Employment discrimination based on race or any other protected characteristic is against the law in Colorado, as it is in all 50 states. Employers do not have the right to treat you unfairly because of your race. The protections against employment discrimination based on race do not apply exclusively to employees who work full-time or have been working for the same employer for a year or more. Unlike health insurance benefits, where the right is guaranteed only for employees who work full-time, or Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) leaves of absence, which are only for employees who have worked for the same employer for more than a year, the protection against discrimination in the workplace applies to everyone. This is true no matter how many or how few hours per week you work.
It is also true whether you have an employment contract or are employed at will, and whether the duration of your employment is open-ended or the job has a predetermined end date. Employees who face racial discrimination in the workplace can also file a discrimination claim regardless of whether they are working as employees with a Form W-2 or independent contractors with a 1099. You do not even have to be hired before you can exercise your right to protection from discrimination; job candidates who did not get hired can file an employment discrimination claim if they have sufficient evidence that the employer’s motives for not hiring them were discriminatory.
The Boulder race discrimination lawyers at HKM Employment Attorneys LLP can help you if you have experienced racial discrimination at your job.
How Can You Tell if What Happened at Your Work Was Racial Discrimination?
The legal definition of employment discrimination is one or more adverse actions taken by an employer against an employee or job candidate based on a protected characteristic of the employee or job applicant. Protected characteristics are features of the person or his or her life history, such as the person’s race, national origin, religion, sex, age, disability, or marital status. The following is a non-exhaustive list of adverse actions that employees may cite in discrimination complaints:
- Refusal to hire
- Unfair treatment during the job screening or training process
- Excessive scrutiny of the employee’s work
- Negative performance reviews
- Constant belittling, teasing, or other non-prosocial behavior that creates a hostile work environment
- Changing the employee’s job duties, schedule, or work location, when this change is a unilateral decision by the employer
- Denial of promotions or raises
- Demotion or reduction of pay
- Termination of employment
Most of these actions are justifiable in some circumstances, such as if the employee breaks the employer’s rules or if the employee’s quality of work is poor. They are never justifiable if the employer’s reason for taking the adverse action is a protected characteristic of the employee.
It is possible that the discrimination you have experienced at work involves more than one protected characteristic. For example, in the same employment discrimination complaint, you can cite that you experienced discrimination based on your race, sexual orientation, and disability if you have evidence that all of those protected characteristics were targets of your employer’s discriminatory actions.
Employment discrimination is not the same thing as employer retaliation, but they are both against the law, and it is possible that you have experienced both at the same workplace. Employer retaliation is when an employer takes an adverse action against an employee in response to the employee engaging in a protected activity. Examples of protected activities include applying for FMLA leave, requesting disability accommodations, filing a workers’ compensation claim, or cooperating with an official investigation into alleged misconduct by the employer or at the organization. If, as in the above example, you file a complaint saying that your employer discriminated against you based on your race, sexual orientation, and disability, you might also cite employer retaliation if your employer fired you or put you on a performance improvement plan shortly after you requested disability accommodations, and you believe that your accommodation request was the reason for the employer issuing the performance improvement plan.
When to Contact a Boulder Race Discrimination Attorney
It is never too soon to contact an employment discrimination lawyer. Racial discrimination is rarely an isolated incident. If your employer denied you a promotion, and you think it is because of your race, then you can probably think of other examples of discriminatory behavior that you experienced at work, even if, when they happened, it did not occur to you that these actions might count as discrimination.
You can even contact a lawyer if, so far, the discrimination has only consisted of your coworkers making offensive comments about people of your racial background, even if none of the comments are directly about you. It is important to document everything, and if you are thinking of complaining to human resources about how your coworkers’ comments bother you, your lawyer can help you prepare for the meeting with HR and plan your next move depending on the HR office’s response. In any case, your interaction with an employment lawyer begins long before you file a lawsuit in court.
How to File an Employment Discrimination Complaint in Colorado
The courts of Colorado only accept lawsuits about employment discrimination if the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has authorized the plaintiff to file the lawsuit. This means that contacting the EEOC is a preliminary step to suing your employer for race discrimination.
When you contact the EEOC, you should provide documentation of all the discriminatory behaviors, from email exchanges with your employer to your personal notes of things your coworkers said and did. The deadline for contacting the EEOC is 45 days after the most recent incident of discrimination. The EEOC will investigate your workplace to see whether your claims have merit. If the EEOC agrees that there is substantial evidence that your employer discriminated against you, it will authorize you to file the lawsuit.
Contact HKM Employment Attorneys, LLP, About Race Discrimination
The Boulder employment lawyers at HKM Employment Attorneys, LLP, can counsel you about race discrimination claims. Contact the employment lawyers at HKM Employment Attorneys LLP in Boulder, Colorado, to set up a consultation.
