Union, New Jersey, Legal Blog

Older New Jersey employees who are concerned about workplace age discrimination should be aware of a proposed law that would make it easier to pursue monetary damages in the event of wrongful termination or demotion. POWADA, the Protecting Older Workers Against Discrimination Act, is a proposed law that seeks to make it less complicated to show that an employer committed age discrimination. Since a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2009 that sided heavily with employers, it has been more difficult for victims of age discrimination to successfully seek damages.

The Supreme Court's decision changed the law so that an employee who was discriminated against has to show that age was the only reason why they were fired or demoted. It is relatively easy for an employer to argue that they would have fired the employee anyway. Under POWADA, employers would not be able to easily argue their way out of a wrongful termination suit.

LGBT workers in New Jersey may be intrigued to learn that the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in several key cases concerning protections for workers against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. The high court will hear three cases from Michigan, Georgia, and New York in which workers sued the companies that fired them; they allege that they were discriminated against for being LGBT. Two men, including a government employee and a skydiving instructor, said they were fired because they were gay. A transgender woman said she lost her job at a funeral home after she announced her transition.

The cases have moved to federal appeals courts, where several have found that LGBT workers are protected under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans sex discrimination. Appeals courts in New York and Chicago have found that gays and lesbians are protected under this provision, and a court in Cincinnati has done the same for transgender workers. However, another federal appeals court in Atlanta has ruled that the provision does not apply to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

In a new Hired study of tech companies, 60 percent of women were offered less money than male workers for the same positions. This is slightly lower than the 63 percent of women who were surveyed a year ago. Overall, the gender wage gap in the technology sector is 3 percent, but the gap is larger for some employees. For instance, black women made roughly 89 percent of what white males made. New Jersey workers may be interested in the other results from the study.

The wage gap was about 8 percent for women members of the LGBTQ community. Where a person worked also had an effect on the difference in pay between men and women. San Francisco had a 6 percent wage gap between men and women while Boston had a wage gap of 9 percent.

Getting fired is an emotional, even humiliating experience. Many people pride themselves on their professional accomplishments and feel emotions ranging from devastation to anger when an employer no longer wants to retain their services.

It is totally normal for people facing the loss of their job to consider if they have any legal rights or options. Both a desire to punish the former employer and a hope of things going back to how they used to be can motivate people to seek options after getting fired from a job.