You May Have Grounds for Civil Litigation and Compensation
Just as it is illegal to discriminate against people for conditions and aspects of your identity beyond one’s control in the workplace, so too is it illegal to deny individuals employment based on one or more of the same sets of conditions and aspects of one’s identity. Many people suspect these to have been a factor in their application process but fail to correct it. We’re here to inform you that you have options.
It is illegal to deny an individual employment solely based on one or more of the following:
- Race
- Sex
- Color
- Age over 40
- Disability
- Pregnancy
- National origin
- Genetic information
Ways To Tell If You’ve Been Unfairly Blocked
Because your time spent with your potential employer up to the point of an illegal hiring block is rather short compared to long-term, office discrimination, you will have to pay attention to the little things in your application, your interviews, and in your correspondences. Particularly, be aware of application or interview inquiries that stood out to you as if the information asked for was irrelevant.
The California Department of Fair Employment & Housing Act lays out what can and cannot be asked about when hiring, and a quick guideline can be found here. If you remember your interviewer asking about your ethnicity, marital status, nationality, or anything not directly related to the job, whether it was off the cuff or blunt, it’s possible that these questions were designed to aid in the discrimination.
First Steps You Can Make Afterward
If you suspect that you should have received the job but were denied of it because of discrimination, the first few things you can do start with taking another look at your applications and correspondences. Are there discriminatory requirements in the application? Is there discriminatory language in the rejection letter?
Next, contact the company’s Human Resources department and ask about the findings of your interview. Did the interviewer write that you were entirely qualified but he or she “decided to go in a different direction”? Did the interviewer report something that was false about your qualifications?
If you can, and this would perhaps be most beneficial, talk to a friend or someone you know personally within the company and ask if they know or believe that discrimination could have been a factor in your failure to hire. This would be a very valuable piece of evidence in civil litigation.
Finally, contact a powerful attorney who is not afraid to take on companies large or small for illegal hiring practices. Alan Burton Newman is a Harvard Law-educated attorney dedicated solely to employment law. His firm has the experience and the fortitude to achieve the results you need.
Call (310) 986-2792 to schedule a consultation with our California employment law attorney.