New Jersey Employment Lawyer Blog

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

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 14, 2023

A Federal Class Action in New Jersey Considers Whether Walmart’s Hiring Policies Violated Discrimination Laws

by Phillips & Associates

Both federal law and New Jersey law generally bar disparate impact discrimination, which occurs when an employer’s action has a disproportionately harmful effect on people of a protected class. These actions may often target employer standards, practices, or rules that seem to be neutral but, in function, end up disparately harming people like women, Black workers, Latinos, older workers, etc. If you’ve encountered an employment practice like that and suffered harm as a result, then you may have a viable discrimination case, and you should contact a knowledgeable New Jersey employment discrimination lawyer to find out more.

J.R. and E.J. allegedly were two of those people harmed as a result of racially discriminatory hiring. J.R. was both Black and Latina and applied for employment with Walmart in 2020. Prior to applying, the New Jersey woman had completed an internship with a Walmart subsidiary in Hoboken, according to her complaint. Allegedly, she did the same entry-level IT support work at the subsidiary that she would have performed with Walmart and was successful enough that her supervisor suggested that she apply to Walmart.

The woman’s interviews were successful and Walmart extended an offer of employment, only to rescind that offer just a few days later. The retraction was the result of content the employer found on the applicant’s criminal history. At some point earlier in J.R.’s life, she had been arrested. According to her complaint, she was “with friends who committed the crime in question,” and she pled guilty to a felony charge as part of a plea bargain because she feared “receiving a lengthy prison sentence” if she went to trial.

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 31, 2023

The Crucial Deadlines in Any New Jersey Employment Discrimination Case

by Phillips & Associates

We all face deadlines at work, and missed deadlines can be costly in any arena. When it comes to discrimination lawsuits, a missed deadline — sometimes missed by as little as one day — can mean catastrophic results for the worker harmed by illegal discrimination. Timely filings, in addition to all other aspects of procedural rule compliance, represent a vital area where a diligent and experienced New Jersey employment discrimination lawyer can benefit your case.

I.K. allegedly was one of those workers where deadlines were an issue. She was an underwriter for a major insurance company who resigned to start working for a competing insurance company. The worker’s old employer sued her for trade secret violations and breach of contract. The underwriter filed a counterclaim, alleging illegal race/ethnicity and age discrimination.

As noted above, avoiding potential timeliness issues may be crucial to success. In the underwriter’s case, the former employer contended that a critical 90-day deadline had elapsed, which meant I.K. could not pursue her discrimination counterclaims.

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: January 17, 2023

Religious Discrimination Cases in New Jersey and Court Inquiries into the Sincerity of a Worker’s Religious Belief

by Phillips & Associates

We are currently only eight weeks away from the start of Ramadan (March 22nd.) Ramadan is the most sacred month in the Islamic calendar and Ramadan practices (such as fasting and fast-breaking, prayer, and reflection) represent religious observations of the highest order for Muslims. Here in New Jersey, the law says that employers should make reasonable accommodations for Muslim workers’ Ramadan practices unless those accommodations would impose an undue hardship on the employer. If your employer fails to meet this legal obligation, then you should contact a New Jersey religious discrimination lawyer about your legal options.

The law also says that employers cannot use a worker’s non-traditional manner of practicing a particular religion (like Islam) to claim that the worker’s belief was not “sincere,” as a recent religious discrimination case demonstrates.

A.J., the plaintiff in the case, was a Muslim and a correctional police officer at the state’s juvenile detention center in Jamesburg. In early April 2018, A.J. was selected for a random drug test. Just a few weeks later, the officer was selected again. Because the second test request fell at the end of Ramadan (meaning that the officer was fasting at that time,) he did not complete the second drug screening.

Published on: January 10, 2023

Seeking — and Obtaining — Essential Electronic Proof for Your New Jersey Employment Discrimination Case

by Phillips & Associates

Today, more and more workplaces are going “paperless,” meaning that they use as little paper as possible. Many of the records and documents that used to reside in hardcopy now exist as digital files or information stored in the cloud. While workplaces going paperless is often a good thing for the planet, it may be a tricky one for some workers who are harmed by workplace discrimination. For some workers seeking to pursue discrimination claims, the pathway to essential information needed to make their cases may be blocked by an employer that claims that the technology platform or app it uses cannot generate the documentation the employee has requested. If you are an employee who encountered this kind (or any other kind) of roadblock to essential proof, a knowledgeable New Jersey employment discrimination lawyer can show you how to go about pursuing that evidence.

A.F. was one of those workers: an employee harmed by age discrimination and whose essential evidence was contained in a cloud-based software platform.

A.F. began working in the advertising sales department of a major North Jersey newspaper in 2004. When she took the job, she was 48 years old. After a major media corporation purchased the paper in 2016,

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: December 16, 2022

Edison-Based Staffing Firm that Allegedly Discriminating Against U.S. Citizens and Resident Immigrants Agrees to a $26K Settlement

by Phillips & Associates

Generally, when one hears the phrase “national origin discrimination,” one immediately calls to mind discrimination against non-citizens or citizens of certain ancestral backgrounds (such as anti-Asian discrimination, anti-Latino discrimination. etc.) However, the full spectrum of national origin discrimination actually goes beyond that, also including incidents of employment discrimination where U.S. citizens were the group targeted for illegal treatment. While less common, it is just as illegal. If you’ve encountered discrimination based on your national ancestry and/or your immigration status, whether you were an immigrant, a non-citizen temporary worker, or a U.S. citizen, you should contact a knowledgeable New Jersey national origin discrimination lawyer to discuss your legal options.

As noted above, while discrimination against U.S. citizens makes up a minority of all national origin/immigration status cases, it does occur. In fact, one central Jersey employer recently agreed to pay a five-figure settlement for allegedly engaging in that sort of discriminatory conduct.

The employer was an Edison Township-based staffing company that hired workers in the engineering and information technology (IT) industries. Starting at the beginning of 2019 and continuing at least into April 2020, the staffing firm posted a dozen or more IT job listings that said that the successful applicant should be temporary visa workers (such as individuals with H-1B visas.)