There are many reasons why you may lose your job. It could be due to a bad economy that forces your employer to lay off workers or it could be for hundreds of other legitimate reasons. Unfortunately, you could also lose your job for unlawful reasons, such as a work-related discrimination. Such kind of discrimination could come in all shapes and forms. The most common forms of discrimination are gender-based and age-based discrimination. There are hundreds of reasons why your employer would want to let you go the above reasons. However, whatever the reasons may be, discrimination is illegal and as a result, you may want to initiate a discrimination lawsuit.
The Age Discrimination in Employment Act in the federal law makes age discrimination illegal for workers at least 40 years of age and to employers who have at least 20 employees. As a result, any job-related decision made by an employer based on your age is liable to a discrimination lawsuit. This means that you cannot be laid off because of your age unless there are some exceptions such as education, training or job safety. The first thing to do is to file an anti-discrimination claim with the local office commission or an anti-discrimination agency of the state where you work as soon as the act of discrimination occurs. Generally, claims should be filed either 180 or 300 days from the time the discrimination occurred. Once it has been determined there is a right to sue, the discrimination lawsuit will proceed within 90 days.
For private lawsuits, lawyers will usually take the cases on a contingency fee basis. Given the damages that an employee is expected to recover, lawyers may also be able to recover their costs in the process as well. Since lawyers will rarely walk away without collecting a fee from a discrimination lawsuit, these claims usually snowball and often take a life of their own. A discrimination lawsuit requires that an employee prove that there was intent to discriminate on the part of the employer and as such, statements such as ?You will not be promoted because you are a woman? is strong evidence of a sexual discrimination lawsuit. In other cases, the promotion of a less qualified person can also be used as long as the intent to discriminate is well presented. In general, discrimination claims can get complicated and at times outright ugly. Being aware of what it entails will prepare one for the outcome.
