California’s law protects employees not only from so-called ultimate employment actions such as termination or demotion, but also from any adverse employment action – i.e. the entire range of employment actions that are likely to have a substantial negative impact on an employee’s job or career.

Although offensive or rude comments or even repeated social

Severance pay is an extra amount paid to an employee upon the ending of the employee’s employment in addition to wages due, vacation pay, or bonus owed to the employee. In California there is no legal requirement to provide severance pay to an employee unless the employer agreed to pay it.

When an employer or supervisor requires an employee to engage in sex to keep their job or receive some job benefit like a raise or promotion, that’s quid pro quo harassment. California’s FEHA law (Fair Employment and Housing Act) prohibits quid pro harassment and permits the employee to sue both the employer and the harasser.

Sometimes an employer has some policy or practice that appears to be fair to everyone but, in the real world, has negative consequences for certain employees only. If the employees who suffer are members of a protected class, then the policy is said to have a disparate impact and it is illegal.

For example, if

Sometimes an employer knows it is wrong to fire an employee, so the employer makes the employee so miserable that the employee has no other choice but to quit. In those cases, the employer has constructively terminated the employee. The law treats employees who have been constructively terminated as though they had been fired

A hostile work environment is one in which the harassment has become so frequent or horrible that the victim’s working conditions are changed for the worse. For there to be a hostile work environment, the harassment has to be aimed at a protected class.

For example, if a supervisor at a tech company frequently makes

Disparate treatment means “different treatment.” Disparate treatment is illegal when it is aimed at an employee or independent contractor because of their membership in a protected class.

Most often, illegal disparate treatment results in an employee not getting a raise, being passed over for a promotion, being assigned an undesirable shift or job duties, or