Losing your job can hit you hard. It can leave you in a perilous financial position, especially if you have a family to support. It can cut you off from the friends and colleagues you have made. It can make getting a new job more difficult, as prospective employers will assume you did something wrong to have been fired. And it may make you feel stupid for wasting so long working hard for an employer who clearly did not appreciate you.
California employers are generally allowed to fire you when they feel like it because it is an at-will employment state. If you have a contract stipulating certain notice periods they need to respect that, but otherwise, they can fire you at a moment’s notice.
While employers do not need a reason to fire you, there are certain reasons they cannot use to fire you.
Protected characteristics
Employers cannot fire someone on account of any of the following protected characteristics:
- Race, color
- Ancestry, national origin
- Religion, creed
- Age (40 and over)
- Disability, mental and physical
- Sex, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding or related medical conditions)
- Sexual orientation
- Gender identity, gender expression
- Medical condition
- Genetic information
- Marital status
- Military or veteran status
Protected activities
Employment law permits you to do certain things and does not allow an employer to retaliate against you for doing them. One is reporting harassment or discrimination that you or someone else suffers. Another is whistleblowing on your employer. This means reporting them to the appropriate authorities for illegal actions such as fraud or failing to adhere to safety requirements.
Your employer probably knows these things are illegal, so they are unlikely to admit that is why they fired you. They’ll likely come up with some other excuse. You may need legal help to show their true reason for terminating you was illegal and to protect your rights.