If you suspect that you’ve been discriminated against at work, then you may be justified in taking legal action against your employer. This is especially true if you’ve suffered harm as a result of the discrimination, such as when an adverse employment action was taken based on discriminatory intent or when you were retaliated against for reporting discriminatory behavior. But even if it seems like you have a strong workplace discrimination case, you can come face-to-face with aggressive defenses that may threaten to derail your case. If you don’t anticipate and react to those defenses, then you could be denied the accountability and compensation that you want and deserve.
But what specific arguments are you going to go up against in your case? While that’s going to be fact-specific, in this post we want to look at some common defenses to workplace discrimination so that you have a better idea of what you may go up against in your case.
Common defenses in workplace discrimination cases
There are several defenses that can come up in a workplace discrimination case. You need to be prepared to counter each of them. Here are some of the most powerful that you might face:
- Poor job performance: This is an extremely common defense in workplace discrimination cases. In short, your employer argues that the adverse employment action in question was based on your poor work performance rather than any discriminatory intent. They might present your prior performance appraisals or emails that are critical of your work to support their position. You might be able to counter this defense by presenting favorable performance appraisals, complimentary emails and witness testimony that attests to your ability to adequately perform your job duties.
- You didn’t meet a bona fide job requirement: Some jobs require certain qualifications, known as a bona fide occupational qualification, that end up disproportionately affecting individuals in a certain class, such as those of a certain age or gender. For example, if the job requires the ability to regularly lift over 75 pounds, then there’s a good chance that those roles will be filled primarily with men. A gender discrimination argument may be tough to make here, but it’s still worth analyzing the situation to see if the qualification in question is truly necessary for the job or if your employer is using it as a cover for discrimination.
- Breach of contract: If your employment is subjected to a contract, then your employer might argue that you breached the contract in some way, thus resulting in the employment action that was taken against you. Make sure you know the terms of your contract and anticipate how the defense will try to use them against you. Then, gather evidence that shows how you stuck to your contractual obligations.
- After-acquired evidence: In some instances, the employer discovers that the employee who was acted against engaged in some sort of wrongdoing, but this evidence doesn’t come to light until after the adverse decision was taken. Stealing from the employer and lying on a resume are examples. Here, the employer may be able to argue that it would’ve taken the adverse employment action in question if it had known about the wrongdoing at the time that it acted against the employee.
Fully protect your interests in your workplace discrimination case
Workplace discrimination can negatively impact your finances, but it can also crater your career and leave you with significant emotional and psychological harm. You don’t deserve that, which is why you should act to hold your employer accountable and recover the compensation you deserve. If you’d like to learn more about how to do that, then now is the time to gain a fuller understanding of how employment discrimination cases work and how you can build a strong one based on the evidence at hand.