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What are the most common types of discrimination claims?

On Behalf of | Jan 31, 2020 | Employment Law

Workplace discrimination takes a lot of different forms. While it may be difficult to determine what the most common type of discrimination is, you can look at the most common claims. This gives some evidence of what types of discrimination happen most often and impact American workers.

In 2018, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission put out the following list of claims that had been filed in the previous year. Starting with the smallest percentage, they are as follows:

  • Genetic Information: 0.2%
  • Equal Pay Act: 1.2%
  • Color: 3.8%
  • Religion: 4.1%
  • National Origin: 9.8%
  • Age: 21.8%
  • Sex: 30.4%
  • Disability: 31.9%
  • Race: 33.9%
  • Retaliation: 48.8%

Now, this list is just complaints filed, so it does not indicate how many of them ended up being valid after the investigation. But these are the charges filed by employees who felt their rights were violated.

Additionally, some people made multiple claims in the same complaint. That is why you have more than 100% if you add up all of the above.

For instance, someone may claim that they faced racial discrimination. Perhaps they brought it up with a supervisor or told the company they were going to file the complaint. At that point, the company retaliated against them in some way. They could then allege that multiple charges applied to the same case. You also have some potentially related categories, such as race, color and national origin.

In any case, this report shows how common discrimination is and why you may face it for a host of reasons, even in 2020. If you do, make sure you know what legal rights you have.