If you are like the vast majority of workers in the United States, you are an employee “at will.” This simply means that your employer may terminate your employment for any reason or no reason, as long as it’s not an illegal reason. Again, an employer can be completely arbitrary in choosing who to fire, and he can simply pull one name out of the list, and decide to terminate his/her employment.
Termination may be unlawful, however, if it can be shown that the reason why any given worker was terminated was unlawful. Termination is unlawful if a member of a protected class was terminated from his job position because of being a member of that protected class. Sex, race, and religious discrimination are the most common discrimination claims in California among workers, students, and other agrieved individuals.
Discrmination may be proven directly or circumstantially. Direct proof requires a testominy of a witness (any third preson) as to hearing or otherwise witnessing discriminatory conduct. For example, a co-worker might overhere his boss using the “n” word in the presence of, or towards, an African American worker, who later files discrimination complaint. Circumstantial proof is a little more tricky. It requires investigation of all facts an circumstances of the environment where a person works to determine whether the employment practices in place are such that they inevitably cause disparate treatment of a protected class. Thus, if an employer imposes a requirement that every new secretary should be able to bench press 150 lbs without any rational reason to have such a requirement considering the nature of the job, this is likely to be a significant evidence of employer’s attempt to prevent women from applying or getting the position of a secretary on site.
Discrimination claims are generally hard to prove because they usually come down to proving intent. Often, there are no witnesses to discriminatory conduct, or some witnesses are unwilling to testify against their own employer. In other cases, finding out whether an employer didn’t treat his employee well or even terminated him/her because of his/her jobe performance or because of his/her race/sex/sexual orientation/religion is quite a challenge as well.
However, with careful investigation of facts, interviewing all available witnesses and looking at the history of the company’s work and internal procedures, unlawful employment practices such as discrimination may surface and be proven at or before trial. Arkady Itkin, Esq.
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