By Latrice Burks-Palmerio, Esq., Associate Attorney at JLG Lawyers
This article was adapted from a piece published in the Daily Journal. Read the original here.
She did everything right. She earned the degree, put in the extra hours, mentored the newer staff, and stayed quiet when she probably should have spoken. Then one day her role was eliminated. The official reason was restructuring. But she had watched less-qualified colleagues keep their jobs. She had heard the comments. She had felt the slow, steady erosion of being taken less seriously than the work she produced actually warranted.
She is not alone. Between February and April of 2025, more than 300,000 Black women left the American workforce. The unemployment rate for Black women climbed to 6.7 percent. News outlets reported the number but struggled to explain it. The explanations they offered, DEI rollbacks, federal layoffs, and small business headwinds, describe conditions. They do not name the cause.
The cause has a name. It is misogynoir.
What Is Misogynoir?
Misogynoir is a term coined by Black feminist scholar Moya Bailey in 2008. It describes the particular form of discrimination that Black women face when anti-Black racism and misogyny operate together, not as separate forces stacked on top of each other, but as a single, combined experience.
Understanding why that distinction matters requires stepping back for a moment. General racism affects Black people. General sexism affects women. But Black women face something that neither of those categories fully captures. They are not simply discriminated against for being Black or for being women. They are discriminated against specifically because they are Black women. The intersection is the target.
This is the core idea behind intersectionality, a framework developed by legal scholar Kimberle Crenshaw to describe how overlapping identities, race, gender, class, age, and others, create overlapping and compounding experiences of discrimination. Misogynoir applies that framework specifically to Black women, and it has roots that go back centuries.
Is misogynoir a legal term?
Not in the statute books. But the discrimination it describes is illegal. Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA), both race and gender are protected classes. When an employer treats a Black woman worse than her colleagues because of the combination of those two characteristics, that is actionable discrimination, regardless of what word you use to describe it.
How Misogynoir Shows Up at Work
I am a Black woman and an employment attorney. I do not just study this. I represent Black women who are living through it. The patterns I see are consistent enough that naming them matters.
Misogynoir in the workplace rarely announces itself. It accumulates. It is the job offer that came in lower than every comparable offer made to a white colleague. It is the performance review that describes the same behavior as “assertive” in a white male peer and “aggressive” in a Black woman. It is the meeting where her idea is passed over, then credited to someone else twenty minutes later.
Sometimes it is louder. Explicit comments about hair, speech, and manner. Assumptions about competence. The particular exhaustion of being asked to represent the entire experience of Black womanhood in diversity meetings while still being expected to carry a full workload. That invisible labor, the emotional and organizational work of simply existing in a space that was not built with you in mind, rarely shows up on a performance review. It rarely shows up in a paycheck, either.
And then there is the exit. It can look like a layoff. It can look like a resignation. But when you follow the thread backward, you often find conditions that became intolerable in ways that were entirely predictable and entirely manufactured.
That is not leaving. That is being pushed out.
The Legal Framework: What California Law Actually Covers
California has some of the strongest employment protections in the country. The Fair Employment and Housing Act prohibits discrimination based on race, sex, gender, and a range of other protected characteristics. Critically, FEHA allows employees to bring discrimination claims based on multiple protected characteristics at once.
This matters for Black women because it means you do not have to choose. You do not have to decide whether what happened to you was race discrimination or sex discrimination. If the answer is both, and for misogynoir it always is, California law has room for that.
Can I sue my employer for misogynoir under California law?
You can bring claims for race discrimination, sex discrimination, or both under FEHA. California courts have recognized intersectional claims. In Martin v. Board of Trustees of California State University, 97 Cal.App.5th 149 (2023), a plaintiff successfully alleged discrimination based on multiple protected characteristics in a single action. In Kuigoua v. Department of Veteran Affairs, 101 Cal.App.5th 499 (2024), the court similarly allowed combined race, gender, and national origin claims. The legal framework exists. The question is whether the facts of your case support it.
