Articles Posted in Discrimination

“Today, we must decide whether an employer can fire someone simply for being homosexual or transgender. The answer is clear.”

“An employer who fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender defies the law.”

In today’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, the Supreme Court made clear that the anti-discrimination protections of Title VII apply to LGBTQ+ persons across the country.

The EEOC has provided good news for workers who are at high-risk for COVID-19.  High-risk employees are entitled to reasonable accommodations in the workplace during the COVID-19 pandemic!

High-risk employees include any employees over 65 years of age.

High-risk employees also include employees who have conditions the Center for Disease Control (CDC) has found make them at high-risk for COVID-19. CDC website

We know many employees are facing uncertainty about their jobs in light of the current pandemic. You may have questions about what you can do if you are sick, or if you have been laid off due to cuts that have been made as a result of COVID-19 /Coronavirus. Many government agencies have put out guidance on how employees can protect themselves and benefits they may be entitled to if they are out of work due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Below we have summarized some resources that we hope will be helpful.

Sick with or Exposed to COVID-19

In California, the California Family Rights Act (“CFRA”) provide up to 12 weeks of unpaid job protected leave within a 12 month period to care for yourself or your immediate family if they have a serious health condition. A serious health condition includes any illness that causes any period of incapacity requiring absence from work, school, or other regular daily activities for more than 3 consecutive days. To be eligible for CFRA leave, you must have been employed with your employer for 12 months and you must have worked at least 1250 hours in that twelve month period and your employer must employ 50 or more people within a 75 mile radius. While the CFRA does not provide pay, other laws may provide wage replacement, and your employer may also have other benefits and programs that you may be able to utilize during this time.

Just ahead of the bill-signing deadline in October, Governor Newsom signed several worker-friendly bills including AB 51, AB 9, SB 142, and AB 749.

When an employment situation sours and an employee pursues his rights, usually at some point there is talk of settlement.  Almost routinely, employers include a no-rehire provision in any settlement agreement which prohibits the former employee from seeking reemployment with the employer. While this may not seem like a big deal if you work for a small company and have no intention of seeking reemployment with the same people who wronged you in the first place, for individuals who work for large employers, the no-hire provision can create significant hardship. For example, if you work for a major retailer with numerous locations and you are terminated, a no-rehire provision might prevent you from working for that company ever again, in any capacity. That means, even if you wanted to work for a store 100 miles away, you would be barred from doing so. This is particularly problematic for long-term employees who have deep knowledge of the employer’s policies and practices and have been successful in their positions for years- they know the job, and have done it well, and now they are unable to apply for any future job at the company where their skills are a perfect match. This is also a significant problem for people who work for a utility; it may be that there is really only one employer in the area you can work for and a ban on working for that company will prevent you from working, period. The no-rehire provision would require you to either move to a new location or develop skills for an entirely different field. It seems, to many employees, like a final act of retaliation by their former employer.

Starting January 1, 2020, employment dispute settlement agreements cannot contain a no-rehire provision and such provisions are void as a matter of law and public policy. There is an exception, undoubtedly inspired by the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements- if an employer has made a good faith determination that the terminated employee engaged in sexual harassment or sexual assault, the employer may prohibit or restrict the terminated employee from obtaining future employment with the employer.

As employers across the country reckon with the impacts of the #MeToo movement, the California legislature and Governor Newsom took decisive action to extend the statute of limitations on certain workplace claims, acknowledging that those who have been targeted by discrimination, harassment, and retaliation do not always come forward immediately.

The California Fair Employment and Housing Act (“FEHA”) prohibits discrimination, harassment, and retaliation against California employees on a variety of bases. The FEHA provides some of the best employment protections in the country, and has been expanded several times over the years to afford additional protections in the workplace. However, one of the greatest hurdles to employees is the statute of limitations. In California, an employee has one year from the date of the unlawful practice to file a charge with the Department of Fair Employment and Housing (“DFEH”). Failure to file a charge within the limitations period waives an employee’s rights to any claims she has under the FEHA. Further complicating matters is that the intake process at the DFEH has several steps and it has been unclear to employees as to when their charge was actually filed, and thus, whether they filed within the one-year period.

On Thursday, Governor Newsom signed AB 9 which extends the one year period to three years starting on January 1, 2020. The bill also specifies filing a complaint means filing an intake form with the DFEH and the operative date of the verified complaint relates back to the filing of the intake form- clarifying what has been a confusing issue for employees over the years. This new statute triples the time an employee has to file their charge, which is particularly valuable for those employees who feel they cannot come forward soon after the adverse employment action.

For years, the battle over arbitration clauses and agreements has raged on in courts and legislatures throughout the country. The latest development in arbitration in employment in California came on Thursday in California when Governor Newsom signed AB 51. The governor’s approval of AB 51 is a victory employees throughout California- it effectively prohibits employers from forcing employees into mandatory arbitration agreements starting January 1, 2020.

It is common practice throughout California to have an employee sign an arbitration agreement at the time she is hired. These agreements are generally non-negotiable, buried in a pile of new hire paperwork, and require the employee to arbitrate any claims arising out of employment. While valid arbitration agreements provide some of the safeguards that are afforded to litigants in court, it often takes away basic protections and rights including a trial by jury, and class or collective action. Arbitration is also a private process so it allows an employer to keep their wrongdoing under wraps.

