In California, it is not just wrong to be unfairly treated at work or denied housing due to your personal life, but also illegal. Many people wonder whether their relationship status is legally protected. Marital status is a protected class in California. You are protected against discrimination under the powerful Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) regardless of your single, married, divorced, or widowed status.
Although federal laws do not provide much protection in this regard, California law guarantees that your personal life will not be intertwined with your professional opportunities. This blog will deconstruct the protections you receive in the workplace and in the housing market. You also learn how to identify unlawful discrimination and what particular actions you can take to defend your rights and seek damages.
What Is Considered Marital Status Under California Law?
You might wonder which life situations fall under the definition of marital status in California law. The legal definition is extensive and inclusive. It covers almost all the possible arrangements for your personal life.
According to the rules provided by the California Civil Rights Department, marital status is single, married, separated, widowed, or annulled. Also covered is same-sex marriage as you would in an opposite-sex marriage, since the law does not differentiate between the two in terms of anti-discrimination.
Moreover, this protection is also applied to your future intentions, which means that you cannot be discriminated against because you are going to be married or you are already in the process of getting a divorce.
The law is intended to prevent inferences about your reliability, stability, or availability from being drawn from your legal relationship with another individual, so your status is not a professional liability.
The Scope of Protection
As mentioned above, the protection given to marital status in California is broad and extends much further than the conventional definition of a spouse. These protections apply to you regardless of whether you have never been married or have experienced various transitions in life, including divorce or widowhood.
The legislation expressly protects you irrespective of whether your marriage partner is of the same or the opposite sex, so that marriage equality is considered in all professional and residential relations.
Also, the protection includes individuals who are separated or whose marriages are dissolved by court annulment. The law protects you against discrimination based on the perceived or real identity of your spouse. This implies that in case an employer or a landlord does not like your spouse or disagrees with the choice of partner, they usually cannot use it as an excuse to deny you a chance or mistreat you, as long as it does not pose a conflict of interest.
What Constitutes Discrimination?
Know what discrimination is to protect your interests effectively. In California, discrimination occurs when unfavorable treatment is based on protected characteristics, such as marital status. This is either disparate treatment or disparate impact. Discrimination is subtle and manifests in changes to tasks, salaries, or appraisals by seniors or housing providers.
Marital Status Discrimination
Discrimination based on your marital status is any adverse action against you due to your being married, single, or a divorced individual. You might find yourself in a scenario where a supervisor expects you to be unmarried, with no other commitments, and therefore can make you work overtime without extra pay or benefits.
On the other hand, you may experience discrimination as a married individual when an employer believes that family commitments will come between you and your work performance in terms of travelling or participating in a project that requires high stakes. This form of bias is based on stereotypes rather than your actual performance or availability.
The law allows you to be judged on your own basis and not on the prejudiced ideas that another person may have about your lifestyle. When these stereotypes are converted into physical harm, i.e., loss of income or even refusal of a promotion, the legal standard of discrimination based on marital status has probably been achieved under the laws offered by the state of California.
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Marital Status Discrimination in Housing
Your rights regarding marital status are not limited to the workplace; they are equally protected in the housing market. California law forbids discrimination by a landlord, property manager, or real estate agent based on your marital status, whether married or not. Some landlords might also be willing to rent to married couples because they feel they are more stable or reliable, but this violates FEHA.
You can rent an apartment, purchase a house, or take out a mortgage without having your marital status as a negative determinant. In particular, in San Diego, where the rental market is competitive, you may come across landlords who cannot agree to allow unmarried roommates to pool their incomes to satisfy a financial obligation but allow a married couple to do so. The legislation stipulates that the financial standards of all applicants must be equal, regardless of their legal relationship with one another, so that everyone has equal access to quality housing opportunities.
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Marital Status Discrimination in Employment
When navigating the job market in San Diego, you should know how your marriage status affects your career path. Discrimination in employment occurs when the employer bases their hiring decision on your marital status, retaining or employing you. This applies to all phases of the professional relationship, from the first job advertisement to the last exit interview.