Hostile Work Environment
A hostile work environment claim does not require a single dramatic incident. It requires a pattern. Repeated microaggressions, tone policing, isolation, and gaslighting can collectively create workplace conditions that are severe or pervasive enough to be legally actionable. The standard is whether a reasonable person in the same position would find the environment hostile. Courts have applied this standard to intersectional discrimination.
Constructive Discharge
Constructive discharge happens when an employer makes working conditions so intolerable that a reasonable person would feel they had no choice but to resign. If you were pushed out rather than laid off, if the conditions became unbearable in ways you can document, that resignation may still be a legal claim. The fact that you technically submitted the paperwork does not end the analysis.
Retaliation
If you reported discrimination and then watched your performance reviews change, your projects disappear, or your role get restructured out of existence, that sequence matters. Retaliation for protected activity is illegal under both state and federal law. The timeline is evidence.
Wage and Equal Pay Claims
Black women are disproportionately offered lower starting salaries than comparable colleagues. They are disproportionately passed over for bonuses and promotions. If you have been doing the work of a higher-paid position without the title or compensation, or if you can show that comparable employees in similar roles were paid more, those are wage claims worth examining.
If This Is Your Experience: What Comes Next
The most important thing I can tell you is this. What happened to you may be illegal, and you may not know it yet. The conditions that drove you out may look, on paper, like ordinary business decisions. That is how misogynoir often operates. It is designed to be deniable. An employment attorney looks at the whole picture, not just the final act.
Document what you remember. Emails, performance reviews, text messages, dates, and details of specific conversations. The more specific your documentation, the stronger any potential case becomes.
Do not sign anything an employer presents to you without having it reviewed. Severance agreements almost always include waivers of legal claims. Once you sign, those claims are typically gone.
Talk to an attorney before you decide you do not have a case. That decision should not be made alone, and it should not be made in the first week after losing a job.
JLG Lawyers represents employees in California. We work on contingency, which means you do not pay unless there is a recovery. The first conversation is free.
If you have experienced workplace discrimination, wrongful termination, or were forced out of a job under conditions that felt wrong, we want to hear what happened.
Frequently Asked Questions
These questions are among the most common we hear from Black women who are trying to understand their legal rights after a difficult workplace experience.
What is the difference between racism, sexism, and misogynoir? Racism and sexism describe discrimination based on a single characteristic. Misogynoir describes the specific experience of Black women, who face discrimination at the intersection of race and gender simultaneously. The combined effect is distinct from either alone.
Does misogynoir have to be intentional to be illegal? No. Under California and federal employment law, discrimination does not require proof of intent. Disparate treatment, meaning being treated worse than similarly situated employees, and disparate impact, meaning neutral policies that produce discriminatory outcomes, are both legally actionable.
How long do I have to file a discrimination claim in California? Generally, you have three years from the date of the discriminatory act to file a complaint with the California Civil Rights Department (CRD) under FEHA. Filing deadlines are strict. If you believe you have a claim, speak with an attorney as soon as possible.
I resigned. Can I still have a legal claim? Potentially yes. If your working conditions became so intolerable that a reasonable person would have felt they had no choice but to leave, California law recognizes that as constructive discharge. The resignation itself does not end your legal options.
I signed a severance agreement. Is it too late? It depends on the agreement and when you signed it. Certain waivers have specific requirements under California law to be enforceable. An employment attorney can review the document and give you an honest assessment.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Latrice Burks-Palmerio, Esq. is an Associate Attorney at JLG Lawyers. She represents employees in California in cases involving wrongful termination, workplace discrimination, harassment, and retaliation. Before joining JLG, she worked at an AM 100 law firm focused on business litigation. A significant portion of her practice involves representing women of color who have experienced intersectional workplace discrimination. She is a vocal advocate for equality in all its forms.
This post is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Reading this article does not create an attorney-client relationship with JLG Lawyers. Past results referenced in JLG’s materials do not guarantee future outcomes. If you believe you have an employment claim, contact a qualified California employment attorney to discuss the facts of your specific situation.
