National Origin Discrimination

California DFEH Reminds Employers: COVID-19 Pandemic Doesn’t Reduce Employers’ Obligations to Avoid Discrimination and Harassment

March 27, 2020 | by Stephen M. Fuerch

The COVID-19 pandemic is disrupting lives and, more importantly, has cost the lives of more than 1,000 Americans. While the pandemic has led to the institution of many extraordinary measures, there are some things that remained unchanged. For example, California employers’ obligations to avoid illegal discrimination and harassment remain in place and are as strong as ever. In fact, given the racial/ethnic component of the virus’s presumed origin, employers should be even more vigilant than ever to avoid improper practices. If, in this era of COVID-19 pandemic, you’ve been harmed at work because of your race, ethnicity or national origin, you may have legal options under the Fair Employment and Housing Act. Reach out to a knowledgeable Oakland employment attorney to find out more.

The Department of Fair Employment and Housing recently released an “Information” document about COVID-19 and employers’ FEHA obligations. The very first topic that the document addressed was the harmful practice of discrimination or harassment “because of race or national origin.” This kind of discrimination or harassment can take many forms. In the context of the current COVID-19 pandemic, the victims of illegal discrimination or harassment may be targeted because of actual or perceived Chinese ancestry.

Note that you don’t actually have to be of Chinese origin or ancestry. Illegal discrimination or harassment can stem from one’s actual national origin or the perpetrator’s perception of your national origin. So if, for example, your facial appearance, your manner of speaking or your name makes your supervisor think you’re of Chinese origin – and your supervisor harasses or discriminates against you because of it – it doesn’t matter if your heritage is Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese or something else entirely. The fact that your supervisor believed you were of Chinese origin and took adverse action against you because of that belief is enough.

California Court of Appeal Rules that ‘Offer of Compromise’ Statute Doesn’t Apply to Nonfrivolous FEHA Cases

January 29, 2019 | by Stephen M. Fuerch

Sometimes, helpful and encouraging knowledge can come even from others’ unsuccessful cases. As an example, there’s the recent case of a Los Angeles restaurant server, who lost his race discrimination case. Even though this server lost his discrimination case, his outcome in the appeals court is an important one for anyone who is considering pursuing a discrimination action in court under the Fair Employment and Housing Act. Some people might be frightened away from pursuing their rights and seeking their day in court by the possibility of not just losing but ending up with an outcome where they are left in the position of having to pay the other side.

If you are considering taking on your employer or former employer in court, you should not let it discourage you. As this case revealed, even if your employer makes a statutory settlement offer that you refuse, and you later receiving an unfavorable verdict, you will still not be “on the hook” for any of the other side’s attorneys’ fees or costs, as long as your case wasn’t frivolous or unreasonable. In other words, fear not, and if you have any questions about pursuing your claims, talk to a knowledgeable Oakland employment attorney today.

The server, F.H. worked at a five-star luxury hotel in Los Angeles. While at work, F.H. and another server became embroiled in an altercation. According to F.H., the other employee had uttered various racist slurs toward him, including “beaner” and “[expletive] Mexican.”

New Regulations Established by California Clarify and Expand What Can Constitute National Origin Discrimination in the Workplace

September 28, 2018 | by Stephen M. Fuerch

As this blog mentioned in June, the state of California has enacted new regulations to strengthen further its public policy commitment to stamping out illegal discrimination, both in housing and in workplaces. The regulations that took effect this past July 1 dealt with one particular form of discrimination: that based on national origin. One of the key aspects of these new regulations expanding the definition of what constitutes national origin discrimination dealt with speech and language. The new rules did not stop there; they went further and provide California workers various avenues for proving that national origin discrimination occurred in their workplace. If you think you’ve been the victim of national origin discrimination on your job, you should take decisive action and reach out to a knowledgeable California discrimination attorney to learn more about the options in your case.

The regulations dealt a variety of hallmarks of national origin discrimination. One was employers’ creation of “English-only” workplace policies. While the policies did not discriminate against any group on their face, the impact was clear. Just like how facially neutral policies like literacy tests had the result of disenfranchising African-American voters in the “Jim Crow” South, these English-only policies had the impact of keeping people of certain national origins out of various workplaces.

Other employers took adverse employment actions against people based only their language accent or dialect. Similar to the “English-only” policies, these rules had the impact of disproportionately harming people of certain national origins for whom English is a second language. In both the cases of language rules and accent rules, the law does not say that the employer can never establish such rules. However, if the employer does create such a rule, the employer must demonstrate that the policy requirement is a business necessity. In 2011, the California courts ruled against Spanish-speaking employees in a case of a “no Spanish at work” rule. The employer only won its case, however, because it had proof that the bilingual employees were using their native tongue to demean other non-Spanish speaking employees and the policy was necessary to stamp out this misconduct.