Gainey Law, PLLC Seattle Employment Law Attorney

       If you are someone who has suffered humiliation through discrimination or sexual harassment at work, you may need more than a path to justice, you may also need a path to healing. A way to reset your fight or flight neurological response which is likely working overtime in response to the trauma you suffered. It is not healthy to allow this system to remain revved up for extended periods of time. It can lead you to anxiety, depression, and exhaustion making reclaiming your life difficult even if you succeed in litigation.       Neglecting how workplace (or personal) trauma is effecting you while at the same time enduring the stressors of litigation is a recipe for failure - whether you win your lawsuit or not. Our civil legal system allows for little outside of the recovery of money damages. Likely the wrong-doer will not be fired, you definitely will not receive an apology or a glowing letter of recommendation admitting that every nasty th...

 The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has released data confirming what plaintiff's employment attorneys (and Human resources professionals) already knew: that not only is sexual harassment targeting women more prevalent in the workplace so are all forms of discrimination and harassment and retaliation. ( read the full EEOC report here ) Of the nearly 30,000 complaints filed between 2018 and 2021, 78.2% of complaints  of sexual harassment were reported by women, and women made of 62% of the 98,000 total harassments charges alleging any basis (e.g. race, national origin). Keep in mind the numbers are much more sobering as 87% of sexual harassment victims still do not report the sexual harassment they suffer in the workplace for fear of retaliation. This number is down only a few percentage points since 2016.      The numbers on the lack of reporting of sexual harassment was originally published in a 2016 EEOC report. Now updated to focus on charges ...

Under Title VII it is best practice for, "an employer should proceed on the assumption that a request for  religious accommodation is based on sincerely held religious beliefs, practices or observances," the EEOC said in its updated guidance. "However, if an employer has an objective basis for questioning either the religious nature or the sincerity of a particular belief, the employer would be justified in making a limited factual inquiry and seeking additional supporting information." The EEOC added, "An employee who fails to cooperate with an employer's reasonable requests for verification of the sincerity or religious nature of a professed belief, practice or observance risks losing any subsequent claim that the employer improperly denied an accommodation." The EEOC has identified the following factors that might undermine the credibility of an employee's claim: The employee has acted inconsistently with the professed belief. However, the EEOC ...