Racial Discrimination in the Workplace

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) prohibit discrimination in the workplace based on race. When a company makes its employment decisions based on an employee’s race, it may be acting in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the California Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA). An employer may even be liable for discrimination based on race when it takes steps to try and avoid discrimination when those steps in fact result in unequal treatment due to racial discrimination.

HOW TO PROVE RACIAL DISCRIMINATION

An employee alleging racial discrimination in violation of California labor laws or Federal employment laws must be able to prove that he or she:

1. Belongs to a racial minority;
2. Has applied and is qualified for a job for which the employer is seeking applicants;
3. Despite being qualified for the job, the employer rejects his or her application or violates wrongful termination laws; and,
4. After the employee is rejected based on racial discrimination, the employment position remains open and the employer continues to seek applicants.

After the employee establishes that there was racial discrimination in the workplace or hiring process, the burden of proof shifts to the employer to articulate some legitimate reason for the employee’s rejection other than racial discrimination.

RACIAL DISCRIMINATION VICTIM? FREE CONSULTATION 800-568-8020

Our racial discrimination lawyers understand how upsetting it can be to lose out on a job based on race, especially when the employee is clearly qualified for the open position. Our race discrimination attorneys represent employees throughout the entire state of California - from the Pacific Ocean in San Diego to the Bay in San Francisco. Our employment discrimination law firm takes qualified lawsuits for racial discrimination on a contingency, no win no fee basis.

Employee Layoffs

You Still Have Rights After a Layoff

In this difficult economy, it is not uncommon for a worker who has been mistreated by his or her employer to be laid off. The job layoff may have been inevitable, or you may believe you were singled out for filing a complaint. Either way, you do not lose your legal right to participate in a class action claim against your former employer just because you are no longer on the payroll. Workers can file claims under California and federal laws for a wide variety of wage-and-hour infractions, including unpaid overtime, failure to pay the minimum wage and denial of vacation pay.

Free Consultation ▪ No Attorney Fees Unless You Recover Compensation

Blumenthal, Nordrehaug & Bhowmik is a class action employment law firm that represents workers who are seeking justice. We have significant knowledge of the employee laws and labor laws that are on your side. By joining a class of plaintiffs in a lawsuit against your current or former employer, your case has increasing visibility in the courts and the likelihood of punitive damages is greatly increased. An employment class action lawsuit is often the only way to force an employer to stop its illegal pay practices. Contact us today to schedule your free initial consultation.

Do you suspect that you were laid off in retaliation for speaking out? This is a type of wrongful termination, and it is illegal. Employers who retaliate against workers for filing a legitimate complaint face serious legal consequences. You have the law on your side — assert your legal rights with the help of an employment attorney.

We can handle a variety of class action employment claims arising in relation to a job lay off, including:

• Unpaid overtime
• Vacation pay and time off
• Illegal wage deductions and business expense reimbursements
• Minimum wage
• Unpaid wages and waiting-time penalties
• Illegal severance packages and release agreements

Talk to one of our lawyers about the circumstances of your job before the layoff, and why you think you may have a valid claim against your employer. We’ll do the research and the math to determine whether you have a claim for wrongful termination or other matters and can initiate or join a class action lawsuit with other workers.

Contact us to schedule a free consultation about your legal concerns. If you are the first to initiate a claim, you may be entitled to additional compensation in the form of a service award. We represent employees in class action lawsuits against employers in Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange County, San Francisco and Santa Clara, and throughout California.

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

The Equal Employment Opportunities Commission’s (EEOC) investigatory authority serves a greater purpose than just investigating a charge on behalf of an individual for employee rights violations such as discrimination in the workplace or harassment. In other words, the EEOC is not merely a proxy for victims of discrimination, but acts also to vindicate the public interest in preventing employment discrimination. The individual victim of wrongful termination or other types of illegal employment law practices is of course guided by a desire to remedy his or her own discriminatory treatment, whereas the EEOC is guided by the overriding public interest in equal employment opportunity asserted through direct federal enforcement. By continuing to investigate a charge of systemic discrimination even after the charging party has filed suit, the EEOC is pursuing its obligation to serve the public interest. 

