Are you a victim of Workplace Discrimination

How can you tell if you are the victim of illegal workplace discrimination. Restating the question - Can my employer do that? Isn’t that Discrimination?

The circumstances relating to discrimination are always different, but the burning question remains the same. Can my employer do that and get away with doing [this, that or other thing], and isn’t that discrimination. This is the central question that prompts an employee to visit a plaintiff’s employment lawyer.

To best answer to this burning question requires some knowledge about how plaintiff’s attorneys prove a case of unlawful discrimination. The best evidence of discrimination is direct evidence of treating a person differently because of their membership in a protected class (i.e. race, color, national origin, age, gender, religion, disability, and in some states sexual orientation). An example of direct evidence are memorandums from management level supervisors stating they will never allow a women or a person of color to be promoted because they take took much time off from work taking care of family matters. Unfortunately, direct evidence is rarely uncovered because discriminators are savvy enough to obscure true motives in employment related matters.

The next best thing is circumstantial evidence which comes from the comparison of you with an employee that is in a similarly situated position to the work that you do. Plaintiff’s employment attorneys are equally savvy in finding and using circumstantial evidence. Therefore, if you earned outstanding (greater than average and above expectations) ratings in job performance reviews three years in a row and over the last ten years every male or non person of color who held your position and earned three consecutive outstanding performance reviews received a promotion, then the question becomes does the company have a legitimate reason that you are turned down for the promotion. How the company answers or will answer this question is critical because having no explanation when asked or actually providing a provable false reason turns the circumstantial evidence into a strong inference that the employer actions are tainted by illegal discrimination.

In a nutshell – how can you tell if you are a victim of illegal workplace discrimination? Start by comparing your specific circumstances to that of a similar situated co-worker who is not in your protected class status (i.e. not of same race, color, national origin, age, gender, religion, disability, and sexual orientation). If you find the treatment of co-worker different from your workplace experience run to an experienced plaintiff’s employment lawyer because you have a limited time period to file a claim before you completely lose your rights to redress any harm caused by the illegal discrimination.