Question

1/ Can Foothill College (a publicly funded community college) discriminate in the hiring of its instructors based upon religion? Can Santa Clara University (a private, Catholic-affiliated university in Santa Clara, CA) do so? More generally, if an employer is sued for discrimination, what defenses against an allegation of discrimination does the employer have? ( the discussion about bona fide occupational qualifications)

2/ How might employers be proactive in avoiding employment discrimination claims? For instance, when Silicon Valley law firms lay off attorneys, they typically provide a cash severance payment, which is payable if and only if the laid-off employee waives any and all claims with respect to employment discrimination. Is this a good idea for the employer? Why or why not.

3/ A friend of the instructor’s was laid off several years ago by a small Silicon Valley consulting firm and, as part of the lay off paperwork, he was asked to sign an employment discrimination waiver in exchange for receipt of his final paycheck, but no additional severance payment was offered to the laid-off employee by the employer. On these facts, can you see a reason for why the waiver might be deemed invalid if the ex-employee decided to then sue the employer for employment discrimination?

Answer 1

1. In general most of the firms, either public or private firms do not encourage or follow discrimination in the hiring process of employees. If some private firms follows discrimination, they do not just blindly follow it, but they made some supportive statements in their MOU or AOU and follow them. If some one raise their voice against a firm that they are discriminating in hiring, the employer simply says that we are hiring based on merit, based on reservation categories and based on our requirement, but not based on discrimination. The others can not prove that the firm is discriminated in hiring process.

2. As I already said above, discrimination is not followed by the firms in general, but in some cases they follow with supportive reasons. When it becomes to laid-off some employees may fire from the firm, and those emploees may claim their firiing from the employer. It is good to the employer too, because they are rewarding the services of the employee and providing some financial benefits to them at the time of their exit from the firm. Employee also feel somewhat better, because the firm paid something to them at the time of exit.

3. Most of the allegations must raise by the employee during his employment period only. Once the employee exit from organization, he may not file some of the sues like discrimination, fair pay, working hours etc on the employer. IN this case, the employee comeout from the firm in early days and now he wants to file a case against the firm, which is not possible to him. If it is true, he must make a sue during his employment period only.