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) controls the employment discrimination charge regardless of what the charging party decides to do. Once a charge is filed, under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 the EEOC is in command of the process. If the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) determines after investigation that there is reasonable cause to believe that a charge of employment discrimination is true, it must endeavor to eliminate the alleged unlawful employment practice by informal methods of conference, conciliation, and persuasion.If those efforts do not work, the EEOC may then bring a civil action against the employer in which the charging party may intervene as a matter of right. If the EEOC fails to bring such an action, the individual employee may bring an action against the employer directly. 

The right-to-sue notice may also be issued to the charging party upon request or when the EEOC determines that there is reasonable cause to believe that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 has been violated, yet was unable to obtain voluntary compliance, but decides not to bring an action against the employer.

Wrongful Termination in Violation of Public Policy

Wrongful Termination - Public Policy Violation

While an employer has the right to fire an at-will employee for a good reason, for no reason, or even for an arbitrary or irrational reason, the employer may not terminate the employee for an unlawful reason or a purpose that contravenes fundamental public policy. Employees have a wrongful termination cause of action against employers who fire them for performing an act that public policy would encourage, or for refusing to do something that public policy would condemn. When such an employment termination occurs, the nature of the employee’s relationship with the employer, whether at will or contractual, is essentially irrelevant. What is vindicated through the cause of action is not the terms or promises arising out of the particular employment relationship involved, but rather the public interest in not permitting employers to impose as a condition of employment a requirement that an employee act in a manner contrary to fundamental public policy. 

In a wrongful termination in violation of public policy action, the public policy must involve a subject which affects the public at large rather than a purely personal or proprietary interest of the employee or company. The policy at issue in the legal battle must also be fundamental, substantial and well established at the time of discharge. Courts in wrongful discharge actions may not declare public policy without a basis in either constitutional or statutory provisions. The public policy exception to the general at-will employment termination rules in California are carefully tethered to fundamental policies which are delineated in constitutional and statutory provisions. Taken together, the public policy exception to wrongful termination of at-will employees strikes a proper balance among the interests of employers, employees, and the public in general. The company is bound, at a minimum, to know the fundamental public policies of the state and nation as expressed in their constitutions and statutes; so limited, the public policy exception presents no impediment to employers that operate within the bounds of law. 

Employees are protected against employer actions that contravene fundamental state policy. And society’s interests are served through a more stable job market, in which its most important policies are safeguarded. In addition to statutes and constitutional provisions, valid administrative regulations may also serve as a source of fundamental public policy that impacts on an employer’s right to discharge employees when such regulations implement fundamental public policy found in their enabling statutes. An employment relationship where hiring of the employee is conditioned on acceptance of statutorily proscribed terms is not acceptable to courts in California usually. 

Moreover, it has potential for bringing serious mischief to the employment sector. Courts cannot expect workers generally to be cognizant of their employee rights and wrongful termination laws in violation of public policy. Courts tend to reject the concept that a worker, compelled by economic necessity to secure employment, can be thus coerced into signing sweeping agreements to not compete with their employers upon leaving the employment in the uninformed hope the agreement will not be enforced by the courts. Companies that fire employees for refusing to sign such agreements may be liable to the employee for wrongful termination in violation of public policy.

Gender Discrimination Laws

Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it is unlawful for an employer to discriminate against any employee with respect to his or her compensation, terms of employment, work conditions, or privileges of employment, based on the employee’s gender. Importantly, sexual harassment in the form of a hostile work environment constitutes sex discrimination.

To prevail on a gender discrimination claim lawsuit, the employee must establish that there was a pattern of ongoing and persistent gender discrimination that was severe enough to alter the conditions of employment. To satisfy this requirement, the employee must prove that his or her workplace was both objectively and subjectively offensive to the extent that a reasonable person in the employee’s shoes would find it to be hostile or abusive. In addition, the employee is required to demonstrate that the gender discrimination took place because of the employees sex.

In employment discrimination lawsuits, some courts ask the following questions to determine whether an employer is guilty of gender discrimination:

1. Was the employee subjected to verbal or physical conduct that amounted to harassment in the workplace?
2. Was the harassing conduct unwelcome?
3. Was the gender discrimination sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of employment and create a hostile work environment?

