Discrimination.

Who leads this work — Arthur Karadzhyan: employment litigation from both sides of the table — plaintiff-side wage-and-hour class actions and defense practice at a national employment firm. That vantage is the method: knowing how the other side reads a file before they read it.

The Fair Employment and Housing Act is broader than federal law on nearly every axis — who is covered, what is protected, what can be recovered. The cases turn on proof, and proof is assembled, not found.

1 · What the law says

FEHA forbids employment decisions made because of a protected characteristic, for employers of five or more.[Gov. Code §12940(a)] The protected list is long and current — race, ancestry, national origin, religion, disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex and pregnancy, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, age over forty, veteran status, reproductive health decisions — and it extends to perceived characteristics and to association with protected people.[§12926] At trial the question is whether discrimination was a substantial motivating reason — not the only reason — under Harris; where an employer proves it would have made the same decision anyway, damages narrow, but declaratory relief and attorney’s fees remain in play.

Disability cases carry two additional, independent duties: reasonable accommodation, and the timely, good-faith interactive process — each its own claim, each capable of succeeding even where the termination claim does not.[§12940(m), (n)] Remedies across the Act include economic loss, emotional distress, punitive damages, and fee-shifting — the last being what makes these cases economically viable for individuals at all.

2 · How these cases actually unfold

Through the Civil Rights Department first — an administrative step with real traps, which our procedure guide covers — then into court, where the case is built circumstantially: comparators treated better for the same conduct; timing that frames the decision; explanations that shift between the termination meeting, the EDD, and the deposition; remarks that Reid v. Google says a jury may weigh rather than a judge filter; departures from the employer’s own process; and, in proper cases, “me too” evidence that turns an instance into a pattern. The defense will move for summary judgment on a legitimate-reason theory; the opposition is where the assembled record does its work. Resolution usually follows — priced by what survived the motion.

3 · Issues to examine

The accommodation counts. In any case with a disability dimension, the failure-to-accommodate and interactive-process claims are separate counts with separate elements — routinely stronger than the termination claim they accompany, and routinely unpleaded.

Association and perception. FEHA protects you when the employer acts on who it thinks you are, and when it acts on who you are close to — the caregiver passed over because of a spouse’s illness, the employee assumed to share a family member’s condition. Firms trained on the federal statute miss both.

The harassment boundary. Conduct-based mistreatment belongs in a harassment count, where liability rules are friendlier — any-size employer, personal liability for the harasser. Pleading environment facts as discrimination alone forfeits those rules; the boundary has its own deep-dive.

Mixed-motive posture. Harris is a two-edged doctrine. Managed well, it keeps a case alive against a partial-truth defense and preserves the fee award; managed lazily, it invites a same-decision instruction that guts damages. The difference is made in discovery, not at trial.

4 · Our approach

We plead the full FEHA architecture the facts support — disparate treatment, failure to accommodate, interactive process, failure to prevent, retaliation — because each count is leverage and the set is a system. We build comparator matrices from the employer’s own records rather than arguing adjectives. We draft the CRD complaint as the foundation of the later lawsuit, naming every entity and every basis. And we prepare the Harris record deliberately, so mixed motives narrow nothing that matters.

What to bring to a first conversation

Your timeline with dates. The names of your comparators and what happened to them. Performance reviews before and after the relevant events. Any remarks — who said what, when, who heard it. And if disability is involved: the notes, the requests, and every response.

Selected authorities

Gov. Code §§12926, 12940(a), (k), (m), (n), 12960, 12965 · Harris v. City of Santa Monica (2013) 56 Cal.4th 203 · Reid v. Google, Inc. (2010) 50 Cal.4th 512 · Guz v. Bechtel National, Inc. (2000) 24 Cal.4th 317 · Yanowitz v. L’Oréal USA, Inc. (2005) 36 Cal.4th 1028

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Page states California law as of its revision date.

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