can help, whether you’re dealing with an employment discrimination issue or a consumer law problem. Our experience is your best protection.
No Justice, No Fee.TM
Frequently Asked Questions
Who does an employment discrimination lawyer help?
The employment discrimination lawyers at Consumer Justice Law Firm help anyone who suspects they are being treated with discrimination at work.
Employment discrimination can impact anyone in any career path or in any phase of their career- from initial application to nearing retirement, entry level to advanced, or factory floor to boardroom table. There is no magic that prevents discrimination in certain workplace environments.
Whether you’re freshly hired custodial staff or a neonatologist with thirty years of experience, you can face direct or indirect workplace discrimination. In fact, even attorneys face discrimination within law firms of every size.
An employment discrimination lawyer helps employees navigate discrimination in even the most complex workplace scenarios, including with employers who have the most robust legal teams.
They may try to intimidate you, but they can’t intimidate us.
What can I do to prevent employment discrimination?
Unfortunately, nothing. Discrimination is unrelated to logic, fairness, reason, common sense, or business needs. It is the result of bias or prejudice toward people with certain traits or statuses.
There is no amount of work performance, education, or attainment that can prevent you from being victimized by it, nor is there any legal mechanism for stopping it before it starts. Employers and supervisors are well aware that the law prohibits discrimination in the workplace and yet it persists.
However, you can adopt best practices for documenting it and combating it as soon as it starts. Not every instance of employment discrimination will require a lawsuit. Talk to one of our employment discrimination lawyers today for a free consultation about your next steps.
FREE CONSULTATIONS! We only get paid when we win. No Justice, No Fee.TM