Federal and state laws protect employees from workplace discrimination and harassment. Because working is so fundamental to most Americans’ lives, legislatures want to ensure that employees can work in a safe and fair environment.

The law does not protect all forms of discrimination. However, there are several basis of discrimination that does violate the law. Employees are prohibited from discriminating on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, pregnancy, age, and disability.

Federal Law prevents employees from discriminating against employees based on age. To succeed on an age discrimination case, the employee must prove that the employer took an adverse employment action against them, which can include hiring, training, benefits, compensation, promotion, firing, layoffs and other terms, conditions and privileges of employment.

Disability discrimination is governed by The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). In order to combat the widespread discrimination against the disabled, the ADA prevents employers from discriminating against the disabled and requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations to employees.

Employers are also prohibited from sexually harassing employees on the job. Employers also cannot encourage or allow other employees to sexually harass employees.

To succeed on a gender based discrimination claim, an individual must prove that an employee made an adverse decision in hiring, advancement, transfer, pay, benefits or other employment-related conditions. The employer will always say that the adverse decision was a business judgment, so the employee will have to prove the employer’s stated reason was a mere pretext to cover up the discriminatory motive.

If you have experienced workplace discrimination contact an employment law attorney immediately. Employers will always find a lawful reason as to why they performed a specific action, such as poor work performance, insubordination, and other reasons. Thus, an attorney will research the case and highlight the facts to disprove the employer’s articulated reason, to strengthen your claim of discrimination.

It is often said that it is easier to find a job when you have a job. This has become increasingly true in today’s economic downturn.

According to the Sun Sentinel, a study conducted by the National Employment Law Project revealed that the Project discovered over 150 job ads that excluded job seekers who are currently unemployed. These ads appeared on various websites including the web’s large online job databases, CareerBuilder, Indeed, Monster, and Craigslist. Most of the ads listed employment status as a qualification, with a statement such as “must be currently employed”. Employment status is being treated like other more expected qualifications like a bachelor’s degree or a certification.

Employers may feel that employment status is an indicator of an applicant’s willingness to work, skills, and abilities. While this may have been true in the past, today there are hundreds of thousands of people who want to work, but cannot find a job based on the sheer fact that every job has hundreds of applicants. The odds are not in job seekers’ favor.

Since many workers were laid off through no fault of their own as a result of the recession, a lot of qualified applicants are currently not working. With unemployment discrimination, it is making it more difficult for these employees to find work again based on preconceived notions about their abilities and work ethic. Discrimination laws are designed to protect stereotypes like these.

At the federal level, legislation has been introduced to protect unemployed workers from discrimination. The law would prohibit employers from refusing to hire applicants based on their employment status. U.S. Representatives Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., and Henry Johnson, Jr., D-Ga. Introduced the "Fair Employment Opportunity Act of 2011".

If this legislation is passed, unemployment discrimination will join the ranks of race, age, disability, sex, national origin and religion discrimination and prohibit employers from using unemployment status in the hiring process.

Two sections of U.S. federal law significantly affect the rights of employees with disabilities. These are the Americans with Disability Act (ADA), which affects all employees and candidates; and the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA), which affects U.S. military veterans.

In 2009, the ADA was expanded by the Americans with Disabilities Amendments Act (ADAAA). The USERRA goes further than the amended ADA.

The ADA prevents employers from discriminating against qualified persons with disabilities when engaging in employment practices, including hiring and promoting. The ADA applies to private and government employers with 15 or more employees.

The USERRA applies to all employers. The USERRA requires an employer to make reasonable efforts to assist a veteran with a disability returning to employment to become qualified for a job. The disability does not have to be connected to the veteran’s service.

If a veteran has a condition that is recognized as a disability under the ADA, the veteran can be protected under both the ADA and the USERRA. It can be difficult to understand where these laws intersect. The USERRA does not adopt the ADA’s definition of disability. A veteran can have a condition that classifies them as a “disabled veteran.” They may receive benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs for the condition. Yet typically, the condition must prove significantly debilitating to the veteran to be considered as a disability under the ADA.

Before the ADAAA was passed, a disability was generally considered to be a condition that substantially limited a major life activity of an individual. The ADAAA pushed the U.S. Supreme Court to define disability more broadly. Now the Court considers impairments that are episodic or in remission, which would substantially limit major life activities when they are active, as disabilities. Such impairments include diabetes, cancer, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, and muscular dystrophy.

A case decided in June of 2011 in the Northern District of California indicated that as a veteran recovers from an illness or injury that severely affects their ability to work, they are recognized under the USERRA and ADA as having a disability. In this case, Kirbyson v. Tesoro Refining & Marketing Co. et al., Kirbyson alleged that he had two foot conditions that negatively affected his ability to take certain positions. The judge ruled that Kirbyson was entitled to a jury determination as to whether his employer made reasonable efforts to accommodate his disability.

Upon divorce, the spouses’ assets are divvied up according to the laws of the state. Assets are cash, property or other economic resources that belong to the couple. A pension is an asset that is often divisible in a divorce. The employee spouse works to accrue a pension to the benefit of the employee and the spouse.

In a recent case, Continental Airlines sued nine of its pilots claiming the pilots got "sham" divorces so their ex-spouses could receive their lump-sum pensions while the pilots continued to work for the airline. They then re-married the spouse after they received the pension. After the spouses remarried, Continental investigated the situation and fired some of the pilots while others resigned.

The pilots lived in places where domestic-relations orders transferred a large portion, or all, of their retirement benefits to their ex-spouses. Continental paid out nearly $11 million in pension distributions based on the awards.

Last week, the court held that divorces are private matters. The court ruled that employers cannot investigate why employees divorced their spouses, or whether or not the divorce was legitimate. According to the Associated Press, an attorney for the pilots, Steve Mitby, said the decision was "a victory for employee privacy rights — nobody wants their employer looking into their divorce."

The court did not decide that pensions should be awarded in cases of sham divorces. Instead, the court ruled that private employment is not the place for this to be decided. Employers are skilled in running businesses, not necessarily in investigating private matters like divorces. Those matters are best left to a court of law.

While employers have wide latitude in making decisions, they must follow the law. When the law requires a pension distribution, employers must make that distribution without looking into the private lives of its employees and making its own independent rulings on the legitimacy of the pension claims.

Age discrimination has always been a problem in the job market. For this reason, employment laws protect workers starting at age forty, when lawmakers believe employees become susceptible to discrimination in favor of younger workers.

Employers are generally aware of the discrimination laws and they will not admit that they fired an employee or took any other adverse employment action against an employer because of their age. Nonetheless, there are several ways to prove age discrimination.

If the employer says he or she is terminating an employee because “there is too much white hair in the company”, or because they want to be “young and fresh”, this is evidence that the employer’s stated reason is merely a pretext. If the employer has made a statement like this there is a good chance you can prove that you were really discriminated against based on age.

Additionally, if the employer has replaced a forty-five year old worker with twenty year olds, this is good circumstantial evidence of a discriminatory motive against the older worker. Also, if most of the workers at the job are younger, this shows that the employer may want a young workforce, which provides the motive for the employer to discriminate against the older worker.

Age discrimination can also be proved by other circumstantial evidence. If the employee is qualified and experienced, but they are terminated in favor of a younger, inexperienced and unqualified applicant, this is evidence of age discrimination.

Evidence of age discrimination does not mean the company will be found liable for age discrimination. Even in cases of direct evidence of discrimination, the evidence merely shifts the burden to the employer. The employer then must prove that they would have taken the adverse employment action even without the discriminatory intent. If the employer fails to meet its burden, the employee will be successful.