Employment Discrimination

Examples of sex-based discrimination include:

• Hiring – A woman with experience and excellent qualifications is not hired because the company believes clients are more comfortable dealing with men.

• Firing – A woman is told that she is laid off due to company cutbacks and reorganization while men in the same job and with less seniority keep their jobs.

• Promotion – A female employee is repeatedly denied the opportunity to advance. Male employees with less experience receive the promotions instead.

• Job Classification – A female employee’s responsibilities have increased over time, but her job classification and pay has remained stagnant. Male colleagues have their job classifications and pay adjusted to reflect their increased responsibilities.

• Compensation – A male and female employee have similar training and work experience, but they are not paid equally even though they perform the same work.

On January 29, 2009, President Obama signed in to law the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which outlaws “discrimination in compensation,” including wages and employee benefits. The bill was drafted to reverse a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision that made it harder to sue for wage discrimination.

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act is named for an Alabama woman who, after 19 years of working as a supervisor at a Goodyear Tire plant, discovered that she had been paid significantly less than her male counterparts for the same work. It is estimated that she lost over $200,000 in salary over the course of her career due to this discrepancy.

Ms. Ledbetter initially won her lawsuit against Goodyear, but the case was later appealed. In 2007 the U.S. Supreme court ruled that discrimination claims must be filed within 180 days of the initial offence and that Ledbetter’s claims were outside the statute of limitations. As it is often difficult to quickly recognize when discrimination in compensation occurs, this ruling greatly impeded employees’ ability to make such claims. Under the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act each discriminatory paycheck extends the statute of limitations for another 180 days.

Our California employment attorneys – with over 50 years of collective experience litigating under California employment law – know how to fight for employees’ rights and get them the money they deserve. We’ve recovered tens of millions of dollars for California employees and represent individuals as well as class actions in virtually every area of California employment and labor laws: California overtime law, off the clock violations in CA, breach of contract disputes, California independent contractor law, sexual harassment, employee misclassification, discrimination, as well as mass layoffs in violation of the California WARN Act. Our California employment lawyers are repeatedly recognized for their expertise litigating in California. Founding partner Eric Gibbs has been selected as one of the Top Plaintiff Lawyers in California. And seventeen of the firm’s attorneys were selected as Northern California Super Lawyers and Rising Stars, a distinction received by less than 5% of attorneys in Northern California.