Disability Discrimination

The New Jersey Law Against Discrimination is broad enough to prohibit discrimination based on a perceived disability even if you are not in fact disabled. Employment discrimination based your employer’s perception that you are disabled may lead to a wrongful termination. Under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination, N.J.S.

Persons with a disability, or who had a temporary disability, have a right to be employed! Persons with disabilities have a civil right to employment as much as any non-disabled person has a right to employment. If you are an employee who became temporarily or permanently disabled and requested a reasonable accommodation so you can perform the essential functions of your job, and your employer began giving you unjustified poor performance evaluations, starting shutting you out of meetings, assigned you a new unreasonable workload you had never been previously assigned, you are not alone. Unfortunately, these are tactics that an unsavvy employer may use to pressure an employee into resigning. See Employment Attorney, I Was Put on a PIP: the Dangers of a PIP.

There are stereotypes which leads employers to believe that persons with disabilities will be not be able to take on and advance in complex tasks and responsibilities and supervise others because of perceived limitations which have no basis in fact, but they are associated with disability in general or with specific chronic health condition stereotypes.

Juneteenth is a day of national recognition and reflection upon this country’s legacy of slavery and systemic racism.

Background History of Juneteenth.

In 1863, as the nation approached its third year of civil war, President Abraham Lincoln issued The Emancipation Proclamation. The Emancipation Proclamation was signed by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863 during the American Civil War. It declared that all enslaved persons in Confederate territory were to be freed.

Chief Executives and high-ranking corporate officers such as Vice Presidents may be lulled into believing they are insulated from age discrimination particularly when they have recently received bonuses and have a long, successful employment history with the company. However, government statistics reveal a huge gap between those who remain employed in these upper level positions before and after they are 54 years of age. See NJ Age Discrimination Attorney, Qualified and Experienced IT Specialists Fired Due to Age.

Don’t sit on your rights. If you think your employer has fired you, or is considering terminating you because of your age, you should contact this law office immediately for a free consultation.

If you are an employee who reported or complained about discrimination to your employer and were subsequently demoted, written up for bogus reasons, or had other retaliatory actions taken against you, you may have a claim for retaliation in some circumstances. The New Jersey Law Against Discrimination protects employees from retaliation for engaging in protected activities such as objecting or reporting workplace discrimination that is based on a class protected under the statute, including the classes of race, creed, color, national origin, ancestry, age, marital status, affectional or sexual orientation, familial status, disability, see New Jersey Disability Discrimination Lawyer, liability for service in the Armed Forces of the United States, N.J.S.A.

Employees may sense that something is wrong in their workplace in terms of the employer’s non-discrimination practices when the employer seems to have no illegal bias at all. Nevertheless, their eyes may tell a different story and discern a distinct and irrational imbalance in the workplace demography as to sex, race, age, etc. While the employer may have no intent to discriminate, an employer’s policies that appear on their face to be neutral could curtail the hiring, promotion and retention of certain protected classes of person, or lead to disparate impact discrimination. See NJ Sex Discrimination Attorney, I’m a Female Executive Unfairly Evaluated.

Disparate Impact Discrimination, What Is It? And Is it Legal?

Unlike most discrimination claims, disparate impact claims do not require proof of a discriminatory motive.

Whistleblowing on illegal acts of your employer can entail risks. Particularly when it is an upper-level manager who does the whistleblowing, the employee may fear it is tantamount to disloyalty, resulting in career building suicide, and be hesitant to whistleblow even though they feel they are ethically obligated to do so.

If the whistleblower first follows statutory mandated steps, employees who object to an employer’s illegal acts have statutory rights. Retaliation against a complaining New Jersey employee is prohibited under the Conscientious Employee Protection Act §§ 34:19-1 — 34:19-14, (CEPA). New Jersey upper-level corporate managers can whistleblow on their company when they reasonably believe the company is engaging in illegal activities, violating legal regulations, or endangering public health and safety.

If you are a New Jersey employee and your employer denied your request for a reasonable accommodation for your disability to allow you to keep working, you should contact this office immediately for a free consultation. We have locations in Northern, Central, Southern and Western NJ to meet with clients and accept cases from all over the state. This law firm has successfully represented numerous employees who had visible or hidden disabilities which were temporary, permanent, or intermittent, who had their rights violated, and was successful in obtaining for them the reasonable accommodations required to enable them to remain employed, recovered money for pain and suffering; and was successful in financial remuneration for lost wages, both past and future lost wages, in termination cases. DON’T SIT ON YOUR RIGHTS! Contact us today for a free consultation.

ACCOMMODATIONS ARE REQUIRED FOR PERMANENT, INTERMITTENT, OR TEMPORARY, VISIBLE OR HIDDEN DISABILITY.

Some employers will fire an employee before the beginning of the new year alleging the employee’s job was being eliminated in a “restructuring”. Devious employers, to mask their illegal discrimination in the firing decision, will sometimes choose the end of the year to terminate the employee, citing an alleged business restructure plan to take effect in January, for the sole purpose of bolstering their bogus allegation that the employee’s position is being eliminated for bone fide business reasons.

If you think your employer may have chosen you to terminate in a bogus “Job Elimination” because of an illegal bias, such as because of your age, race, disability etc., or because you complained at about what you believed to be the employer’s unsafe or illegal practices, you may be right. See

An employee who whistleblows on fraud committed against the Federal Government, such as a healthcare worker reporting Medicare fraud or an employee working for a contractor who contracts with the US government, possibly may be able to bring a claim under the False Claims Act,  and by filing a Qui Tam Complaint may be able to receive a percentage of the government’s recovered funds under what is known as the qui tam provisions of the False Claims Act (FCA), 31 U.S.C. §§ 3729 et seq. Non-employees who report such fraud on the Federal Government may also file Qui Tam Complaints.

When NJ employees think of whistleblower claims, they may commonly think of the claims filed under New Jersey Conscientious Protection Act. See New Jersey Whistleblower Laws Attorney. These arise when an employer retaliates against an employee reported or objected or refused to participate in any activity, policy or practice they believed to be illegal. To read more, see NJ Employment Attorney, Auditor Employees have Whistleblower Protection.

Employees and Non-Employees and the False Claims Act

However, employees who have knowledge their employer is committing fraud against the United States Government, such as Medicare fraud or contractors fraudulently billing the US government for work never done, possibly may bring a claim under the Federal False Claims Act (FCA), and receive a percentage of recovered funds under what is known as the qui tam provisions.