The Fair Employment and Housing Act is the principal law protecting Californian employees from discrimination, harassment and retaliation in the workplace.
Employees now have more time to file a FEHA claim due to a recent law revision.
What is FEHA?
FEHA prohibits discrimination at work based on a person’s race.
- Race,
- Religious creed,
- Color,
- Source:
- Ancestry,
- Physical Disability
- Mental disability,
- Medical condition
- Genetic information
- Marital status
- Sex,
- Gender,
- Gender identity,
- Gender expression,
- Age,
- Or sexual orientation
- Military or veteran status.
Federal law does not provide protection for all groups, but only a portion of them (e.g. The Americans with Disabilities Act bans discrimination in the workplace based on a mental and physical disability. However, the California FEHA protection covers all California workers.
Specifically, FEHA makes discrimination against an employer based on any protected category listed above illegal.
- Refusing to employ someone for a job, or for a training program.
- Resigning an employee from a job, training program or other position;
- Unfair compensation, terms, conditions, and privileges in employment.
Discriminating is also prohibited from employment agencies and labor unions based on these factors.
There are several options for recovering a California FEHA Employment Discrimination Claim
You can file a lawsuit under California anti-discrimination law to seek damages for economic and non-economic losses you sustained as a result of the actions of your employer.
Economic damages can restore financial losses that are quantifiable, such as:
- Past wages not paid
- Future lost wages
- You may have lost benefits.
- Costs of job search.
These damages are meant to cover your out-of-pocket and actual losses.
You can get noneconomic damages to compensate for more subjective hardships resulting from discrimination in employment.
- Emotional distress,
- Anxiety,
- The loss of enjoyment in life and
- Post-traumatic stress.
Sometimes, a court will also award punitive damage to punish an employer who has committed particularly maligning discrimination. This is to discourage them from repeating the same mistake in the future.
Summarized from an article by Ottinger Employment Lawyers.
