Discrimination in the Workplace

Workplace discrimination is rarely obvious at first.

It starts small. A shift in tone. A missed promotion. A performance review that contradicts every review before it. An investigation that starts with the conclusion already written.

I represent the people living through it.

As Managing Partner at HKM Employment Attorneys, I handle cases involving race discrimination, disability discrimination, sexual harassment, retaliation, and wrongful termination. I am licensed in Oregon, California, Idaho, and federal court. Before I represented employees, I defended corporations. I know how companies structure an internal investigation, and how early they start building the defense.

That matters in discrimination cases.

Employers rarely admit bias. They document performance issues, restructure departments, or point to policy language that justifies the decision. The question is almost never whether discrimination exists. The question is whether the evidence shows it drove a specific decision about a specific person.

Documentation, timing, comparator evidence, and credibility build a strong case. So does close reading of emails, performance records, disciplinary history, and explanations that shift over time. So does discipline. Not every unfair workplace decision breaks the law. The law sets specific standards, and the evidence has to meet them.

Over the years my clients have recovered significant sums, including a $3.5 million settlement for a college employee fired during cancer treatment, and substantial recoveries in race discrimination and retaliation cases. Preparation and leverage produced those numbers. Not rhetoric.

The workplace keeps changing. Automated hiring tools and algorithm-driven evaluations create new risk. Technology does not eliminate discrimination. It hides it behind process. The law is still catching up.

If you think this is happening to you, start documenting. Save the emails and texts. Keep your records. Write down the dates. What you do in the first few weeks often decides how strong the case looks a year later.

Discrimination cases are hard. They take persistence and strategy. They also take clear eyes about what the law does and does not give you.

This is the work I do.