Disability Discrimination Category Archives — New Jersey Employment Lawyer Blog Published by New Jersey Employment Attorneys

Published on: May 10, 2023

The New Jersey Appellate Division Addresses the Discoverability of a Worker’s Social Media Posts as Part of Her Discrimination Case

Social media represents a nearly ubiquitous presence in the lives of many people today. Older generations often counsel younger ones to be wary of “putting too much out there” on social media or text messages. While the wisdom of that advice can be reasonably debated, there undisputedly are times when your social media content can play a role in your discrimination or harassment case, and it’s important to recognize that reality at the outset. As with any aspect of your discrimination case, a skilled New Jersey employment discrimination lawyer can advise of your rights, as well as what your obligations may be under the rules of discovery.

A disability discrimination case from Union County shows an example of a situation where the worker’s online information was discoverable.

N.D., the worker, was a staff attorney with a nonprofit that performed legal advocacy for people with disabilities. The staff attorney was herself a person with disabilities, as she had received diagnoses of lupus and cancer. In January 2020, the organization fired the staff attorney, so she sued, alleging that the termination was an act of impermissible disability discrimination in violation of the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination.

Published on: April 21, 2023

How an Employer’s Internal Investigation May Form the Basis of an Employee’s Winning Retaliation Claim

by Phillips & Associates

Workers who raise complaints of discrimination face many on-the-job risks, including retaliatory termination. Sometimes, the retaliatory motive may be evident in the employer’s stated (bogus) reason for termination. Other times, the stated reason may be legitimate but the investigation that preceded it may have been the product of retaliatory motivations. In either circumstance, your employer’s “retaliatory animus” may be enough to give you a winning retaliation case. If you think you’ve been the victim of that kind of illegal employment practice, don’t wait to contact a knowledgeable New Jersey workplace retaliation lawyer to discuss your situation.

Here’s an example of what we mean. J.C. was a Black man who worked for a steel fabricator in southeast Pennsylvania. The employee suffered from herniated discs and arthritis in his back, a disability that caused him to pursue leave from work under the Family Medical Leave Act.

The employer fired the man in the summer of 2019. It claimed that it had found proof on his cell phone that he’d been soliciting sex workers while on company time and company property. The fired employee contended that the company fired him in retaliation for his complaints of race discrimination and disability discrimination, as well as using FMLA leave.

Published on: April 7, 2023

Federal Versus New Jersey Age Discrimination and Disability Discrimination Laws: What’s the Difference?

by Phillips & Associates

In some situations, you may encounter workplace discrimination that targets you for one specific reason. Other times, you may be the victim of discrimination that spans multiple protected characteristics. (Still other times, the nature of the discrimination may involve a tandem of protected characteristics, such as, for example, discrimination specifically targeting Latina women.) Each of those scenarios may implicate state anti-discrimination law, federal law, or both. Whatever the nature of your circumstance, you can help your case’s chances of success by talking to an experienced New Jersey employment discrimination lawyer as soon as possible.

These issues of state anti-discrimination law versus federal law are sometimes quite significant as, in some ways, the procedural requirements between the two can vary in important ways.

Take, for example, the multi-faceted discrimination case of E.D., a woman who worked for an insurance entity. Her complaint alleged that she endured disability discrimination when her employer failed to engage in a good faith interactive process to provide her with a reasonable accommodation after her return to work from emergency surgery.

Published on: March 31, 2023

The Appellate Division Court Revives a New Jersey Municipal Judge’s Discrimination Case Predicated on Her Perceived Alcoholism

by Phillips & Associates

As a worker in New Jersey, you need to understand that the Law Against Discrimination (LAD) protects you from discrimination not just as a result of your membership in a protected class but also as a result of your employer’s perception that you were a member of a protected class, even if that belief was factually incorrect. On this basis, if your bosses punished you because they thought you were, for example, disabled, you can win a LAD case, even if you were not disabled. A knowledgeable New Jersey disability discrimination lawyer can help you determine how to advance your case based on a perceived disability.

V.P. was a municipal court judge in Newark whose LAD case was one of perceived disability. Problems came to a head in May 2017 when, one day, the chief judge believed she smelled alcohol on V.P.’s breath. The judge denied that she’d been drinking.

The chief judge contacted the city’s personnel director and informed her that the judge “was intoxicated and emanating the smell of alcohol…” The memo also contained the chief judge’s accusation that she suspected V.P. of being drunk at work one time before.

