The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination in employment on the basis of ethnicity or national origin. This type of discrimination occurs when an employer bases an employment decision on a person’s ethnicity or national origin rather than on performance on the job or on qualifications to do a job. This kind of discrimination also occurs when an employer maintains neutral policies that are not related to job qualifications but tend disproportionately to exclude ethnic minorities.
The federal law against ethnic or national origin discrimination prohibits employers with more than 15 employees from using these categories as a basis for hiring, termination, promotion, compensation, job training, or any other term, condition, or privilege of employment. The law also prohibits employment decisions based on stereotypes and assumptions about abilities, traits, or the performance of individuals of certain ethnic groups. New York State and New York City law extends this protection to employers with more than 4 employees.
Ethnic discrimination in the workplace can be extremely subtle and can be occurring even when it seems that an employer is acting evenhandedly. Situations where employers may be using ethnicity or national origin as a factor in employment decisions might include:
You fill out a job application and it asks for information about your ethnicity or where you were born; you don’t get the job.
You are scheduled for a promotion, and your employer knows you are a native of Lithuania to hire or promote a lesser-qualified person who was born in the United States.
You work for a company that has clients in areas known for non-violent hostility toward ethnic minorities. Your employer decides that minorities should not hold positions in which they have to deal with those clients.
A company advertises for employees in solicitations that will tend only to reach non-minority applicants.
You are receiving excellent performance reviews, but you are being compensated less than other employees of equal seniority who were born in the U.S. or who are of particular ethnicities.
Your employer downsizes, but all or most of the employees laid off were born outside the U.S.
Valuable accounts or clients are being steered to native-born workers or workers of particular ethnicities.
You are kept out of strategic meetings in favor of native-born workers.
Act quickly—there is a limited amount of time for you to take legal action.
If you were fired and received severance, check the severance agreement to make sure you didn’t waive your rights to claim discrimination. (Even if you did, the waiver may not be valid).
Gather written reviews and other documents proving your performance quality, as well as your employee manual, if published.
Get in touch with an experienced employment lawyer.
