Glendale Legal Blog

Employers in California and around the country that do business with the federal government were prohibited from discriminating against workers based on their sexual orientation or gender identity by President Barack Obama in 2014. The move was lauded by LGBT advocacy groups, but the rules will be relaxed for religious organizations if a recent Department of Labor proposal is implemented. The proposal, which was published in the Federal Register on Aug. 15, would allow companies with a religious purpose and groups that identify as religious to base their employment decisions on whether or not a worker would accept and adhere to faith-based tenets.

This proposal has drawn widespread condemnation from the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU says the religious exemption would use taxpayer money to discriminate against LGBT workers in the name of religion. According to the advocacy group, the seemingly narrow rule change could affect millions of American workers. Almost one in four workers in the United States is employed by a company that has at least one contract with the federal government.

A camera operator on the hit crime procedural "Criminal Minds" has filed a lawsuit alleging that the show's director of photography sexually assaulted him hundreds of times between 2011 and 2019. The director of photography, California-based ABC Studios and New York-based CBS Corporation and Entertainment Partners are named as defendants in the lawsuit. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. is also listed as a defendant despite having no connection to the long-running show. The litigation was filed on July 25 in Los Angeles.

The plaintiff claims that the director of photography touched him in a sexually suggestive way between two and three times per week during his eight years working on the show. He also alleges that the director of photography screamed at him on several occasions and threatened to have him fired. He is seeking a jury trial and unspecified damages for sexual harassment, discrimination, assault, emotional duress and retaliation.

Over 200 American corporations, including California-based Apple, Google and Walt Disney, have joined the court brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees from workplace discrimination. The brief was submitted by a group of five LGBTQ rights groups on July 2 in preparation for oral arguments on three discrimination cases scheduled to go before the high court on Oct. 8.

During the Obama administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission concluded that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act protected LGBTQ workers from discrimination. However, under the Trump administration, the Justice Department has argued that Title VII offers no such protections. So far, federal appeals courts in Cincinnati, Chicago and New York have ruled that federal law does indeed shield employees from discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. However, an Atlanta federal appeals court ruled in reverse. The Supreme Court is being asked to settle the matter.

When employees feel they have been treated unfairly by their employers, they often face difficult decisions. Although they may truly believe they are being mistreated in a manner that is against the law, they might hesitate to act for fear that nothing will come of the complaint except more negative treatment at work or, worse yet, termination. Often, the worker wants to continue on the job but under proper and legal conditions. However, even when a California employee does take the major step of filing a claim with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the results are not always as expected.

Established EEOC procedure requires a claim to be evaluated to determine if mediation may be helpful or if the employer should be provided an opportunity to answer the employee's allegations. Discrimination case experts indicate that the case may be dismissed for procedural reasons, such as an untimely filing or the lack of jurisdiction by the EEOC. Increasingly over the last several years, the EEOC has been designating more of its regular cases to its low-priority track, which essentially means that no action will be taken.