Workplace discrimination is the elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about. After all, the civil rights movement was a long time ago and we have an African American president. These matters surely cannot exist in today’s workplace. Or can they? Shockingly, the issues of workplace discrimination are still making headlines.

Take the case of Michelle London-Marble, the former Boeing employee from Mesa Arizona. London-Marable claims that she was discriminated by the company because of her race, wrongly denied disability benefits after an on the job injury, and forced to resign because she could no longer perform because of her injuries. After years of denials and dismissals, London-Marable is now hoping to take her discrimination case against Boeing all the way to the Supreme Court, as reported this past week.

Also last week, MALDEF, the country’s leading Latino legal organization has joined as co-council in the case of Moreno v. AARP. The case alleges that the AARP, the nation’s largest membership program for older Americans, discriminated against former employee Michael Moreno citing wrongful termination and retaliation. Moreno claims he was denied promotion opportunities based on his nationality and he claims that he was a victim of retaliation after he assisted other AARP employees in filing a sexual harassment suit.  And then he was fired. 

The story that really brought the topic of workplace discrimination to the forefront came out of the state of Virginia.  Governor Bob McDonnell shocked human rights groups as he removed homosexuals from workplace protection from the states discrimination policy. The newly elected governor reissued the state’s policy on discrimination with two groups newly and suspiciously absent: gays and lesbians. Although McDonnell promises to be fair to all groups of people, gay and lesbian rights groups are concerned. Eliminating any group of people from workplace protection is a dangerous prospect and rights groups from around the globe are watching Virginia and hoping that this decision is not a trend.

The juicy story of Kay Morris-Robertson is one that involves shopping mall conglomerate Westfield Holdings, a struggle with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and shocking allegations of failure to accommodate disability and disability discrimination. This bizarre tale began as Morris-Robertson, a former executive with Westfield Holdings, watched her husband die of a heart attack in front of her suddenly as the couple was sailing off the coast of Southern California in 2008. 

Kay Morris-Robertson claims that she asked her supervisor for unpaid leave during her time of grieving but he responded unsympathetically and assigned her more job responsibilities instead. After sending a distraught email to her supervisor expressing her feelings, Morris-Robertson was arrested and held in a psychological detention unit based on a police complaint given by her employer. Westfield, the $62 billion dollar operator of shopping centers around the globe, was allegedly unsympathetic to Morris-Robertson’s diagnosis of PTSD and denied her time off for therapy appointments while threatening her with termination. She also claims that Westfield never informed her of her rights under the Family Medical Leave Act or the California Family Rights Act, two State measures designed to protect employees. 

Kay Morris-Robertson’s laundry list of alleged charges against Westfield includes Failure to Accommodate Disability, Failure to Engage in Interactive Process, Disability Discrimination, and Violation of California Family Rights Act, among others. Represented by the Gillian Law Firm, Morris-Robertson’s lawsuit has been picked up by most major media outlets around the globe, most likely because of the dramatic content and shocking accusations. But Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a failure to accommodate disability and disability discrimination are serious topics that reach far beyond the realms of water cooler gossip. 

According to the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), employers are required to provide reasonable accommodations to a qualified worker who has a disability, and failing to accommodate disabled workers puts employers in hot water with employment discrimination, which violates the ADA. In other words, allegations like the ones Kay Morris-Robertson has against Westfield Holdings are serious business.

A 10-year-old class action age discrimination lawsuit by dozens of televisionwriters against some of the major television networks and others, has finallyended in a $70 million settlement. The plaintiffs were 165 television writers, whoinsisted that they had been discriminated against by the television studios, talentagencies and television networks because of their age. The talent agencies weresued because they refused to represent the writers and help them get work.

Although the settlement seems like a huge amount, it is not that much of a liability for the defendants. Approximately 2/3rd of the settlement will be paid by the insurers, and none of the defendants will be liable for more than $1 million each. $2.5 million of the settlement is earmarked to create a Fund for the Future that will grant loans to the affected writers to improve their financial prospects,and enhance their writing careers. After you subtract lawyer’s fees and litigation expenses, you are left with just $245,000 for each plaintiff.

The Writer’s Guild of America has conducted research which has found that since the class action suit was filed, the percentage of employed television writers below 31 years of age has fallen to 6.2 percent of the total number of writers in 2007, from 9.8 percent in 1999. There are other indications that inthe10 years since the suit was filed, age has ceased to be such a primary factor in the employment of television writers. Some of that might have been the result of the lawsuit, but there has also been a perceptible shift in television viewing patterns. More and more television audiences are now comprised of people in their 40s and 50s, who watch the police and medical shows that are so popular now. This necessitates writers of the same demographic who can write for these audiences.

Even so, California employment lawyers continue to be concerned about lowemployment rates for older writers in a youth-obsessed entertainment industry.