Sex / Marital Status Discrimination Category Archives — New Jersey Employment Lawyer Blog Published by New Jersey Employment Attorneys

Published on: February 28, 2023

An Employer’s Argument of ‘Payroll Error’ Wasn’t Enough to Stop a New Jersey Woman’s Unequal Pay Claim

We all want to be paid what we’re worth as demonstrated by the quality of our work output. Too many women, however, have lived experiences on the job that fell short of that lofty goal. If you are someone who has been harmed by a gender-based pay gap at your place of employment, both federal law and state law may offer potential relief. Talk to an experienced New Jersey equal pay lawyer to find out more regarding what steps you can take.

S.S. was a woman who worked as a sales manager for an Atlantic City resort. She also was someone who allegedly encountered gender-based unequal pay.

In 2020, the woman applied for the role of “Selling Manager.” The selling manager position had only been created two years prior, and the resort’s only previous selling manager had been a man. That man, T.M., had been paid both a salary and commissions. The resort selected S.S. and another woman to be its new selling managers, but neither received a base salary as part of their compensation packages. Additionally, neither woman received a specific type of commission (called a “takeover” commission) that the male selling manager had received, and neither had as many team members as the man had.

Published on: February 21, 2023

When Once is (or Isn’t) Enough: Racist/Sexist/Homophobic/Etc. Slurs and Hostile Work Environment Claims in New Jersey

by Phillips & Associates

The N-word… the B-word… the F-word… the C-word. They’re all incredibly offensive (as indicated by their censoring here.) Sometimes, one-time uses of certain slurs may be enough to satisfy the “severe or pervasive” standard federal law demands. With cases involving other words, however, you may need something more. To get a clear understanding of the proof you need for your hostile work environment case, talk to an experienced New Jersey sex discrimination lawyer to discuss the parameters of your situation.

Before he ascended to the U.S. Supreme Court, then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh wrote of the “N-word” that it is “probably the most offensive word in English.” For this reason, courts have declared a single utterance of this word to be enough to constitute severe discrimination.

Other words, however, generally will carry less weight. For example, many courts have ruled that a single use of the misogynistic “B-word” isn’t sufficient to establish, by itself, a hostile work environment. As a recent sex discrimination case from Cape May reminds us, though, supervisors who direct that word toward a female employee often do it more than once, and repeated uses of it can be sufficient to establish the necessary degree of severity or pervasiveness to make out a hostile work environment claim.

Published on: February 7, 2023

The New Jersey State Assembly Weighs a Bill that Would Protect Workers from Discrimination in the Hiring Process… by Artificial Intelligence Software

by Phillips & Associates

Last spring, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sounded an alarm that called into question the fairness of hiring processes aided by artificial intelligence, pointing out that AI-assisted hiring has the potential to enhance, rather than alleviate, certain forms of impermissible bias. That risk remains an ongoing problem… one that the State of New Jersey may soon address with a new law. If you have been the target of discrimination in the hiring process because of your disability, gender, race, age, or other protected characteristic, that’s a potential violation of the law, whether the source point was a human or a bot. Whatever the specifics, a knowledgeable New Jersey employment discrimination lawyer can help outline for you the options the legal system has available.

Right now, employers have few restrictions on the AI they use. That could soon change in this state. Certain lawmakers here in New Jersey recognized the potential for AI to increase, rather than decrease, the frequency of certain types of discrimination in hiring processes.

Three Democrat lawmakers are the primary sponsors of Assembly Bill 4909, which would impose certain rules on employers seeking to use AI in their hiring processes. According to one of its primary sponsors, the bill doesn’t seek to ban the use of AI in hiring, but rather intends to make “sure that we are checking and auditing and putting some boundaries in place to ensure equity,” northjersey.com reported.

Published on: January 24, 2023

A White Police Chief on the Jersey Shore Recovers a $500K Settlement to Resolve His Race Discrimination Case

by Phillips & Associates

In a 2007 case, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the “way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” While many — including members of the Supreme Court — disagree, his analysis serves as a reminder of two very important things. First, discrimination on the basis of race is illegal. Second, that previous sentence can be true even if the alleged victim is white. Regardless of your race or color, if you think you’ve been targeted for adverse treatment at work based on a protected characteristic, you should contact a knowledgeable New Jersey race discrimination lawyer to discuss your legal options.

One New Jersey township whose police department has a long history of alleged workplace discrimination is paying out once again in the aftermath of a Law Against Discrimination claim, according to the Asbury Park Press. In this instance, however, the plaintiff was a white man.

According to the lawsuit, two of the township’s committeemen — who were also members of the Police Oversight Committee — collaborated with a consultant and a lawyer to discriminate against the plaintiff, who was also the police chief.

Published on: December 30, 2022

When Your Denied Promotion May Be the Basis of an Employment Discrimination Claim in New Jersey

by Phillips & Associates

In most employment discrimination cases, your employer probably is going to come armed with a great many explanations as to why the actions it took were legitimate and permissible. In those cases, the first step often is not to prove conclusively that discrimination occurred; rather, your first goal is to defeat your employer’s motion for summary judgment, which means simply establishing that your evidence is sufficient to show that a genuine factual dispute exists. As you seek to do that (and eventually to proceed forward with your case,) an experienced New Jersey sex discrimination lawyer can help you ensure that your case possesses the evidence and the arguments needed to get past summary judgment and get your day in court before a factfinder.

A.B.’s sex discrimination case was one where establishing that genuine issue of disputed fact was crucial.

In 2008, A.B.’s employer hired her as a manager in its finance department. Two years earlier, it hired R.V., a man, to a manager position in the same department. In 2011, the employer promoted both to senior manager.

Published on: December 23, 2022

A New Jersey HR Director Obtains $500K in Punitive Damages and $1.3M in Attorney’s Fees in Her Sex Discrimination Case

by Phillips & Associates

When it comes to matters of discrimination and/or harassment, we all know there are gradations. There are employers who violated the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination because they made an honest mistake when it comes to the law, such as misconstruing when the law demands that they accommodate a worker’s disability. Other times, though, employers engage in harassment and/or discrimination in ways that are much more nefarious. They discriminate with malice or with reckless indifference to the illegality of their conduct. Sometimes, they also try to wear you down through litigation that is vexatious, frivolous, or advanced in bad faith. When these things occur, it pays to have a skilled New Jersey employment discrimination lawyer on your side to help you get everything you deserve, including awards of punitive damages and attorney’s fees.

A recent South Jersey race and sex discrimination case is an example of an employee who succeeded on both those compensation fronts.

M.H., a Black woman, was the human resources director at a South Jersey housing firm. Her employer, as part of its year-end meetings, presented purportedly lighthearted and humorous slideshows. The HR director, however, recognized many of the pictures’ captions in the 2015 slideshow as inappropriate. According to the lawsuit, the employer attached captions like “I want mine big like these,” “What a nice set,” and “Mary’s are bigger” to photos of female employees who had held balloons to their chests as part of a team-building exercise earlier in the year.

Published on: September 23, 2022

Mixing Business With (Strip Club) Pleasure: A Problem that Remains Persistent, Including in New Jersey

by Phillips & Associates

Grace Hopper, a pioneering computer scientist and rear admiral in the U.S. Navy, is credited with having observed that the “hardest thing in the world is to change the minds of people who keep saying, ‘But we’ve always done it this way.’ These are days of fast changes and if we don’t change with them, we can get hurt or lost,” the admiral told a Baltimore newspaper. That reality rings true for employers and supervisors who think that “we’ve always done it this way” works as some sort of immunity against liability for sexual harassment. It doesn’t and, if you’ve endured harassment from an “old boys club” who told you “we’ve always done it this way,” then you should get in touch with an experienced New Jersey sexual harassment lawyer to discuss your situation.

One area where too many employers seem to have a blind eye to the need for change is the issue of mixing business and strip clubs. Most recently, a female employee scored an important federal court victory in her sexual harassment case against her employer, a New Jersey corporation that provided “products and services to mobile network operators.”