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: October 10, 2022

Marijuana, Disability Accommodations, and Employment Discrimination Law

by Phillips & Associates

In early 2021, the governor of New Jersey signed into law a bill that, among other things, protected New Jersey workers from certain adverse consequences as a result of their legal use of marijuana off the clock. If you’ve been fired or suffered other negative consequences as a result of your legal marijuanba use, your employer may have violated the law. Get in touch with an experienced New Jersey employment discrimination lawyer right away to protect yourself and your rights.

More recently, the New Jersey Cannabis Regulatory Commission published workplace guidelines that established protections for legal users. One of the biggest takeaways from the commission’s new guidance is that, while employers may still test for marijuana, they may not punish their workers solely as a result of workers’ testing positive in a drug screen for marijuana metabolites (THC).

The new guidelines say that employers seeking to penalize a worker primarily must look for “behavioral indicators” or “physical signs or symptoms” sufficient to support a reasonable suspicion that the employee has attended work while intoxicated. If the employer has identified one or more of these indicators and/or signs, then a positive test result may also be included as part of the employer’s reasonable suspicion about a worker’s having worked while high on marijuana.

Published on: August 24, 2022

Monkeypox and Employment Discrimination and Harassment in New Jersey

by Phillips & Associates

In April, we discussed incidences of workers enduring harassment and/or discrimination based on current events. That topic has again risen to the forefront in the wake of the 2022 monkeypox outbreak. Regardless of terrorism at home, war abroad, or a disease outbreak, there’s never a valid reason to discriminate against somebody at work because of their national origin, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation. If that has happened to you, you should get in touch with a knowledgeable New Jersey employment discrimination lawyer to discuss what steps you can take.

Back in the early 2000s, many people of Middle Eastern ethnicity and/or of the Islamic faith experienced discrimination and harassment in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. More recently, Chinese and other East Asian people encountered mistreatment when the COVID-19 pandemic began to rage across the United States. People of Russian ancestry encountered issues after the events in Ukraine flared up into war.

Now, there’s another current event and another group being targeted. Monkeypox began to break out overseas in May. In June, the New England Journal of Medicine reported that, of those studied, 95% got monkeypox through sex, and 98% of those with the disease were gay or bisexual men, leading some people to consider monkeypox a “gay disease” and engage in harassment and discrimination against LGBT+ people. In an effort to combat this, the Attorney General’s Office announced the release of a FAQ document related to monkeypox.

Published on: July 22, 2022

Hostile Work Environments in New Jersey: It’s Not Always About Slurs, Assaults, or Extreme Humiliation

by Phillips & Associates

Certain instances of workplace discrimination are fairly clear: a Black person who endures a daily deluge of racial epithets, a Muslim employee who hears a seemingly endless line of jihadi, terrorist, and bombing jokes, or an older worker who endures a regular torrent of “OK Boomer” comments. Other times, it’s not so obvious. In either type of situation, you may have a viable claim for a hostile work environment. Also in either circumstance, but especially in the latter, it pays to retain a knowledgeable New Jersey employment discrimination lawyer, who can help you make the most of your facts and demonstrate how they satisfy each of the elements of the law.

I.G. was someone whose alleged hostile work environment fell into the latter category. According to his complaint, he experienced a bout of vertigo in 2020, and as a result, the employer forced him to take a week of medical leave from his plant supervisor job.

After he returned, C.C., his supervisor, allegedly was “very cold and negative.” According to the lawsuit, the supervisor began making negative age-related comments about I.G. to other workers, including “it’s time for [I.G.] to retire.”

Published on: July 15, 2022

Diversity Jurisdiction and Overcoming Defense Claims of ‘Fraudulent Joinder’ in Your New Jersey Discrimination Case

by Phillips & Associates

There might be various reasons why you’d prefer to litigate your New Jersey discrimination case in a state Superior Court as opposed to a federal District Court. (You may have considered issues of speed, cost, the kind of jury that’ll hear your case, or other factors.) Whatever the reason, you and your knowledgeable New Jersey employment discrimination lawyer undoubtedly contemplated the issue at great length, so you want to do everything possible to ensure that your case eventually proceeds in the court you prefer.

There may be various ways you can shield your state court case from potential removal to federal court. An experienced attorney can help you with pleading your discrimination case in a way that avoids unnecessary exposure to removal.

One of those potential exposures is something the law calls “diversity jurisdiction,” as a recent disability discrimination case from Somerset County illustrates.

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.