Current Events

Wage discrimination in your past employment positions should not follow you into your future employment! Unfortunately, up until January 1, 2020, it was legal for prospective employers in New Jersey to ask applicants what they earned in their prior employment. Employers would frequently then scale down their offer of wages proximate to the applicant’s prior earnings in their former employment, i.e., pay as little as they could get away with while still maintaining a work force. This perpetuated the historic wage discrimination practices.

On August 24, 2021, the US House of Representatives approved The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, named for the civil rights leader and Georgia Congressman John Lewis, who died in 2020. This new bill aims to restore the full protections of the original, bipartisan Voting Rights Act of 1965. It has been widely discussed that the bill faces an uphill battle in the Senate.

Although the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was reauthorized by Congress in 2006, the Supreme Court eviscerated it in 2013 in the Shelby County v. Holder decision.

New Jersey’s top law enforcer announced in a press release in August that an employer, Academy Bus Lines, must pay a former driver $40,000.00 for firing him because he took a leave to care for his dying father. According to the investigation, the Hoboken-based company fired the bus driver after he began intermittent leave under the New Jersey Family Leave Act. (FLA).

The FLA is an Act to provide employees with newly-born or adopted children or seriously ill family members temporary leave from their employment, and guaranteeing job security and certain benefits during this leave.

Harriet Tubman Planned, Organized and Successfully Led a Union Military Operation Against Confederate Troops During the Civil War.

After the Union gave Harriet Tubman her new orders for her to organize an espionage ring to help the Union Armed Forces defeat the Confederate States Armed Forces, the Union Army subsequently asked her to lead a military operation in South Carolina, which mission she accepted. Harriet Tubman made her last trip as a conductor on the Underground Railroad in December 1860. But her work for the cause of liberty and the emancipation of slaves had not ended.

Relying on intelligence that Tubman had gathered through her espionage network, Colonel James Montgomery asked Tubman in 1863 to lead a secret military mission against Confederate Armed Forces in South Carolina Harriot Tubman was the only woman known to have led a military operation during the American Civil War.

The Union Army recruited Harriet Tubman to work as a covert operative as described in Parts 1 and II of this series on this brave leader. She traveled to a Union Army camp in South Carolina supposedly to aid the former Black slaves who had been given sanctuary with the Union troops, but she was there for espionage work on behalf of the Union. The skills Tubman had acquired as a conductor on the  Underground Railroad served her work as a covert operative for the Union. Because she was from Maryland and not South Carolina, she was not familiar with the ways of South Carolina or their dialect, which made communication with them difficult. They resented the rations the Union Army gave to her.

If your boss starts treating you poorly or discriminates against you because he/she learn of your association with person(s) of a race other than your own race or ethnicity, that is “Associational Discrimination”. The New Jersey Law Against Discrimination is sufficiently latitudinous to allow race and ethnic discrimination claims to proceed based on the Plaintiff’s association with a person of a different race or ethnicity.

By way of example, a white waitress works at her job for several years, and when the employer learns she is dating a Black man, her shifts get cut. A long-term worker brings her children to an employer-sponsored party where the employer learns that her children are bi-racial, and subsequently the promotion she was promised is given to someone else. Or a secretary who is known at work to be Jewish tells her boss that she is married to an Egyptian Muslim, and she thereafter is “let go” in a bogus restructuring.

Under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination, NJSA, 10:5-4, it is illegal for an employer to discriminate in employment, its advantages and privileges, because a person is a member of a protected class under the statute. This is a declared civil right.

In spite of progress made in the LGBTQ’s Rights Movement, there still exists stigmas in some workplaces for workers who are gender non-conforming. Men who exhibit what is considered to be traditionally feminine traits and woman who express contrary to feminine stereotypes may be passed over for promotions or harassed by co-workers.

Whether you are non-binary, non-cisgender, or transsexual, harassment and discrimination based on one’s being a certain sexual orientation is prohibited just as discrimination based on gender identity or sex is prohibited.

In New Jersey, it is illegal for an employer to discriminate against you because he perceives you to be disabled, irrespective of whether you actually are disabled or not. If this happens, you may have a valid claim for illegal employment discrimination under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination even if you are not disabled.

The New Jersey Law Against Discrimination is broad enough to prohibit discrimination because of perceived handicaps even if you are not in fact handicapped. If your employer thinks you are handicapped or disabled, it may be a valid claim in some situations even if you are not disabled.

Many subsequent cases of perceived disability discrimination cite back to a 1982 NJ Supreme Court case, Andersen v.

When a long-term employee learns that other employees who are doing the same job and who and have worked less years for the employer, are earning more money than she/he, it can be shocking and hurtful. Particularly when the employee has logged in many years of loyal service. It appears counter-intuitive but “seniority” as to employees’ legal rights is illusory in many employment contexts including as to pay grades. The exceptions are when an employee is deemed to have certain seniority rights because they are covered by a bone fide merit system, Civil Service Commission rules, or in some instances by terms of a collective bargaining agreement or other contract. The majority of government employees in state and local government are covered by New Jersey’s Civil Service System.

Employees have come to me wanting to know if an arbitration agreement they signed at work is enforceable. According to a recent ruling by a Federal Court in New Jersey, it is enforceable. N.J. Civil Justice Inst.

In this year 2021, Black employees at work may experience racism that is blatantly horribly racist, which happens much more frequently than many Caucasian people find believable. Unfortunately, being called the n-word by supervisors and/or co-workers still happens too frequently especially in blue collar and physical labor jobs. I have filed lawsuits on behalf of workers who were called the n-word and other racist epithets at work and was successful in recovering money to compensate them for their pain and suffering.

Black employees of all levels may experience discrimination at work in spite of attempts to raise awareness about the struggles of Blacks such as the recent commemoration of Juneteenth as a national holiday, the first time celebrated as a Federal holiday was June 19, 2021. Juneteenth marks June 19, 1865 when Black slaves in Texas were told about their freedom, however at that point the 13^th Amendment had not been ratified.