If you believe you are facing pregnancy discrimination, talk to an experienced lawyer right away. If you are still employed, there may be steps you can take to save your job. A quick letter from an attorney might make your employer think twice about taking action against you.
If you have lost your job, an attorney can help you assess the strength of your claims and decide how best to move forward, whether by trying to negotiate a severance package or pursuing legal action. To preserve your right to sue, you must first file a charge of discrimination with the EEOC or a similar state agency.
And, there are strict deadlines, both for filing a charge and for filing a lawsuit afterwards. You are undoubtedly more concerned with due dates than statutes of limitation. However, you must take action quickly to keep your options open. An attorney can help you take all of the necessary steps to enforce your rights. The information provided on this site is not legal advice, does not constitute a lawyer referral service, and no attorney-client or confidential relationship is or will be formed by use of the site.
The attorney listings on this site are paid attorney advertising. In some states, the information on this website may be considered a lawyer referral service. Please reference the Terms of Use and the Supplemental Terms for specific information related to your state. Grow Your Legal Practice. Meet the Editors. Learn about direct evidence and circumstantial evidence of pregnancy discrimination. What Is Pregnancy Discrimination? Proving Pregnancy Discrimination To win a pregnancy discrimination case, you must show that you were treated differently than other employees who were similarly situated, and that the difference in treatment was based on your pregnancy.
Direct Evidence of Discrimination Sometimes, an employee has direct evidence of discrimination. Circumstantial Evidence of Discrimination If your employer didn't admit that pregnancy played a role in its decision, you might still have enough evidence to allow a judge or jury to infer discrimination. But other evidence might exist, such as: Facts showing that your employer didn't follow its usual termination procedures in your case. For example, if your manager said you were being fired for performance issues, but other employees with performance problems were given written warnings and a chance to improve prior to termination, you could point to this discrepancy as circumstantial evidence of discrimination.
Suspicious timing. Or, that you were fired the day after the company's CEO visited your office, noticed your condition, and asked you pointed questions about your intent to return to work after having your baby. Pregnant women who are unfortunate enough to be fired during their pregnancy often ask us: Is my employer allowed to fire me while I'm pregnant?
Isn't there a rule against that? The short answer is yes , your employer is "allowed" to fire you while you're pregnant assuming that, like most Californians, you're at at-will employee and the termination doesn't violate an employment contract.
For instance, if you falsify time records, break company policies, or even if your employer just needs to lay people off, an employer is allowed to fire you. Put differently, your pregnancy is not an absolute guarantee that you'll keep your job. However, pregnancy discrimination is alive and well--and your employer cannot terminate you because of your pregnancy. Pregnancy discrimination laws ban employers from using pregnancy as a "motivating reason" to terminate you.
This means you should look beyond your employer's stated reason and ask: was I treated worse or differently than non-pregnant employees? Did my employer consider my pregnancy, my maternity leave, or bias against parents in making the decision to fire me?
Most employees in California are "at will" employees. What does that mean? It means your employer can fire you for any reason, for no reason, and even for a factually wrong reason for example, that you were late one day, when you actually weren't. Even if you are an at-will employee, your employer cannot fire you for an illegal reason. Illegal reasons include race, gender, disability, pregnancy, and the fact that you requested a pregnancy-related accommodation among other things.
You can show that your pregnancy was a motivating reason for your termination in a variety of ways. These methods of proof are the same in all kinds of discrimination cases. The following are some examples:. The timing is suspicious. In a scenario where it's just one person's word against another, it's extremely difficult to carry an employee's burden of proving that the discrimination occurred. How difficult is it to prove pregnancy discrimination against an employer? There are different factors in the difficulty to prove pregnancy discrimination.
Timing is an important characteristic and an important component of any type of proof. If you announce that you're pregnant and two days later you're demoted. The timing is suspicious there and one way you can show it is one of the circumstances that surround a decision. The better way to be able to prove that discrimination occurred is to have a recording of some kind. Other hard documentation such as emails or text messages that show that the pregnancy was part of the decision to do something to an employee in the workplace.
You have to show evidence to suggest that your pregnancy was improperly considered as part of an employment decision.
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