California Age Discrimination Lawyer

Age Discrimination

Representing California Workers Pushed Out After 40

Age discrimination is the polite discrimination. Nobody says "too old" out loud - they say "overqualified," "not a culture fit," "we're going in a different direction," "digital native preferred." Then the 55-year-old's position is "eliminated" while a 28-year-old absorbs the duties under a new title. FEHA protects every California worker 40 and over at employers with five or more employees, and it reads through every one of those euphemisms.

How It Shows Up

The layoff that skews old: a "restructuring" where the cut list averages twenty years older than the kept list. The pipeline freeze: raises, promotions, and training that quietly stop after a certain birthday. The replacement pattern: your duties survive, your title survives, only you didn't - and the person now doing it is decades younger. Harassment counts too: "okay boomer" as management humor, relentless retirement questions, being called "dinosaur" in the group chat. And the recruiting version - ads seeking "recent grads" or capping experience - violates the law before anyone is even hired.

The Severance Trap Built Just for You

Federal law has a rule that exists because employers push out older workers so often: a release of age claims by a worker 40 or over must give you 21 days to consider it (45 days in a group layoff, with data on who was selected by age), plus 7 days to revoke after signing. An employer demanding a same-day signature on your severance is violating that rule - and telling you what the file would show. Never sign a layoff release without having it read; the data disclosure alone sometimes proves the case.

Proving It

Age cases are comparison cases. Who was kept, who was cut, and how old were they? Who got the training, the accounts, the promotion? What did managers say - in meetings, in chats, in performance reviews that suddenly discovered "energy" problems? California juries do not need much: strong reviews for fifteen years, a new younger manager, a paper trail that turns, a termination, a younger replacement. Save your reviews, note the ages around you, and write the comments down the day they happen.

What You Can Recover

Lost pay and benefits - which for late-career workers can be the largest wage losses in employment law, because reemployment at the same level after 55 is demonstrably harder. Front pay for the years that job would have carried you. Emotional distress. Punitive damages where the pattern was knowing. Attorney's fees under FEHA. These cases run on contingency: no fee unless we win.

Deadlines

Three years to file with California's Civil Rights Department; one year to sue after a right-to-sue notice; 300 days on the federal track; six months for Government Claims Act notices against public employers. If the "restructuring" already happened, start the clock work now - and if a severance deadline is ticking, call before it runs: 1-800-371-3088. Free, confidential, employees only.