Any form of discrimination in the workplace drawing from ethnicity, color, race, or national origin is prohibited by California laws. In addition to racial discrimination, it is also illegal to discriminate against someone because of their skin color. Any form of deprivation, isolation, or disfavor that arises because of light or dark skin is strictly illegal. In law, both the California Fair Employment and Housing Act and the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made racial discrimination an illegal affair. Sadly, racial or sexual discrimination is yet quite common in California. A few years ago, some 29,000 allegations were made to the Commission for Equal Employment Opportunities, with many allegations of racial discrimination. From these figures, it is estimated that thousands originated in California.
In this article, we will explain how the laws are applicable and clarify the misconceptions that people have about these forms of discrimination in California.
Racial or Sexual Discrimination Laws apply to every aspect of employment
Racial discrimination is prohibited in any employment practice that includes job advertisements or programs, interviews and applications, hiring, promotion, relocation or leaving work, and working conditions. It should be noted that racial or sexual discrimination can be anything related to work – pay, team, roles, working hours, vacation, etc. Regardless of how they arise, discrimination about race or sex is illegal by the existing provisions of the relevant laws in California and the United States.
New working conditions apply due to differences in sexual identity.
Discrimination laws in California are becoming more complex than most other laws in several other states in the United States. Our sexual discrimination lawyers will tell you everything that you need to know. California law requires employers to approach the expression and identity of transgender people in the future. The regulations, sanctioned by the California DFEH, went into effect in July 2017. In particular, the new provisions extend the DFEH Act and outline new policies that employers in California must implement. A number of these policies take into account toilets, transition, clothing standards, preferred identity, and name and documentation. In this light, whether you are an employer or an employee in California, it is instructive to come to terms with the new and dynamic style that sex discrimination laws enact. If you do not, you may find it difficult to assert your rights where there is discrimination.
Discrimination laws prohibit harassment
Some may belittle commenting or making light jokes about a person’s racial and sexual identity because it may seem innocent to them. However, the practice is that racial and sexual discrimination laws help protect against racial harassment, comments, reprimands, offensive images, and names about a person’s race, sexual identity, or skin color. When this happens, the person suffering from the abuse may file a claim against their abusers. However, it should be noted that this abuse must also be sufficiently severe and widespread, so that any joke or slight abuse may not be sufficient. The repetition of the wording or statement to which the person concerned has shown a lack of interest may be sufficient to justify a claim. Curiously, seeing that such harassment can lead to a hostile work environment, even when the person is not the person committing the harassment, the silent attitude of the supervisor or the boss of the job may be enough to provoke a discriminatory claim.
Discrimination laws protect all races and sexes
As long as they are recognized under federal law and in California, anyone of any race, color, or sexual identity can file a discriminatory action. Interestingly, it does not matter whether the person being discriminated against is of the same race as the oppressor. For example, a black supervisor may discriminate on racial grounds against a fellow black employee by leaving him or her for white. Such discrimination remains illegal. Racial discrimination in the workplace is not limited to circumstances in which each employee or boss belongs to a different race.
What to do to protect against race, sex, or color discrimination
If you accidentally suspect that you have been discriminated against based on your race, gender, or color, you have an open window to seek protection. There are several ways to do this. For starters, you can file a complaint with the EEOC at the federal level or with the DFEH in California. In most scenarios, California law offers better and more appropriate protections than federal law. You must report it to DFEH. However, you can ask which agency to share relevant information with the other agency. In any case, it is advised you report the discrimination to any of the agencies and exhaust available administrative remedies in the process before you attempt to file a discrimination suit in court.
Reach Out!
Yet another route to cut it right to the chase – reach out! You may want to free yourself of all the seemingly stringent protocols and paperwork of approaching the DFEH or the EEOC. In that case, you are more likely to reach out to a trained discrimination attorney to help you all along the way. Of every type of discrimination that occurs in the workplace, discrimination based on sex, color, or race is quite hard to stamp out. Employees who think they have been discriminated against need to meet with a lawyer timeously to have their case reviewed. You can take a look at the several legal claims that we cover at JLG lawyers and call us for representation.