Employment Lawyers in Delaware County: Discrimination, Age and Retaliation

The deadline that ends most claims before they start

Employment discrimination is one of the few areas where you cannot simply go to court. You have to exhaust an administrative process first, and it carries its own clock.

People routinely spend six months going through an internal grievance, an appeal and a conversation with HR, and arrive at a lawyer’s office after both windows have closed. The internal process does not pause either deadline.

At will employment, and what it does not permit

Pennsylvania is an at will state. An employer can end your employment for a good reason, a poor reason or no reason at all, and most dismissals that feel unjust are lawful.

What an employer cannot do is dismiss you because of a protected characteristic, or because you complained about discrimination, filed a workers compensation claim or reported something unlawful. The question is never whether the dismissal was fair. It is whether the real reason was a prohibited one.

Age discrimination

The federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act protects employees aged 40 and over, and the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act runs alongside it. Age cases are rarely proved by a single remark, although a remark helps. They are usually built from the pattern: who was let go, who was kept, who replaced them, what the stated reason was and whether it holds up.

Where an employer gives a reason that the evidence contradicts, that inconsistency is itself evidence. Lawyers call it pretext, and it is what most age cases turn on.

Retaliation stands on its own

If you complained about discrimination and were then dismissed, demoted or moved, the retaliation claim survives even where the original complaint fails. You do not have to have been right about the underlying discrimination. You have to have complained in good faith.

Where these cases are heard

Pennsylvania Human Relations Act claims are brought in the Court of Common Pleas, which for this county sits at the Delaware County courthouse in Media. Federal claims under the ADEA and Title VII go to the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Many cases carry both, which is one of the reasons the two deadlines matter so much.