The employee, B.C., alleged that the employer’s president and chief technology officer twice attempted to kiss her. Additionally, her supervisor took clients to strip clubs and engaged in discussions of his strip club trips that made B.C. “uncomfortable.”

Published on: June 30, 2022

Dealing With Non-Disparagement Agreements as Part of Settling a Discrimination or Harassment Case in New Jersey

by Phillips & Associates

Workers who have endured discrimination or harassment on the job deal with it in a wide array of different ways. Some survivors of harassment and discrimination feel that an important part of the process is speaking publicly about what happened to them. What sometimes confines them, though, is if they signed something called a “non-disparagement agreement” as part of the settlement of their civil lawsuit. These agreements, however, sometimes leave openings that may permit you to speak out and remain in compliance with your contractual obligations. Whether negotiating a settlement, reviewing a non-disparagement agreement, or determining when and how to speak out, a skilled New Jersey employment discrimination lawyer can help to make wise choices.

Recently, a former police sergeant in Monmouth emerged successful in precisely this kind of case. The employee, C.S., allegedly was the target of sexual harassment and sex discrimination at work. Both C.S. and E.G., another female officer on the force, filed sex discrimination lawsuits in 2013. The sides settled the cases in 2014. The department agreed to promote both women to the rank of sergeant, making them the only female sergeants on the force.

However, the women allegedly experienced more harassment and discrimination and more lawsuits ensued. C.S. settled her 2016 lawsuit in July 2020. That second settlement included a “non-disparagement agreement.”

Published on: May 24, 2022

How a Hiring Decision by Artificial Intelligence or an Algorithm Could Be Discriminatory in Violation of the Law in New Jersey

by Phillips & Associates

Businesses are always on the lookout for ways to be more efficient. “Work smarter, not harder,” the saying goes. That’s also true in hiring. To that end, many employers have begun using artificial intelligence in their hiring processes. While this might seem like an ideal solution both in terms of increasing efficiency and eliminating biases that result from the introduction of the human element, the reality is far murkier. Many forms of AI are far from perfect and their flaws make them far from unbiased. Sometimes those biases result in violations of anti-discrimination laws. If you think you’ve encountered that kind of hiring bias and been denied employment because of it, you should get in touch with a knowledgeable New Jersey employment discrimination lawyer to discuss your situation.

Most recently, the federal government put out the call to employers to beware when using algorithms and AI in their hiring processes. The U.S. Justice Department and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission put out a guidance document on May 12 where they laid out ways that these automated systems can unfairly disqualify some people with disabilities.

For example, some employers use automated personality tests or other cognitive screening exams to assess particular “personality, cognitive, or neurocognitive traits.” The problem with these exams is that they potentially can cull people with “cognitive, intellectual, or mental health-related disabilities,” even though those people met the qualifications that the test was supposed to be analyzing and should not have been eliminated from consideration.

Published on: April 22, 2022

Recognizing All of the Essential Elements of Successful Sex Discrimination or Sexual Harassment Case in New Jersey

by Phillips & Associates

Sometimes, a case where a discrimination plaintiff loses can be just as instructive (or even more so) than an outcome where a discriminated worker was successful in court. Much like how the old TLC show “What Not to Wear” educated views about fashion by highlighting others’ faux pas, an unsuccessful case can be a “cautionary tale” of a sort, illustrating what not to do. One of the best ways you can ensure your discrimination case doesn’t get wiped out by a legal faux pas is by ensuring you’ve retained a skilled New Jersey employment discrimination lawyer to represent you.

L.B.’s gender discrimination case was one of those lawsuits that roundly failed. She worked at a bar in Morristown where the atmosphere was irreverent, and workers frequently joked with one another. Supervisory individuals engaged in this, as well.

One of the bar’s owners allegedly called L.B.by “names used to describe a person with an oversized posterior.” (The court did not specify those names.) Those nicknames appeared in place of L.B.’s given name on the weekly work schedule and, sometimes, on the woman’s pay envelopes. The nicknames may have been facetious or intentionally inaccurate, as L.B. weighed only 110 pounds and stood 5’2″.