Center for WorkLife Law

Welcome to the Center for WorkLife Law

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Family Responsibilities Discrimination (FRD) is employment discrimination against workers based on their family caregiving responsibilities. Pregnant women, mothers and fathers of young children, and employees with aging parents or sick spouses or partners may encounter FRD. They may be rejected for hire, passed over for promotion, demoted, harassed, or terminated -- despite good performance -- simply because their employers make personnel decisions based on stereotypical notions of how they will or should act given their family responsibilities.

FRD affects men and women across the income spectrum and employers in every industry. Cases have included those in low-wage jobs (grocery clerks, nurses' aides), pink-collar jobs (administrative assistants, teachers), blue-collar jobs (police, firefighters), and professional/managerial jobs (lawyers, doctors, executives). Here are some examples of FRD:

• firing or demoting employees when they become pregnant;
• passing over highly qualified mothers for hire or promotion in favor of less qualified fathers or women without children;
• firing employees without valid business reasons when they return from maternity or paternity leave;
• denying flexibility to employees who want it for child care reasons, while allowing flexibility to employees for non-family reasons (e.g., to participate on a sports team);
• firing employees whose spouses or elderly parents become disabled for fear of increased absenteeism or higher health insurance premiums; and
• fabricating work infractions or performance deficiencies to justify dismissal of employees with family responsibilities.

The Center for WorkLife Law (WorkLife Law or WLL) is a nonprofit research and advocacy group with a unique “six stakeholder” model that reflects our belief that many different stakeholders are ready, willing, and able to play a role in sparking social and organizational change around work/life issues. WorkLife Law works with employees, employers, plaintiffs’ employment lawyers, management-side employment lawyers, unions, and public policymakers, to educate each group about the prevalence of family responsibilities discrimination, and to develop effective measures to eliminate FRD. WLL also works with social scientists to spark interdisciplinary studies of bias against caregivers, and works extensively with the press. WorkLife Law is housed at the University of California Hastings College of the Law. WLL's work is made possible through generous support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, The Rockefeller Family Fund, The Wallace A. Gerbode Foundation, the Women's Bar Association of D.C. Foundation, Abigail Disney, and the University of California Hastings College of the Law.

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The Center for WorkLife Law's website and its content are provided for general information purposes only and may not reflect current legal developments, verdicts or settlements. Any information contained in the website should not be construed as legal advice and is not intended to be a substitute for legal counsel. No attorney-client relationship will be formed based on your use of this website or any service provided.