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One of your managers dislikes an employee’s family member. Can that lead to discrimination?

Writer's picture: Joseph DierJoseph Dier

A business would be in the minority if it did not experience some internal strife between coworkers. But what happens when that conflict is caused not by a relationship between two employees, but an employee and a coworker’s family member?


The NYS Human Rights Law (HRL) prohibits discriminating against an employee because of familial status and marital status. Let’s first address familial status. The NYS Division of Human Rights (DHR) has explained familial status protection as follows: “employees or applicants for employment are protected from discrimination on the basis that they are, or are in the process of becoming, the parent or guardian of one or more children.” A hypothetical helps explain this.


Manager John is interviewing applicants for a position as a busy executive at your company. Manager John finds out that Applicant Jane has five young children, one of whom bullies his son at school. Manager John declines to offer Applicant Jane the position for two reasons: (1) the demands of having five children will take away from her commitment to the job; and (2) anyone related to the bully must be unfit for the position. Putting aside how inappropriate these considerations are, you can see the key difference here is that, with the first consideration, Manager John is discriminating against Applicant Jane because of her status as a mother of five children. But what about Manager John’s second consideration?


Although childish and silly, this is not discriminatory. Applicant Jane’s status as the mother of a specific person (i.e. the bully) is not protected under the HRL. This is because the HRL protects employees from their status as a parent, not the fact that they are the parent of a specific person. Or, as DHR explained: “actions taken against an employee because of who their child is, or what that child has done, do not implicate familial status discrimination.” This is a subtle distinction and one that employees often do not understand, leading to mistaken discrimination complaints.


“Marital status” follows the same general principles. For example, Manager John supervises Jack, who is married to Jill. Years ago, Manager John dated Jill and the relationship ended very badly, leaving Manager John very bitter and angry at Jill. Manager John learns that Jack is now married to Jill and he doesn’t react well. He begins mandating Jack for a lot of overtime, assigns him menial tasks, and gives him poor performance evaluations. Jack complains to you about Manager John’s actions.


Is this a discrimination issue? Most likely, no. Again, this is because the HRL protects employees based on their marital status (e.g., married, single, divorced, etc.), and not the specific person to whom you are married, divorced from, etc.


Interestingly, federal law does not contain similar protections. Therefore, a charge filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) based on familial or marital status should be unsuccessful. However, be wary that the EEOC may interpret certain similar actions to be discrimination based on sex.


In sum, while Manager John’s behavior is inappropriate for the workplace, not all of his actions implicate discrimination issues and the concerns that go along with them. Dier Law is available to assist employers, whether through investigation or consultation, in determining whether employee complaints fall within the HRL’s protected classes of marital status and familial status.

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