Current Events

Many are shocked to learn that the characteristics of “weight” or “height’ are not designated protected characteristics which prohibits employment discrimination against an individual because of their “weight” or “height’ under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination or under Federal Civil Rights Statutes such as Title VII. There is a bill in New Jersey which aims to rectify this egregious wrong for NJ employees. It is logical for one to assume that “weight” or “height”, would be protected characteristics preventing an individual from employment discrimination based on those characteristics, but that is not yet the law. When there are many other protected characteristics under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination, such as sex, race, etc., it defies reason and is unconscionable that one’s height and weight are not also protected characteristics.

A worker's ability to freely change jobs is critical to the individual's freedom and personal and economic liberty. Workers’ ability to change jobs at their own discretion creates a thriving and innovative US economy but employers and businesses have fought against this and sought to take away this freedom by demanding non-compete agreements as a condition of employment. Workers suffer when they have to stay in low paying jobs or jobs without any realistic hope of promotions or advancement.  Help is on the way for New Jersey workers to prohibit the employer’s forcing of non-compete agreements. New Jersey Senate Bill S4386 will greatly help New Jersey employees if it passes and gets signed into law.

New Jersey and federal law both provide strong protection against employment discrimination based on ethnic origin, race and religion, except that the prohibitions against religious discrimination are subject to certain exceptions for religious entities. See US Supreme Court Decides Religious Exemptions for Certain Teachers.

The Federal law, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, provides protection against such discrimination to an employee who works for an employer with 15 or more employees. The New Jersey Law Against Discrimination also protects employees from such discrimination, but there is no minimum number of employees required- unlike Title VII, the NJLAD protects people who work for companies with less than 15 employees. 

Recent events in world news and media reporting have indicated an increase in ethnic origin and religious discrimination such as prejudice against Muslims and antisemitism occurring in numerous entities such as colleges and other institutions.

In order to state a claim of illegal discrimination under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination, N.J.S.A. 10:5-1 et.

Studies have documented that individuals are discriminated against for their height or weight in many aspects of their life, professionally and otherwise. Unfortunately, and surprisingly to many, under the current state law in New Jersey, weight and height discrimination in employment is permissible. Many individuals suffer such discrimination related to their weight or height because a person’s “weight” or “height” is not a designated characteristic that is protected from employment discrimination under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (LAD) as are other characteristics such as race, age, sex etc. However, that may change. The New Jersey Senate passed a bill, S1602, seeking to amend the LAD, which would prohibit height and weight discrimination in employment by adding weight and height as classes protected from discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations.

If you are a person with a disability, either temporary or permanent, who could have continued in employment if your employer how agreed to a reasonable accommodation to allow you to carry out the essential functions of your job, but your employer refused and instead terminated you, or harassed you into resigning, you are not alone. Unfortunately, too many employers just cannot be bothered to make any reasonable accommodations to allow workers to keep working. Supervisors and those with the authority to hire and fire,  either set aside their own personal sympathy to fall into line with an employer’s frequently illegal rules of “No Exceptions”,  fearing for their own job security if they lobby to expand what could be certain illegal parameters of a  “No Exceptions” rule; or else they have no cognizant sympathy for a worker with a disability (until of course, they themselves get cancer, have a serious leg impairment, or receive a diagnosed heart condition, etc.) Unscrupulous employers will sometimes begin issuing unjustified negative evaluations of the employee’s work to lay a bogus paper trail in case they subsequently have to defend on a discrimination claim. See Employee Performance Evaluations.

Discrimination based on religion or ethnicity are frequently intertwined and may overlap with bias against other legal classes who are protected from discrimination. In matters of religious discrimination, it frequently encompasses a bias against several protected classes which span multiple categories, including national origin/religious discrimination; race/religion; ethnicity/religion; color/religion. There is an overlap in all of these categories, e.g., race and ethnic origin are frequently intertwined and open to opinion, such as a person whom others categorize as being Hispanic, may themselves identify as being African American, Caucasian or Pan-Asian.

Older female professional workers may experience a double bias of age and sex and a perception by their employers they are expendable with no major loss to the company

Discrimination against older women including high-end experienced female executives in the workplace is a persistent issue, often manifesting as subtle or overt biases in hiring, promotion, in the daily workplace environment, and termination. In New Jersey, both federal and state laws provide robust protections for older worker, particularly women, who may face the compounded effect of both age and sex discrimination.

If you are an older woman and your employer has begun discriminating against you, you should contact this office immediately for a free consultation. I have represented public and private employees who were discriminated against and was successful in recovering financial compensation for their emotional pain and suffering and moneys for past lost wages and projected future lost wages. Call today for a free consultation.