Whether you’re an employee who’s endured discrimination or an employer facing a discrimination claim, it is important to understand how the employment discrimination litigation process works. An employee’s success is predicated upon clearing a series of evidentiary hurdles. For employers, success may lie in persuading the court that any one of those components was lacking. Whichever side you’re on, an experienced Atlanta employment discrimination lawyer can help you pursue your case in the most effective way possible.
As we noted last month, workers who allege employment discrimination may prove their cases either by presenting a “convincing mosaic” of circumstantial evidence or by satisfying the elements of the test created by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1973 case of McDonnell Douglas v. Green. A recent federal race discrimination case from here in Atlanta shows the McDonnell Douglas procedure at work, and how a single evidentiary flaw can doom a worker’s case.
The employee was a sales representative for an analytic and diagnostic lab. After two years, the lab fired the representative. It said she had underperformed. She said it was race and gender discrimination.