The United States Supreme Court has said, repeatedly, that arbitration agreements are valid in the employment context. Recognizing the inherent imbalance in power between employers and employees, several states have tried to stop employers from forcing employees into arbitration. However, given the Supreme Court’s rulings, it is impossible to ban arbitration in employment altogether.  The hope is that in California, AB 51 will even the playing field before an employee signs an arbitration agreement; requiring that an employee can only enter such an agreement voluntarily. The law also prohibits an employer from retaliating against an employee who declines to enter into an arbitration agreement, which provides additional protection.

Three Laotian correctional guards were subject to racial and national origin discrimination and harassment.  They filed a civil lawsuit for discrimination under the California Fair Employment and Housing Act, and also filed claims under California’s Workers’ Compensation ActLy v. County of Fresno (October 12, 2017).

This sounds like the beginning of a very typical workplace claim. However the Court brought the civil claims to a very atypical, and I must say, poorly reasoned and dangerous, ending.

The Workers Compensation Act claim went to a hearing first and the Administrative Law Judge found that the employer’s actions were “non-discriminatory, good faith personnel decisions.”  Based on this finding in an administrative hearing, where there is no civil discovery, the impetus to put on witnesses and gather evidence is different, and, among many other differences, the legal standard is different, the Court of Appeals held that the employees’ civil claims were barred.

Recently, it has been reported that campaign staffers were encouraged to “dress like women” while on duty. So what can an employer require of an employee with respect to his or her appearance?

Employers are permitted to set grooming standards for their employees and those standards may differ for male and female employees. Over ten years ago, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that: “Grooming standards that appropriately differentiate between the genders are not facially discriminatory.” Jespersen v. Harrah’s Operating Co., Inc. (9th Cir. 2006) 444 F.3d 1104. In that case, Harrah’s casino had a “personal best” grooming policy that required all of its bartenders to wear the same uniform but had differing policies for men and women with respect to their hair, hands and face. Men were not permitted to wear make-up and were required to have short hair and women were required to wear eye and face make up. A female employee objected to the requirement that she wear make-up and brought a claim under Title VII for sex stereotyping. In a controversial opinion, the Court determined that the differences in the grooming policy for men and women did not give rise to a sex stereotyping claim.

However, Courts have found violations of Title VII where there is an “undue burden” placed on female employees that is not placed on male employees. In Frank v. United Airlines (9th Cir. 2000) 216 F.3d 845, female flight attendants were required to stay under a certain weight in order to keep their jobs. Many of the female flight attendants went on extreme diets to try to make the cut but were unsuccessful in losing enough weight. As a result, they were disciplined and/or terminated. The Court held that United’s policy had a disparate impact on women and was facially discriminatory because it applied less favorably to women than to men.

In Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Abercrombie & Fitch Stores, Inc., 575 U.S. ____ (2015), the United States Supreme Court delivered the straight-forward rule that employers “may not make an applicant’s religious practice, confirmed or otherwise, a factor in employment decisions.”

In this case, Abercrombie refused to hire a young Muslim woman named Samantha Elauf to work in one of its retail clothing stores because Ms. Elauf wore a headscarf. Abercrombie suspected that Ms. Elauf wore the headscarf in observance of her Muslim faith and simply did not want to accommodate the headscarf, claiming that it would violate the company’s “look policy” (which forbade employees from wearing “caps”). When the EEOC sued Abercrombie on behalf of Ms. Elauf for failing to make a reasonable accommodation for her religion, the company defended its actions by arguing that it did not “actually know” that the headscarf was a religious practice – it merely suspected that it was a religious practice. In other words, Abercrombie made the absurd argument that even though it actually believed the headscarf was a religious practice and the headscarf was indeed a religious practice, the company should nevertheless be allowed to discriminate against Ms. Elauf because Ms. Elauf did not specifically tell the company that the headscarf was a religious practice.

Luckily, the U.S. Supreme Court did not buy Abercrombie’s argument. The Court’s decision makes it clear that employers may not make employment decisions that are “motivated” by someone’s actual religious beliefs or practices, nor can it refuse to make reasonable accommodations for such religious practices, by simply claiming that the employee (or job applicant) never explicitly confirmed the company’s suspicions regarding their religious beliefs or practices.

Proving discrimination cases by the standard of a “substantial motivating factor” is now clearly the law of the land – at least in the land of California. Let’s look at why this is so, and what it means.

First, in May 2013, the California Supreme Court declared that the standard of “substantial motivating factor” would replace the previously accepted “a motivating factor” in mixed motive cases under California law. Harris v. City of Santa Monica, 56 Cal.4th 203 (2013). (Mixed motive cases are cases where the employee proves there was discrimination, but the employer proves it would have made the same decision even without this discriminatory animus).

Although the language in Harris was broadly stated, it wasn’t one hundred percent clear whether this standard applied to all discrimination cases under California law, or just mixed motive cases. Along comes Alamo v. Practice Management Information Corporation (2013) 219 Cal.4th 466, holding that the Harris decision applies to almost all employment discrimination cases, thus hammering a nail in the coffin of “a motivating factor” standard under California law. In other words, in an employment discrimination case, although discrimination need not be the sole reason for the wrongful act – it must be a “substantial motivating factor”.

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