Family Responsibilities Discrimination (“FRD” or “Caregiver Discrimination”) claims have been steadily on the rise over the past decade. According to a widely cited study by the Center for Worklife Law at the University of California Hastings College of Law, the number of FRD claims increased by 400 percent from 1996 to 2006, as compared to only 23 percent of all other discrimination claims during the same period. Moreover, these same statistics indicate that plaintiffs have a greater than 50 percent success rate with FRD claims, and awards may be substantial: the study reports an FRD claim jury award as high as $11.65 million.
The proliferation of FRD claims has not gone unnoticed. In 2007, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) issued enforcement guidance to employers on this very subject, highlighting the recent emergence of FRD claims onto the landscape of employment litigation. Although the EEOC asserts that such guidance is not intended to create a new “protected category,” the virtual explosion of FRD claims makes it clear that caregiver discrimination is a new form of discrimination of which employment attorneys should take notice in order to properly counsel clients.
