Discrimination

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DISCRIMINATION LAW, HARASSMENT LAW – LITIGATION PROCESS

Discrimination

cases of discrimination

The majority of what most people consider to be cases of discrimination are covered under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act as amended. Title VII prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. However, Title VII is not the only federal regulation that protects an individual against unlawful discriminatory conduct. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA), protects individuals who are 40 years of age or older; and, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) as amended by the ADA Amendments Act of 2008, prohibits employment discrimination against qualified individuals with disabilities in the private sector, and in state and local governments. In Idaho, Title 67 Chapter 59 of the Idaho Code mirrors the protections provided under federal law. Generally, most employers will have policies which in letter and sprit provide protection that mirror the requirements of the applicable federal and state laws. However, there are those times when the employer and employee cannot resolve their differences within the confines of the employer’s rules and policies. When the matter can not be resolved in-house then inevitably, as the existence of the state and federal judicial system attest, some cases will proceed through the prerequisite administrative steps and then to litigation.

frequently asked questions

What will happen if a case cannot be resolved through the use of internal procedures and the aggrieved party seeks further redress? What is the process? How long will it take? These are questions frequently on the minds of potential litigants and employers and this is not surprising. Formal administrative procedures and our court system are foreign to most people, including many lawyers who actually have never seen the inside of a courtroom. Most clients (employers and employees) who contact Idaho Employment Law Solutions for help have never been involved in a lengthy administrative law procedure or a lawsuit and never imagined they would be. Most clients who seek legal redress are shocked that a case of alleged discrimination may take over 2.5 years to go to a jury trial. They are even more dumbfounded when the employer in the lawsuit files a counter-claim alleging wrongdoing on the employee’s part.
Add the appellate process to the legal landmine, and it is easy to see that a case that starts in one year may not be settled for five years through litigation. So how does an aggrieved person or an employer intelligently decide to file and pursue a lawsuit when all administrative remedies have been exhausted, if exhaustion of administrative remedies is indeed a prerequisite to litigation? How does an employer decide how to defend against the allegation and or pursue a counter-claim? To gain insight to answer the latter questions, an examination of a fictional case of sexual harassment brought by a female or male client in Idaho follows. Please note that although our sample case is concerned with sexual harassment, a form of gender discrimination prohibited under Title VII, the steps presented herein are applicable to most cases of alleged discrimination covered under state and federal law.
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The Hypothetical Idaho Case

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