New Jersey’s Anti-Discrimination Laws

New Jersey’s Law Against Discrimination is one of the strongest anti-discrimination laws in the United States. It provides employees with more protection and allows employees to recover more potential damages than do the federal laws against discrimination.

In 1991, Congress amended the principal federal anti-discrimination law, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, to impose “caps” on the total amount of compensatory and punitive damages that employees could recover upon proving and winning a discrimination case. Those “caps” can be as little as $50,000 for small employers and go up only to $300,000 for even the largest employers.

By contrast, under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination, which outlaws discrimination based on race, age, sex, disability, and sexual orientation and also covers a host of other “protected classes,” there are no “caps” on damages. Millions of dollars are potentially recoverable, in a sufficiently egregious case of employment discrimination, against any employer in the State of New Jersey, regardless of size. Moreover, New Jersey state courts have generally been more protective of employee rights than have the federal courts.

For these reasons, it is critical, if you believe you have been discriminated against, to consult with a New Jersey employment attorney who focuses on New Jersey employment law and who has extensive experience litigating cases under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination.