There are several laws on the books designed to protect employees from discrimination based on race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age and other distinguishing characteristics. However, there is one law not many employees or employers know a lot about one that every person who has served in the U.S. military needs to know.
The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) protects military personnel when they step away from civilian life to serve our country. It is designed to prevent employers from denying veterans employment, returning to employment or opportunity for advancement within the company because of their military service.
Though this law has been on the books since 1994, few veterans are aware of their USERRA rights. They aren't always cognizant of discrimination they face from employers because they have to take time off from work to serve in one of our military branches. They might feel that being passed over for a promotion or losing vacation time is justified by the fact that they had to be away for two weeks while attending their annual military training.
Even if a veteran knows his or her USERRA rights, filing a claim against an employer can be an uphill battle. Hiring and promoting employees is a judgment call, and without a noticeable distinguishing characteristic, establishing bias is very difficult. Denial of benefits due to excessive time away from work may be part of a company's human resources policy. An employer can even claim that he or she was unaware of the fact that someone was a veteran at the time when the person was interviewed for the job.
The only time where it is obvious someone's USERRA rights have been violated is if an employer doesn't allow a veteran to return to the job he or she had at the company following a deployment. Even then, an employer has a built-in defense: the employee wasn't there, and there was no guarantee that he or she would return. Therefore, the employer hired someone else to fill the role.
At this point, you might think filing a USERRA claim is a hopeless, desperate act, but it's not. There are a number of cases in the books where veterans have received full compensation for discriminatory acts by employers, including Serricchio v. Wachovia in 2009 and Wright v. the City of Jamestown (N.Y.) and the Jamestown Police Department in 2017.
In the latter case, my client, Timothy Wright, filed a USERRA claim against the police department in 2007 after he was denied vacation time and a promotion within the department. He had come off a 2004 deployment in Iraq when he first filed the claim, and then he served two six-month deployments to Afghanistan, beginning in 2009. A Chautauqua County, N.Y., Supreme Court jury found in favor of Wright in 2014, but the police department and the city appealed the verdict. The city abandoned their appeal, and Wright moved for summary judgment on the back-pay and attorney fees as a result of the city's violation of USERRA. After nearly three more years of litigation, the state Supreme Court awarded Wright more than $170,000.