When an employer chooses to hire single people only because they believe that they are more committed to the company, or even hires married people because they think they are more stable, they are breaking the law. Your employer has no right to base their decision to pay you less than a colleague of the same qualification on your marital status or deny you an opportunity to participate in training programs or health benefits, which they are providing to others. This is a protection that allows your career development to be based on your abilities and work ethic, rather than on your personal life decisions.
Hiring, Firing, and Promotion
Hiring, firing, and promotion are the key areas that you should be keen on since they are common areas where discrimination based on marital status occurs. During the hiring process, when you are denied an opportunity to be hired because a qualified candidate is chosen instead of you, the hiring manager's right to hire you has been infringed.
In the same manner, if you are being laid off or fired, your employer cannot discriminate against you on the grounds of marital status to fire you instead of another person. For example, your employer cannot dismiss you because of a divorce proceeding, even if they think you will be too distracted to be productive.
Regarding promotions, you are assessed on your career successes and leadership capabilities. When your superiors refuse to give you an advancement on the basis that your position as a parent or a spouse will not allow you to devote the time needed to take a new position, you are facing illegal discrimination, which should be the subject of a formal legal action.
Unsuitable Interview Questions
In an interview, the interviewer can pose questions that might appear innocent, but in fact, they are meant to determine your marital status so that they can use it to discriminate against you. It is not acceptable that a prospective employer may inquire about whether you are married or not, whether you were a maiden, or what your spouse earns.
They also are not to inquire whether you have children or whether you are going to have a family in the near future. Although these questions may sound like a conversation, they are often used to assess your perceived permanence or distractibility. When you are faced with these questions, you are not out of order to direct the discussion to your professional competence.
An employer who decides to hire based on responses to these prohibited questions risks being sued for discrimination. A person's personal life cannot be a legitimate subject of professional interrogation during the recruitment process in California.
Disparate Treatment
Disparate treatment is a particular type of discrimination in which you are treated worse than your colleagues, in particular due to your marital status. This could be where you find that married employees are provided with certain benefits, such as flexible schedules or housing allowances, that single employees in the same positions are not.
Instead, you may find that the single employees are supposed to work more shifts on holidays or travel more than their married counterparts on the assumption that they do not have as many personal obligations.
This imbalance directly infringes on our right to equal treatment in the workplace. To establish disparate treatment, you should show that your marital status was a reason that influenced the employer to treat you differently. These incidents should be recorded in detail, including the people treated favorably and the reasons cited by management. This is substantial evidence if you choose to file a legal case to address the unfairness and recompense your losses.
Although the law protects against discrimination based on marital status, you should also be aware of the so-called anti-nepotism exception in California law. This exception permits an employer to establish policies that prevent spouses from working in the same department or having a direct supervisory relationship with each other. The reason is to avoid conflicts of interest, promote workplace safety, and improve professional morale.
This exception will only work if the employer can demonstrate that the restriction is based on a legitimate business reason. For example, if your spouse is the human resources head and you apply to a position that would see them in charge of your performance appraisals and salary increases, the employer can step in. The employer, however, cannot have a blanket policy of not hiring any married individual simply because his spouse works in another capacity.
California State vs Federal Law
One of the most significant concepts you should understand is the difference between California state law and federal law. Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not explicitly provide marital status as a covered category. This implies that, by relying only on federal law, you would find that you have few avenues of pursuing a discrimination claim unless you can demonstrate that the discrimination was also based on sex or any other federally protected characteristic.
However, in California, FEHA offers protection that federal law does not. Therefore, your best legal remedy is in state court, not federal court. You should seek the advice of an attorney so that you can bring your claim under the most appropriate statutes to stand the best chance of a successful result and so that you can exhaust every available remedy.
Damages You Recover in a Lawsuit?
If you have suffered as a result of marital status discrimination, you can claim damages as a result of the injury. California allows various forms of recovery to help you get back to being whole again.
