Best Ohio Gender Discrimination Attorney Answer: Can I sue my employer for discrimination against men? What can I do if my employer has a performance review policy that favors female employees? If my female supervisor treats me differently than female employees, is it illegal?
At Spitz, The Employee’s Law Firm, our employment lawyers work every day on discrimination issues that center around gender. Whether it be gender based comments, differential treatment based on gender, or sexual harassment based on gender, our employment discrimination lawyers have seen instance after instance of employees being treated poorly at work because of being male or female. In fact, you may have read about some particularly noteworthy gender discrimination issues here on our lawyers’ blog (See My Job Promoted A Less Qualified Man!; Can I Be Fired Because My Boss Doesn’t Think I’m Feminine Enough? Can I Still Bring A Gender Discrimination Claim If I Am Forced To Quit?; and What Is Reverse Discrimination?)
While this may not come as a surprise, most of the instances of gender discrimination handled at Spitz, The Employee’s Law Firm and litigated in court nationwide involve female employees being discriminated against and harassed by male bosses, managers, and supervisors. We could write an extremely lengthy blog about why it is that females by in large face more discrimination at work than their male counterparts. But, for the purposes of this entry, our attorneys wanted to point out a newsworthy case that involves the flip side: a male employee claiming that female employees are being favored over him at work and that he was wrongfully fired because of his gender.
Gregory Anderson worked for tech giant Yahoo in California as an editorial director in Yahoo’s Autos, Homes, Shopping, Small Business, and Travel sections. Yahoo has been in the news a lot lately, where its CEO, Marissa Mayer, recently announced that Yahoo was laying off 15% of its workforce. Anderson faced a similar issue when in 2014, he claims he got permission to spend some time at the University of Michigan taking part in a journalism fellowship. While at the fellowship, Anderson was informed that he was being terminated as a result of a poor performance review. Anderson was told that the performance review placed him among the lowest five percent of Yahoo’s employees, all of whom were being fired.
In turn, Anderson filed a federal suit against Yahoo in the Northern District of California. Anderson claimed that his female supervisors, in particular Chief Marketing Office Kathy Savitt, had a pattern and practice of favoring female workers. Anderson claimed that when Savitt began at Yahoo, top managers in Anderson’s department were less than 20 percent female. At the time of Anderson’s termination, the number of female managers increased to 80 percent. Anderson claimed that Savitt publicly stated that she wanted to increase the number of women in media and intentionally hired and promoted women because of their gender. Anderson went on to claim that female employees were given more opportunity to leave voluntarily and find new jobs while male employees were simply fired.
Even though Lind filed suit in California, his situation is applicable to employees in Ohio. As we’ve blogged about discrimination at work before, federal law contained in the provisions in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 are designed to prohibit gender discrimination in all fifty states. This includes behavior likely using gender as a consideration in decisions to promote, or scoring a male employee lower on a performance review based in part on his gender. Similarly, Ohio Revised Code § 4112.02(A) makes it an unlawful discriminatory practice for any employer to “discharge without just cause, to refuse to hire, or otherwise to discriminate against that person with respect to hire, tenure, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, or any matter directly or indirectly related to employment” based on gender. Neither the federal nor Ohio law discusses a particular gender.
Anderson’s claim is high profile due to the recent struggles of Yahoo and the (often unfair) spotlight that is put on Yahoo’s CEO, one of the few major tech companies to have a female at the helm. However, a lot of attention will be given to this case as it progresses because of the seemingly novel issue of a male claiming he is being discriminated against for being a male in Silicon Valley, an industry notorious for issues of gender discrimination against women.
Bottom line, if you are being discriminated against at work because of your gender, whether male or female, you should absolutely discuss the issue with an experienced employment attorney. While males facing gender discrimination in the workplace is admittedly not as prevalent, it still happens and it is still patently illegal.
If you feel that you are being discriminated based on your gender or sex, then call the right attorney. It is never appropriate to discriminate against female employees. Discrimination against women includes being harassed, fired, wrongfully terminated, discriminated against, demoted, wrongfully disciplined, denied a promotion, and denied wages or not receiving equal pay. When you call the right attorney to schedule a free and confidential consultation at 866-797-6040, you will meet with an attorney from Spitz, The Employee’s Law Firm to discuss wrongful discrimination claims and help you determine the best way to pursue your gender/sex discrimination claims.
Disclaimer:
The materials available at the top of this page and on this employment law website are for informational purposes only and not for the purpose of providing legal advice. Your best option is to contact an Ohio attorney to obtain advice with respect to gender discrimination questions or any particular employment law issue. Use and access to this employment law website or any of the links contained within the site do not create an attorney-client relationship. The legal opinions expressed at or through this site are the opinions of the individual lawyer and may not reflect the opinions of Spitz, The Employee’s Law Firm, Brian Spitz, or any individual attorney.