What are the different forms of discrimination at work?
Discrimination at work can take many forms. It usually happens during hiring, firing, promotions, job assignments. Sometimes it could be retaliation. Sometimes it could be harassment.
When something like this happens, the employer is usually discriminating based off of a protected characteristic instead of job performance. California law has a broad protections for discrimination.
And it's important that if you feel like there's discrimination happening at your workplace because of one of these protected characteristics, you speak with an attorney as soon as possible because certain deadlines may apply and you only have a certain amount of time to address these types of discrimination.
Two very different kinds of discrimination
Most people think of discrimination as an obvious decision — not hiring or promoting someone because of a protected trait. That's called disparate treatment. California law also recognizes disparate impact: a policy or practice that looks neutral on its face but ends up disadvantaging people with a protected characteristic far more than others, even if no one intended it that way.
Harassment and failure to accommodate are their own categories
A hostile work environment is treated as a separate legal claim from a discriminatory decision like firing or demotion — it's about the conditions of the job, not a single adverse action. When an employer fails to engage in a good-faith process to accommodate a disability or religious practice, that failure can be its own violation, separate from any decision to discipline or terminate.
Retaliation piles on top
Reporting discrimination is legally protected activity of its own. If your employer punishes you for complaining — even informally, even if the original complaint doesn't ultimately hold up — that retaliation can be a separate claim, on top of whatever discrimination prompted the complaint in the first place.
More questions, answered.
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