Addressing Marital Status Discrimination in California: Legal Protections for Employees
California laws shield state employees from workplace discrimination based on the protected classes. Marital status discrimination is a crucial category among them. If you are facing workplace discrimination for your marital status, it is high time you took legal steps against your employer. Let’s discuss about marital discrimination rights.
How am I protected against discrimination based on marital status?
Usually, the marital status of an individual refers to whether that person is married or not. This term may also denote the states like married but separated, married but seeking a divorce, divorced, widowed, annulled marriage, plans to get married someday, and so on.
According to the California Fair Employment and Housing Act, your employer can not refuse to hire you, select you for a training session, discharge you, or discriminate against you based on any of the previously mentioned marital statuses. FEHA applies to all employers having 5 or more employees in the workplace.
What can I do if I face marital status discrimination in the workplace?
Make a formal report
You may proceed to make an official report to your supervisor or the human resources department. Hopefully, they will take the necessary steps to combat the situation. If they fail to find a solution regarding your issue, you may have to take help from external sources.
Seek legal help from law enforcement agencies
The California Civil Rights Department (CRD) deals with employment discrimination based on marital status in California. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) enforces anti-discrimination laws regarding sex, religion, and color but it excludes marital status as a protected category. That is why you may have to seek protection from CRD.
You may file the complaint via phone call or their online website. CRD will investigate your claim and try to settle the dispute on your behalf.
File a lawsuit in the court
According to California employment laws, you may directly file a lawsuit against your employer for marital status discrimination. In this case, you need to get a right-to-sue notice from your employer. Then you may take the issue to the civil court and sue your employer.
Consult an attorney
When you face any unfair treatment in the workplace for your marital status, you may need to consult an employment attorney. The attorney will be there for you to take appropriate legal action depending on your situation.
Ask for a legal remedy
You are most likely to get legal compensation when you file a lawsuit against workplace discrimination. For example, you may recover monetary damages like back pay, front pay, employee benefits, punitive damages, damages for emotional distress, etc.
Final Words
Marital status discrimination is a gruesome practice that may occur in the employment sector even during the hiring process of the workers. California state laws provide safety and security to the employees to shield themselves from such discrimination in their workspace. Hopefully, the above discussion will be helpful for you to deal with the unfair treatment of your employer associated with marital status.
Photo Credit: Adobe Stock/ Viacheslav Yakobchuk