Racial discrimination is the type of employment discrimination that gets the most attention in the media, but it is not the only kind. It is against the law for employers in Montana, and anywhere in the United States, to discriminate against employees and job seekers based on their race, color, or national origin, whether arising from statements that the employee made about his or her own racial background or from assumptions that the employer makes about the employee. Racial discrimination can affect just one employee in a workplace, or it might take the form of employers in a racially diverse organization giving preferential treatment to employees of one race to the exclusion of others.
The discrimination does not have to be anything as obvious as the employer firing you; it could also take the form of your employer being excessively critical of you, or your coworkers generally treating you disrespectfully. The Bozeman race discrimination lawyers at HKM Employment Attorneys LLP can help you if your employer discriminated against you because of your race.
Protected Characteristics and Montana Employment Law
Race is a protected characteristic according to federal and state employment laws. This means that employers may not use it as a basis on which to take adverse actions against employees or to refuse to hire job candidates. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 officially prohibits racial discrimination in employment and in other areas of life, such as housing and education; later laws have outlined additional protected characteristics. Other protected characteristics recognized by the Montana Human Rights Act include age, sex, religion, marital status, and disability.
Discrimination is not merely whether other people at your workplace like you; you have no way of proving, or even knowing for certain, how others feel about you. You can, however, prove that discrimination occurred if you have evidence that your race was the employer’s real reason for taking an adverse action against you, even if your employer provided other excuses about their motivation.
For example, an adverse action could be an employer reassigning you to a different work location or changing your work schedule or job duties in a way that is burdensome to you, or which you did not request and does not come with an increase in pay. It could also mean that your employer denies you promotions and raises for which you apply and for which you meet the formal eligibility requirements. If the people who got promoted instead of you are of a different race than you, you may cite this as evidence that the employer’s promotion decisions were racially motivated. A hostile work environment also counts as an adverse action. An employer creates a hostile work environment when employers scrutinize your work more closely than they do the work of other employees in a similar position to yours. It also occurs when coworkers harass you about a protected characteristic, and management does nothing to stop the harassment, even when you complain about it. The harassment might consist of statements and intrusive questions that coworkers direct toward you. It could also include derogatory comments or offensive jokes that coworkers make about your race or people who share your racial background; it still counts as harassment if the coworkers engage in this behavior in your presence, even if they are not directly speaking to or about you.
How to File an Employment Discrimination Complaint
If you experience racial discrimination in the workplace, you should document all incidents of it. This means writing down in your own notes things that coworkers said and did that you believe were racially motivated. It also means that you should archive all emails that could count as evidence of your work supervisors being unfairly critical of you, refusing your requests for well-deserved promotions, or ignoring your complaints or failing to take them seriously.
When suing your employer for discrimination, you cannot go straight to the court and file a lawsuit as soon as the discrimination happens. Instead, you must first complete the preliminary investigation process and get written permission from the relevant federal or state entity to file your lawsuit. Start by meeting with a counselor at the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) or the Montana Human Rights Bureau. The deadline for contacting the EEOC about discrimination is 45 days after the most recent incident of discrimination. You can set up appointments with both entities and pursue your complaint simultaneously at the federal and state levels.
After your initial meeting with the Human Rights Bureau or EEOC, its employees will conduct an investigation into discrimination at your workplace. They may find that your employer also had a valid, non-discriminatory reason for taking an adverse action against you. Conversely, the EEOC or the Bureau might find that there is additional evidence of racial discrimination at your workplace beyond what you cited in your initial complaint, whether it was directed against you or against other employees. If the EEOC or Bureau finds that the evidence of discrimination is strong enough, it will authorize you to file a lawsuit. If you sue without this authorization, the court will dismiss your lawsuit and refuse to consider it.
Proving That Your Employer’s Behavior Toward You Was Racially Motivated
In an employment discrimination lawsuit, as in any civil lawsuit, the burden is on the plaintiff to persuade the court that his or her claims are true. The easy part is showing that your employer took an adverse action against you, but the difficult part is proving that your race is the employer’s main motivation for doing it. The good news is that, once your case makes it to the lawsuit stage, you have the results of the EEOC or Human Rights Bureau’s investigation to back up your claims.
HKM Employment Attorneys for Race Discrimination
The Bozeman employment lawyers at HKM Employment Attorneys LLP, can give you advice about filing a race discrimination complaint against your employer. Tell our employment lawyers about your case and set up a consultation.