To answer these questions about whether an employer is guilty of gender discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, courts usually look at the following circumstances:

• The frequency of the discrimination based on gender
• The severity of the sex discrimination
• Was the employer’s conduct physically threatening or humiliating, or a mere offensive utterance or trivial?
• Did the sex discrimination unreasonably interferes with an employee’s work performance? 
• As a general matter, playful teasing and isolated incidents, will not amount to gender discrimination.

CALL 800-568-8020 FOR A FREE GENDER DISCRIMINATION CONSULTATION 

At Blumenthal, Nordrehaug & Bhowmik, our gender discrimination lawyers understand how hard it can be when companies single employees out based on their sex or gender. Not only is gender discrimination in the workplace immoral, but it is also illegal and the law is on your side if your company has committed acts of gender discrimination or otherwise created a hostile work environment for you.  Contact our sex discrimination attorneys in California for a free consultation about your employee rights with respect to discrimination in the workplace.

Reverse Discrimination in the Workplace

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) prohibit the firing of “any individual” because of such individual’s race. The racial discrimination laws are not limited to discrimination against members of any particular race. Rather than the federal employment laws and California labor laws being limited to discrimination against members of a particular race, the laws are extended to prohibit racial discrimination in private employment against white persons upon same standards as racial discrimination against nonwhites. 

DISCRIMINATION AGAINST CAUCASIANS IN THE WORKPLACE

In one employment discrimination laws, white employees who were fired alleged racial discrimination based on the employer’s failure to discharge African American employees who had engaged in similar ,misconduct. The Court found that the white employees met their burden under the Fair Employment and Housing Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act by alleging that the union did not satisfy its duty properly to represent the white employees. Instead of adequately representing the employees reverse discrimination interests, the employees alleged that the union joined in on the employer’s alleged racial discrimination against them.

REVERSE DISCRIMINATION LAWYERS IN SAN DIEGO AND SAN FRANCISCO

If you think that you may have been wrongfully terminated or denied a job opening based on reverse discrimination, contact an employment lawyer at Blumenthal, Nordrehaug & Bhowmik. Our reverse discrimination lawyers know how to aggressively represent victims of discrimination in the workplace. We offer employees free consultations about their employee rights and take qualified reverse discrimination lawsuits on a contingency fee basis, meaning employees don’t pay our labor lawyers unless we recover money for them.

California Employment Lawyer

Our California employment lawyers understand that companies violate employee rights and leave workers feeling like they have no where to turn for help. Employees throughout the state of California - from Los Angeles to San Francisco - have been relying on our employment law firm for over 30 years in lawsuits involving illegal employment law practices such as wrongful termination laws, discrimination laws, retaliation laws, overtime pay laws and many other types of Labor Code violations.

In the process of helping employees fight back against illegal employer practices, our California employment attorneys have obtained over $1.3 billion in settlements and judgements for workers throughout the state. Our employment lawyers take cases for employees only and work on a contingency fee basis, meaning employees never pay our attorneys a dollar unless we win money for you. Most importantly, we have helped millions of workers throughout California get back on their feet through individual and class action lawsuits.

3 Secrets About Hiring California Employment Lawyers

There are three important things that employees must consider before hiring a California employment attorney. First, the employee needs to understand how the law firm makes its money. On the one hand, an employee with resources and money may want to hire an hourly employment lawyer. On the other hand, an employee who lacks resources and wants to sue a big company for employment law violations may want to hire a contingency fee lawyer. The benefit of hiring a contingency fee employment lawyer is that the lawyers don’t make money unless the employee makes money and the attorneys are motivated to spend time and effort on the lawsuit.

The second important factor involves location. For example, employees may want to make sure that the California employment law firm they are hiring has a specific attorney in the same city as the employee who will be the lead attorney in the lawsuit. This allows employees to visit with the California employment lawyer in person for a free consultation and for the actual process of the litigation. While most matters can usually be handled over the phone, sometimes employees prefer to actually have a sit down meeting with their employment law attorneys.

The third important thing that employees must consider before hiring an employer lawyer in California is whether or not the firm has a good reputation. In litigation, there are never any guarantees of course. However, as a general rule, history tends to repeat itself and there is no special exception when it comes to hiring California employment lawyers. Employees may therefore want to review the employment law firms record of settlements and judgments to see if the firm has won any big cases. An employee may also want to read reviews about the California employment lawyers to assess whether the firm is known for providing its clients with excellent customer care.