Houston Discrimination Lawyer
Relief Available for Victims of Discrimination
Every employee deserves a workplace that is free from discrimination and harassment. Houston employment law attorney Dennis Clifford of The Clifford Law Firm helps people who have lost their jobs due to unlawful discrimination.
Victims of discrimination are eligible to recover a variety of damages, including:
- Lost wages (past and future)
- Lost benefits, including medical insurance
- Damages for mental anguish
- Punitive damages
Types of Discrimination Cases
The Clifford Law Firm handles the following types of discrimination cases:
- Age discrimination: The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (“ADEA”) and the Texas Labor Code prohibit discrimination based on age.
- Race discrimination: Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (“Title VII”), Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 (“Section 1981”), and the Texas Labor Code prohibit discrimination based on an individual’s race.
- Disability discrimination: The Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) and the Texas Labor Code prohibit discrimination based on an individual’s actual or perceived disability.
How to Prove Your Case
Houston employment lawyer, Dennis Clifford, uses various discovery techniques to gather the evidence necessary to prove your case. Discovery options include written requests to your employer to produce documents and electronic data, including emails; written questions to your employer, which must be answered under oath; and depositions (lengthy question-and-answer sessions).
There are two types of evidence in employment cases: direct evidence and circumstantial evidence. We can prove your case with either type of evidence.
Direct evidence is powerful and compelling because it directly links the termination decision to your protected status (i.e., your age, race, or disability). For example, if your employer tells you that you are being laid off because you are getting too old for the job, that’s direct evidence of discrimination.
Circumstantial evidence typically requires an inferential step. For example, if you go outside and you see wet grass and water beads on your car, then it’s probably safe to assume it rained. Even if you didn’t actually see the rain falling from the sky, you can infer, from the circumstantial evidence, it probably rained sometime recently.
Common types of circumstantial evidence in discrimination cases include:
- Your replacement: Who did your employer hire to fill your position? If you were replaced by a significantly younger employee, that may serve as circumstantial evidence of age discrimination. Likewise, if your replacement is a different race that may suggest that your race was a factor in your employer’s decision to terminate you.
- Composition of workforce: Are most of the employees in your department the same race? How many of your coworkers are over 40? Over 50? Over 60? The answers to these questions may reveal a pattern or practice of discrimination.
- Layoff decisions: If you were laid off in a reduction-in-force (“RIF”), what are the races and ages of the individuals who were not selected for inclusion in the RIF? We may use these statistics to prove that the decision-makers acted with discriminatory intent.
- Inconsistent treatment: How did your employer treat other employees who committed the same offense that you allegedly committed? For example, if you were terminated for being late to work, were other employees who were also late to work only given a written warning? If so, that may serve as circumstantial evidence that you were treated more harshly because of your race, age, or disability.
- Negative comments: Did your manager say anything negative to you about your race, age, or disability? If so, those comments help to establish that your manager may have acted with discriminatory intent.
- Policy language: Were you allegedly terminated for violating a workplace policy? If your employer has misapplied the policy or ignored the actual policy language, that may serve as convincing evidence of discrimination.
- Failure to follow progressive disciplinary policy: Does your employer have a progressive disciplinary policy? The failure to follow the steps outlined in a progressive disciplinary policy can serve as evidence of intent to discriminate.
- Different or shifting explanations: Did your employer tell you that you were being terminated for one reason, but your termination paperwork states a different reason? Different or shifting explanations may suggest that your employer is being less than honest with you about the real reason for the termination. In such cases, we can infer that discrimination is the real reason for the termination.
- Incomplete investigation: If your employer terminated you for committing a workplace violation, did your employer properly investigate the matter? An incomplete investigation may suggest your employer was more interested in terminating you than trying to figure out what happened.