Princeton Employment Law Blog

We have the freedom to belong to a particular religion and the ability to change our religious affiliation if we so desire. Federal and New Jersey anti-discrimination laws are intended to protect a person's private choice from being the subject of hostile or unfair action in the workplace. Unfortunately, the law's deterrent effect is not always enough to prevent workplace discrimination, but the remedies provided for by the law can offer victims a sense of justice.

A jury recently awarded $5 million to a former employee of Southwestern Bell/AT&T, who had filed a lawsuit claiming that she was the victim of repeated religious discrimination. The woman had been working in the company's fiber optics department for over half a decade and had received public recognition for her good job performance. But other workers' attitudes towards her changed dramatically when she converted to Islam during her employment there.

Federal laws prohibit employers in New Jersey and around the country from discriminating against their employees on the basis of certain enumerated categories, such as religion, gender and age. But age discrimination cases are somewhat different from other cases because of a 2009 Supreme Court ruling in a case called Gross v. FBL Financial Services, Inc. By a 5-4 margin, the Court declared that employees who bring an age discrimination claim must show that their age was the "determinative factor" in their employer's discriminatory conduct.

The Court's standard marked a departure from that typically used in discrimination cases brought under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In other workplace discrimination lawsuits, an employee is not required to show that their gender, race or similarly protected category was the determinative factor leading to the discriminatory action. Instead, they need only meet the lower burden of showing that it was merely one factor.

The loss of jobs during the most recent economic recession in New Jersey and around the nation has coincided with a sharp spike in employment discrimination cases seen by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Some see a causal link between the two, arguing that when it comes time to terminate workers, employers may favor certain groups while discriminating against others. According to EEOC data, the agency handled 20 percent more complaints in 2011 than it did just 4 years earlier.

In one case, a woman who worked for an airline was dismissed because she was too slow getting around the company's office. She was arthritic and, with the help of the EEOC, sued under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The company agreed to settle the case for $20,000.

In our last post we discussed the difficulty that many workers in New Jersey and elsewhere are having in securing permanent employment. As companies cut workforces during the recession, many older employees who had worked in the same job or industry for years were laid off. News stories frequently cite the hardship that older workers can have in regaining employment, especially at the level they formerly enjoyed, in the current market.

While this hardship does not necessarily mean that employers are engaging in age discrimination, older workers who believe they are being discriminated against are protected by federal law. In 1967, Congress passed the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, or ADEA. That law protects employees over 40 years old from discrimination based on their age. This week the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission added a new rule under the ADEA which is meant to create brighter lines in age discrimination cases.