Growing numbers of employees with family responsibilities, including child and elder care, are filing “caregiver discrimination” or “family responsibility discrimination” (“FRD”) claims. The number of claims has risen so steadily in the last decade, the EEOC has recently created guidelines it calls “Enforcement Guidance on Unlawful Disparate Treatment of Workers with Caregiving Responsibilities.”

With awareness among younger workers and claims rising rapidly, employers should be knowledgeable and proactive about this type of claim.

What constitutes Caregiver or Family Responsibility Discrimination?

The EEOC describes FRD as: discrimination of workers based on their responsibility to care for children, parents or disabled family members. FRD does not represent a new form of discrimination as much as it creates a new way for employees to claim violation of existing discrimination law.  Caregivers are not a protected class.  However, they will generally try to establish liability under the ADA or sex discrimination law on the theory that they are the victim of disparate treatment because of sex or disability. 

The most common FRD claims are from pregnant women, or women who have just had a child and feel that their employers have discriminated based on stereotypes that they will not be able to juggle their job and motherhood. According to the EEOC, pregnancy-related discrimination claims submitted to their office, and state and local agencies, have risen 45% since 1992.

Examples of FRD discrimination:

Common examples of unlawful disparate treatment of caregivers include: 

• Denying women with young children opportunities that are offered to men with young children.
• Pregnancy-related discrimination, including limiting job duties based on pregnancy stereotypes.
• Disability-related discrimination, such as not hiring a worker who is the parent of child with a disability, based on the assumption that the situation will make the worker less reliable.

Visit http://www.eeoc.gov/policy/docs/qanda_caregiving.html for a list common Caregiver Discrimination examples.

Next Steps for Employers:

• Review your existing policies to ensure that you do not allow disparate treatment of employees with caregiving responsibilities and foster equal treatment of all employees. 
• Include awareness of this type of discrimination in your normal anti-discrimination training. 
• Training should also make employees aware that co-workers should not be treated any differently because of caregiving responsibilities.