Workplace Legal represents employers and high-level executives in discrimination and harassment lawsuits in state and federal courts as well as before governmental agencies. Across all of these forums, Workplace Legal attorneys have represented clients facing allegations of discrimination and harassment on the basis of age, race, religion, ethnicity, gender/sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, HIV/AIDS, medical condition, and disability.
Discrimination & Harassment
What is Discrimination?
When an employer treats an employee or applicant differently on the basis of any protected category – like age, race, gender/sex, sexual orientation, or disability – then that employer may be liable for unlawful discrimination. The employer may also be liable for the “failure to take all reasonable steps necessary to prevent discrimination,” which is a separate claim that imposes separate liability on the employer. This separate claim makes it critical for an employer who is facing an allegation of discrimination to promptly initiate a thorough and impartial investigation into that allegation and take “immediate and appropriate corrective action” to correct any discriminatory conduct that the investigation uncovered.
What is Harassment?
When a California employer, supervisor, or co-worker harasses or bullies a co-worker because of that co-worker’s age, race, gender/sex, sexual orientation, or other protected status, the employer may be liable for unlawful harassment if the offending conduct is “severe and pervasive.” The employer may also be liable for the “failure to take all reasonable steps necessary to prevent harassment,” which is a separate claim that imposes separate liability on the employer. Just like in discrimination claims, an employer facing an allegation of harassment must also (a) promptly initiate a thorough and impartial investigation into the allegation, and (b) thereafter, to take “immediate and appropriate corrective action” to correct any harassing conduct that the investigation uncovered.
How Workplace Legal Can Help
Workplace Legal attorneys have decades of experience guiding employers through discrimination and harassment allegations, investigations, agency actions, and lawsuits.
In our Counseling & Preventive Advice practice, we regularly advise clients who have just received an allegation from an employee about possible discrimination or harassment. We advise the client on selecting a proper investigator and, following the investigation, the “immediate and appropriate corrective action” that should be taken by the employer to deal with the investigation’s findings. In our Employment Litigation & Trials practice, we defend clients accused of discrimination or harassment in state and federal courts, before state and federal administrative agencies, and before private arbitrators and mediators. In our Workplace Investigations practice, we serve as neutral investigators for clients and interview witnesses, review evidence, make findings, and draft investigatory reports.
Not only does Workplace Legal investigate and defend these claims for our clients, we also work to prevent them in the first place. In our HR Audits, Infrastructure & Strategy practice, we draft state-of-the-art equal employment opportunity policies for our clients – including the foundational Policy on Harassment, Discrimination, Bullying & Retaliation that all employers are required to have. We also train employers and HR teams on their equal employment opportunity obligations.
OTHER PRACTICE AREAS
