Employment Discrimination Attorney Los Angeles

The FEHA also prohibits California employers from restricting or barring employees from using any language in the workplace (e.g., not just English) unless there is a legitimate business necessity for the restriction and specific procedures are followed in imposing it.  In general, FEHA’s antidiscrimination protections are broader than those provided by parallel federal antidiscrimination laws.

Persons of any gender, sexual orientation, race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion or marital status are protected from employment discrimination under California law, regardless of whether or not they are a member of a minority or less-favored group.  This means, for instance, that persons of any race, ancestry or national origin may be victims of prohibited discrimination, and persons of any race, ancestry or national origin may be perpetrators of prohibited discrimination.  Discrimination based on race, color, ancestry, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, religion or marital status is prohibited by the FEHA, even if the discriminating individual is a member of a minority group, the victim of discrimination is a member of a majority group, or the discriminating individual and the victim of discrimination are members of the same protected category.  For this reason, female supervisors, for example, are still prohibited from discriminating against female employees or applicants on the grounds of their sex/and or gender, even though the victim and the perpetrator are both members of the same protected class.

California’s FEHA allows employees and job applicants to bring two different types of employment discrimination claims: (1) disparate treatment discrimination; and (2) disparate impact discrimination.

Disparate treatment is the mostly common type of employment discrimination, and is generally easier to establish than a disparate impact claim. In order to successfully establish disparate treatment, an employee or job applicant must prove:

A broad variety of conduct may constitute a “negative employment action” for purposes of the FEHA, including but not limited to:

Employment discrimination on the basis of a protected characteristic may be overt and explicit, but more subtle forms of discrimination are common and are equally prohibited by California law. 

In other words, even if a policy applies to all employees without expressly calling out any protected group or trait, that policy may still be unlawfully discriminatory under the FEHA because of its disproportionate negative effect on employees and/or job applicants with a particular protected characteristic.

To successfully establish disparate impact discrimination, an employee or job applicant must prove that:

Although an employee or job applicant alleging disparate impact discrimination is not required to prove that the employer acted with a discriminatory motive, disparate impact discrimination is generally more difficult to prove than disparate treatment, and usually requires the presentation of complex statistical or other expert opinion testimony at trial.

The FEHA bars California employers from firing, demoting, suspending, or otherwise subjecting an employee to negative employment consequences because he or she made a good faith report or complaint about prohibited discrimination based on a protected category or characteristic.  California employers are also prohibited from refusing to hire a job applicant for reporting or complaining about prohibited discrimination.

If you have been the victim of discrimination in employment based on a protected category and are concerned about the consequences of reporting that misconduct, we can assist you with the process of reporting discrimination to your employer, taking steps to minimize the possibility of unlawful retaliation, and if need be, pursuing your civil remedies in court.