Disparate Treatment: An Illegal Discrimination Case

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Illegal discrimination which is also called disparate treatment, means that raters assign scores differentially to various employees based on factors that are not performance related, such as race, nationality, color, or ethnic and national origin. As a result of such ratings, some employees receive more training, feedback, or rewards than others. More so, illegal discrimination is usually referred to as disparate treatment because employees claim they were intentionally treated differently because of their sex, race, ethnicity, national origin, age, disability status, or other protected classes under the law (Aguinis, 2013).

Essentially, the majority of legal cases involving performance management systems involve a claim of disparate treatment. …show more content…

v. Green. In this influential case, the court established the logical framework to determine whether employment discrimination occurred due to disparate treatment. Hence, to prove a prima facie case in an employment discrimination case based on disparate treatment, a claimant must show that they are a member of a lawful protected class who applied for and was qualified for a position but was rejected based on their protected …show more content…

If the claimant is successful in proving a prima facie case of disparate treatment, the burden shifts to the employer to articulate some legitimate nondiscriminatory reason for the employee's rejection of the job seeker. If the employer is successful, the burden shifts back to the job seeker to prove that the employer's legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for the decision is merely a pretext for discrimination. This standard can be incredibly difficult to meet. The difficulty in proving intentional discrimination necessary for a disparate treatment claim is that most employers today are quite astute and sharp about discrimination. Essentially, rather than using obvious communication directly showing a discriminatory intent, employers and employment agencies may use code words to exclude some job seekers from consideration. Therefore, discriminatory intent or motive must be proven to win a disparate treatment claim, which is a high burden for any job seeker who has been excluded from consideration (Jolly-Ryan,

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