Workplace
Rights & Protections
How we assist in protecting your workplace rights.
We represent employees across the United States in litigation against their current or former employers. To keep our balance, we also represent a select number of companies in defense matters.
Employment litigation is a technically complex area of litigation filled with procedural pitfalls and employer-friendly defenses. We leverage our experience defending against these claims to ensure our clients use the right language and create a strong narrative in pre-litigation disputes and lawsuits.
Wrongful Termination
“Wrongful termination” might be the two most common words we hear from potential clients. Unfortunately, there is no claim for wrongful termination in Georgia, and the scope of that claim in other jurisdictions is far more limited than most people believe. We nonetheless assist clients facing potential adverse action by their employer by identifying other potential claims.
Discrimination
Federal law prohibits employers from taking adverse employment actions against current or prospective employees based on certain characteristics, such as a person’s race, national origin, gender, religion, sexual orientation, parental status, military obligations, or disability.
Discrimination can manifest in many forms, like preferential treatment, unfair treatment, harassment, promotion and hiring decisions, discipline, and terminations.
We assist our clients in determining whether their experience may constitute unlawful discrimination and help them understand the available avenues to redress potential discrimination in the workplace.
Harassment/Hostile Work Environment
Employees are not only protected from major adverse actions by an employer under antidiscrimination laws. Employees also have a right to a harassment-free workplace. In severe cases, employees may be able to claim that they have been subjected to a hostile work environment.
One of the most common hostile work environment claims is for sexual harassment. Sexual harassment can range from sexual assault to repeated comments or proposals for sexual favors in exchange for better working conditions.
Hostile work environment claims also extend to other protected categories. For example, if a person is subjected to derogatory comments because of their religious practices, the employer may be liable for creating a hostile work environment.
We assist our clients in understanding whether their experience rises to a hostile work environment and counsel them on how to raise concerns in a manner that will generate additional legal protections if the employer retaliates against them.
Disability
Federal and state law provide employees with certain protected leaves, as well as the right to obtain reasonable accommodations in the workplace to accommodate disabilities. Additionally, employers are often required to provide leave to employees who have a qualifying family member who experiences a serious health condition.
We help our clients navigate these legal obligations through the accommodation process and ensure that these requests are made in a manner that protects the requesting employee from retaliation by the employer.
Retaliation
Retaliation happens when an employer treats an employee differently after you make a protected complaint. What constitutes “protected activity” varies from statute to statue, and we help our clients prepare complaints in a sufficiently specific manner such that they are covered by anti-retaliation statutes if their employer retaliates against them.
Whistleblower Claims
Through their employment, some employees learn that their employer is engaged in some kind of illegal activity or misconduct. We counsel employees on whether what they have discovered qualify for potential whistleblower rewards programs, as well as how to protect employees from potential liability related to corporate misconduct and help ensure they are protected if they intend to disclose their employer’s bad acts, either to a regulator or within the company.