Best Ohio Employment Discrimination Attorney Answer: Can a prospective employer consider my disability when making a hiring decision? Is it legal to discriminate against women in hiring? How do I know that my race wasn’t a factor in deciding not to give me the job?
The NBC TV show The Voice just announced that Miley Cyrus and Alicia Keys will join Adam Levine and Blake Shelton as judges on the upcoming season. My family makes an effort to watch the show together, albeit for different reasons. My wife likes the music. My daughters think Adam is really hot. And me, the employment lawyer, well, I like what the show stands for. Talent stands above everything else. If you are unfamiliar with the show, contests from all walks of life try out, Black, White, men, women, LGBT, old, and young. The judges sit in chairs that face away from the stage and just listen. Only when they opt to bring the contestant onto their team and press a button does their chair swivel so that the can see the contestant. All that they get to make their decision is the contestant’s voice. Because, that was all that truly mattered to the transaction.
Should the hiring process for the rest of us working Americans be any different? As our employment discrimination attorneys have previously written about, the same Ohio and Federal laws that prohibit firing decisions based on protected classes, also prohibit hiring decisions based on those classes. (See I Didn’t Get The Job Because I’m Too Old. I Need A Lawyer!; What Should I Do If I Was Rejected For A Job Because I’m Black? I Need A Lawyer!; Discrimination: Refusal to Hire). Specifically, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (race/color, religion, gender/sex, national origin discrimination), the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (“ADEA“) (age discrimination), the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA“) (disability discrimination), Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 (“PDA“)(pregnancy discrimination), and Ohio Rev. Code § 4112 all prohibit employers discriminating against employees on the basis of employees’ protected classes. The conduct that these statutes prohibits includes not just discriminatory wrongful termination, but also discriminatory hiring decisions, pay decisions, job assignment decisions, and pretty much any other decision related to the conditions of employment.
A recent survey by Fortune reveals that the tech industry, like the wider employment world, is behind the times when it comes to diversity in the workplace. EBay, LinkedIn, Hewlett Packard, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft all fill less than 25 percent of their key management positions with women. Moreover, more than half of the total workforce at each of these companies is white.
Stephanie Lampkin has created an app that she hopes will take some of the bias out of the hiring process in the tech industry. Lampkin created Blendoor, a mobile app that allows candidates to upload their resumes, while hiding their photos and names from prospective employers. “When you think about it, names and photos are not necessary for the transaction,” said Lampkin.
Lampkin, who recently announced Blendoor’s official roll-out at SXSW, stated that with the app, “we will be able to challenge the idea that there is a pipeline problem. There are a diverse number of candidates that are qualified, but they aren’t making it past the phone screen. Our app, which is a ‘blind-recruiting platform’ is positioned to help companies make better decisions at the gate.”
In addition to helping candidates search for jobs without disclosing their gender, race, or national origin, Blendoor allows applicants to research the diversity of potential companies using company profiles, analytics, and user recommendations. Blendoor will collect statistics on who is applying to tech’s most coveted jobs, as well as and who gets matched with those jobs. “Blendoor wants to make companies accountable using data,” Lampkin said.
While Lamkin’s app is certainly an encouraging development in the fight against discriminatory hiring, our employment attorneys know that discriminatory hiring is still very widespread. If you applied for a job and didn’t get it and believe that you were discriminated against, you may have rights under Federal and Ohio laws. Even if you are not sure about your discrimination claim, you should call the right attorney as quickly as possible. If you are searching “I need a lawyer because I have been wrongfully fired or terminated;” or “I have been discriminated against based on my …” race, national origin, gender, age, religion or disability; or even think that you might need an employment lawyer, then it would be best to call the right attorney to schedule a free and confidential consultation at 866-797-6040. Spitz, The Employee’s Law Firm and its attorneys are experienced and dedicated to protecting employees’ rights and solving employment disputes.
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