Financial Compensation
Financial compensation for your economic losses is the most immediate way of recovery you can demand. This involves back pay, which is the money that will compensate for the lost wages and benefits from the time when the discrimination took place until the date of your legal judgment. This can be a significant amount, particularly if you were fired or denied a promotion, and interest is added.
You may also qualify for front pay if you cannot resume your former job or if the discriminatory environment renders reinstatement impossible. Front pay is a payment that compensates you for the future income that you are going to lose before you can secure a similar job.
You can also refund the expenses incurred in the course of seeking employment or the out-of-pocket costs you incurred due to the refusal to be housed. Your lawyer will assist in collecting the required records, including pay stubs and tax returns, to demonstrate the actual scope of your financial loss and make sure that you will be fully compensated for your losses.
Emotional Distress and Punitive Damages
In addition to financial losses, you may recover damages due to the emotional distress as a result of discrimination. This involves reimbursement for the anxiety, depression, sleep deprivation, and reputational harm that a discriminatory incident usually comes with. These damages are non-economic in nature and are determined by the extent of the harm to your life, and in many cases, they need to be testified to by you or by mental health experts.
Punitive Damages
Besides emotional distress, you can also receive punitive damages provided that you can demonstrate that the employer or the landlord was malicious, oppressive, or committed fraud. Punitive damages are not supposed to recompense you but to punish the defendant due to his/her heinous actions and to act as a deterrent to others.
Although punitive damages are more difficult to prove and less common, they may substantially increase the overall award in cases where the discrimination was so deliberate or inhuman. You have to prove that the conduct was not a mere error but a willful violation of your civil rights.
Equitable Remedies
Money, in other instances, is not sufficient to repair the damages, and you can demand fair redress in court. Equitable remedies are the orders of the court that require the defendant to take specific measures to remedy the situation.
Indicatively, in the case of wrongful termination, the court could direct your employer to re-employ you in your previous job with all the seniorities and benefits that you would have had had the act of discrimination not taken place. In case you were refused a promotion, the court might direct the employer to ensure that you are promoted to that position at the earliest opportunity.
A court may direct a landlord to provide you with the next available unit or to modify their discriminatory policies in the context of housing. You could also have the company's directives to undertake compulsory anti-discrimination training for all employees. These remedies aim to restore your status and permanently transform the discriminatory environment in your favor, creating a fairer future for you and others.
The Legal Process of Filing a Claim
The steps in seeking justice must be taken in accordance with the particular legal procedures prescribed by California law. The initial step you usually take is not to go to court but to file a formal complaint with the California Civil Rights Department (CRD). This administrative action is required in the majority of workplace and housing discrimination claims under FEHS. You are supposed to be ready to give an account of the discriminatory acts in detail, including dates, names of the people, and any documents that you have to support your claim.
The following are procedural requirements that you should be aware of:
- Observe the Statute of Limitations: You usually have 3 years from the last date of the discriminatory act to file your administrative complaint with the CRD.
- File with the California Civil Rights Department (CRD): After the CRD gets your complaint, they will proceed to investigate the issue, and they can even provide mediation services to assist you in settling the issue.
- Obtain a Right to Sue Letter: When the case is not disposed of under the CRD, you may seek a Right to Sue letter, which formally authorizes you to commence a private action in a California superior court.
Find a Family Law Attorney Near Me
You are entitled to a professional and personal life that is free from discrimination. The California law is intended to provide you with the exact protection. When being denied a home or career due to your marital status is one of the reasons, it is a direct infringement of your civil rights as a San Diego resident.
At San Diego Family Law Attorney, we are determined to be with you and help you through the maze of the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) to obtain the justice that you deserve. We are aware of the emotional and financial burden of discrimination, and we are the specialists who can assist you in seeking damages and remedies to move forward. Contact our family law lawyers at 619-610-7425 for a confidential and in-depth case analysis today.
