California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA)

FEHA is the legislation that prohibits employers from discriminating against employees because of their gender, gender expression, gender identity, or sexual orientation. Under FEHA, employers cannot take someone’s gender or sexual orientation into consideration when making any job-related decision such as who to hire, fire, promote, demote or assign to a new position. Employers also have a legal obligation to step in and prevent sexual orientation discrimination from occurring in the workplace through educational trainings.

Proving Sexual Orientation Discrimination

First, you must prove your employer is covered under FEHA by meeting the minimum employee requirement. Then, you must prove the employer’s discriminatory behavior caused you harm. Finally, you have to show the action that caused you harm was motivated solely by your sexual orientation. This means if you lost out on a promotion, in order to claim you were discriminated against because of your sexual orientation, you have to be able to show you were not chosen for the promotion because of your sexual orientation and not because someone else was better suited for the position.