Do I Have A Discrimination Case?
Four questions to ask yourself to determine if you have a discrimination case worth pursuing.
If you're facing discrimination or retaliation at work, it's completely normal to want someone - HR, a lawyer, or the EEOC - to step in, look at the situation, and say, “You're right. This isn’t okay.” You trust that they know what discrimination looks like and their knowledge can help you make sense of what’s happening, but what you may not realize is that before they help you, you’ll need to convince them your claims are valid.
This leads to a disconnect, because they can’t be a source of validation for your discrimination concerns if their expectation of you is that you’ll be convincing them. Think of it this way, HR or an investigator will follow the trail you built for them to see if they also arrive at the conclusion it’s discrimination, but they’re not going to create the map for you if you didn’t bring one.
By the time you’re reaching out to others for help (internally or externally), they expect you to already have a clear sense of what’s happening and be ready to show evidence that backs it up.
I know this can feel impossible if you’ve never been through this before and don’t know how the system works, which is why in this post I’ll walk you through the key questions you should ask yourself when deciding whether or not to pursue your discrimination claims.
Q1: Did Discrimination Result in Direct Financial Harm?
Employment law focuses more on financial recovery for the victim than it does on punishing the employer for being unfair, so provable financial harm plays a significant role in whether you’re able to get help with your case.
The cases where you’re most likely to get help are the ones where financial harm can be linked directly to compensation — like being fired, denied a promotion or paid less than coworkers doing the same job — as this is measurable. Compensation-based harm is calculated two ways:
Back Pay: Wages or benefits you lost because of discrimination.
Front Pay: Future pay you won’t receive because of long-term impact.
Additionally, there are the more ambiguous values for emotional distress and to punish the employer:
Compensatory Damages: Out-of-pocket costs tied to emotional or physical harm.
Punitive Damages: Additional financial penalties for egregious behavior
However it’s important to note that compensatory and punitive damages are typically add-ons to an already strong case based on compensation lost rather than the primary value pursued. The reason why? It’s nearly impossible to get someone to take on your case without compensation-based recovery due to the uncertainty and ambiguity in damages.
There are exceptions, of course — for example with sexual harassment claims, but unfortunately even those typically have to cross a line that goes beyond inappropriate jokes or comments to actual physical harm to be prioritized for a legal fight if there’s no compensation component (such as being terminated).
So in general, the clearer the financial harm, the easier it will be for you to get help with your claims.
Q2: Can You Link the Financial Harm to Discrimination?
While discrimination is typically associated with groups that have been marginalized historically, we are all part of protected classes based on race, gender, religion, etc.
For example, my personal case is based on gender discrimination, which means I built my claims on evidence that shows men were given preferential treatment over women. However, gender discrimination could also work in reverse with a man fighting on the basis of being treated unfairly compared to women.
So while proving you’re part of a protected class is a given and suffering financial harm is often a matter of fact, the real hurdle in fighting discrimination is proving that you were financially harmed because of your protected class compared to others who are not part of your protected class.
This often requires demonstrating a pattern of discriminatory behavior leading up to the financial harm. For example:
Men are consistently given better opportunities than women.
I ask for better or more opportunities and am denied based on a subjective, personality based critique.
My male peers are promoted before I am and I am told it’s because of their higher level of impact.
With the right evidence, you can link the discrimination (disparity in opportunities assigned between men and women) to the financial harm (promotion denial).
Before we move on, I want to take a moment to clarify that not all unfair treatment is discrimination, so it’s important to know the difference:
If my boss is a toxic leader who refuses to promote anyone on the team, including men — I don’t have a gender discrimination case, because while I’m being treated poorly, the men are also being treated poorly.
If my boss promotes everyone from his home state — men and women — but not others, I wouldn’t have a discrimination case because preferential treatment based on state isn’t illegal.
If you’re interested I explore this more in Favoritism vs. Discrimination.
Q3: Do You Have Evidence of the Discrimination?
Your employer and anyone you seek help from is more concerned with what evidence you have to prove your claims then they are in what actually happened. This even applies to raising concerns internally with HR as the companies legal exposure and risk is almost certainly going to be factored into the outcome of your investigation.
The stronger your evidence and documentation, the more likely it is you’ll be able to get a lawyer or EEOC win which increases the likelihood your company’s HR team will take your concerns seriously.
This is why documentation and evidence is always the best way to protect yourself when you believe you’re being discriminated against.
Why is evidence so important if your discrimination claims are real? The burden of proof falls on you as the employee to prove the discrimination happened before the employer faces any risk of accountability. If you can’t prove there’s a reason to believe discrimination happened, your employer knows you won’t be able to hold them accountable even if they did do it.
You may argue that this is what discovery is for when you sue, but to get that far you’ll first need to convince a lawyer or the EEOC to help you and doing that without evidence and on your word alone is unlikely. You could file pro se and take it to court yourself, but your employer will simply file motions to have your claims dismissed. And yes, you can overcome the motions, but that’s much harder without legal support and you’re employer is likely to do this over and over again trying to get your case dismissed.
So while I know collecting evidence and documenting can feel intimidating, it is a necessary part of protecting yourself before you start trying to get help. If you want additional guidance for collecting evidence read: Evidence To Prove Your Workplace Discrimination Claims.
Q4: Can you communicate your claims effectively?
Even if you’ve suffered financial harm, can link it to discrimination, and have all the evidence to support your claims, there’s still one crucial hurdle: can you effectively communicate your case to a third party?
Many employees don’t realize how hard this part really is. You might be sure what happened to you was discrimination, but that doesn’t do you much good if you can’t convince someone else.
That’s why it’s so important to organize your experience into a clear, factual timeline. Think of it like building a trail of evidence — something that guides the person reading it through exactly what happened, when it happened, and why you believe it’s discrimination.
It’s your job to connect the dots and show how the pieces add up. The best way to do this is with a documented, formatted and organized timeline.
Final Thoughts
After reading through this you likely see that much of this post was far more concerned with whether or not you can prove your discrimination claims than whether or not discrimination occurred.
That’s because, I assume if you’re here you already know something is off and you don’t need me to tell you it’s discrimination, because deep down you already know it is. My goal then is to simply guide you towards validating it for yourself, so you can move forward with your claims confidently and strategically in order to protect yourself from further harm.
And if you want to talk about it and create a strategy with support: Book a consultation.