Not all in-house counselors deal with employment law issues. Some deal with nothing but patents and commercial contract negotiations. However, the bigger your company grows, the more likely it will be that you’ll be looked to when employment discrimination issues arise.

The Top Five Claims

  • Retaliation (All Statutes) 38.1%

  • Title VII Retaliation alone made up 31.4% of all claims.

Unsurprisingly, retaliation claims are huge. An employee complains and their supervisor either outright retaliates, resents the employee subconsciously, or the employee becomes hypersensitive due to the prior alleged discrimination. It happens. Be prepared for it.

The Rare Claims

The least popular claims, Genetic Information (0.3%), Equal Pay (1.1%), Color (2.7%), and Religion (3.8%) all fall in the single digits but should not be overlooked.

For some of these statistically minor claims, there were likely similar claims that bled into other categories, such as Color claims being classified as Race claims and Equal Pay claims falling under Sex Discrimination claims. For GINA, or Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 claims, it might simply be a lack of awareness - the GINA Act is only a few years old and has resulted in only a couple hundred filings per year since.

The Takeaway

Other than a continual upward trend in disability claims, the breakdown of claims hasn’t changed significantly over the last few years. For those of you in-house attorneys who deal with employment issues or draft nondiscrimination polices, the statistics should help you to allocate your resources and priorities appropriately.

Related Resources:

  • Learn From Lap Dancers: Employees or Independent Contractors? (FindLaw’s In House Blog)
  • How Do You Address Sexual Harassment Complaints? (FindLaw’s In House Blog)
  • Three Human Resources Polices to Revise for 2013 (FindLaw’s In House Blog)

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