Your Employer Had a Team of Lawyers Ready Before You Were Even Fired

Losing a job is one of the most destabilizing events a person can face, especially when it happens for the wrong reasons. Massachusetts is an at-will employment state, which means an employer can generally end a working relationship without cause. But that legal reality comes with hard limits. What an employer cannot do is fire someone because of their race, gender, age, religion, disability, national origin, sexual orientation, or gender identity. They cannot terminate an employee for complaining about discrimination or harassment. They cannot push someone out in retaliation for requesting medical leave or accommodating a pregnancy. When they do, the law is clear: the employee has been wronged, and they have a path to compensation.

What that path looks like in practice, and whether it ends in a meaningful result, depends entirely on the quality of representation the employee brings to the fight. Insurance-backed employers have dedicated employment defense teams whose job starts the moment a potential claim surfaces. The workers and executives on the other side of that table deserve representation that is built the same way, ready for trial from day one.

Massachusetts Employment Law and the Protections Available to Boston Workers

Workers in Boston benefit from both federal and Massachusetts-specific protections that in many respects exceed the federal floor. The Massachusetts Fair Employment Practices Act applies to employers with as few as six employees and prohibits discrimination based on age, race, color, national origin, religious creed, disability, sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation. Federal counterparts, including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, cover employers with fifteen or more employees.

When an employee believes they have experienced workplace discrimination or retaliation, they typically have the option of filing a complaint with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD), pursuing a federal charge through the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), or bringing a civil action in court. Each pathway has its own timelines, procedural requirements, and strategic considerations. Filing deadlines can be as short as 300 days from the discriminatory act for EEOC charges. Missing those windows can permanently foreclose a claim, regardless of its merits.

“The world hears about our trial victories but few realize that most of our cases settle before we ever step foot in the courtroom. Our reputation of winning big at trial often makes opponents decide to settle early to avoid trying cases against us.”

Discrimination, Harassment, and Hostile Work Environments

Employment discrimination does not always take the form of an abrupt termination. It can unfold over months as a pattern of overlooked promotions, altered job duties, unequal pay, or a workplace environment that makes clear a person is not wanted because of who they are. Sexual harassment, racial bias in performance reviews, age-based exclusion from opportunities, and retaliation against employees who raise concerns all fall within the scope of actionable employment claims.

Proving discrimination frequently requires building a circumstantial case, as employers rarely document discriminatory intent in writing. An experienced employment litigator will know how to use discovery, depositions, patterns in employment data, and comparator evidence to construct a compelling picture of what actually drove the employer’s decision. The strength of that evidentiary foundation is often what determines whether a case settles on favorable terms or whether it needs to go to a jury.

Wrongful Termination and Retaliation Claims

Retaliation claims are among the most common and most legally complex employment claims an attorney handles. An employee who complains about discrimination or harassment, requests reasonable accommodation for a disability, takes protected medical leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act or the Massachusetts Parental Leave Act, reports safety violations to a regulatory agency, or objects to illegal conduct is protected from adverse employment action as a result. When an employer fires, demotes, reassigns, or otherwise penalizes that employee for engaging in that protected activity, a retaliation claim may arise.

The connection between the protected activity and the adverse action is often the central battleground. Employers routinely point to performance issues or business reorganizations as the reason for a termination, even when the timing tells a different story. An experienced employment attorney will scrutinize that stated justification carefully, looking for inconsistencies, shifts in the employer’s rationale, and the trajectory of the employee’s record before and after the protected activity.

Elite Trial Firm. Boston Office. Real Consequences for Employers Who Cross the Line.

Greenberg Gross LLP is routinely listed among the nation’s Best Law Firms by U.S. News & World Report and has been recognized as one of the elite litigation boutiques in the country. Founded by Alan Greenberg and Wayne Gross, both former partners at one of the world’s largest global law firms, the firm was built around a single idea: that the best trial lawyers should be able to serve their clients with a level of focus and commitment that large institutional firms rarely deliver. Every attorney at the firm is trained as a trial lawyer from the first day they arrive. The firm has even designed state-of-the-art courtrooms inside its offices so that case preparation happens in the same kind of environment where outcomes are decided.

The firm has obtained multi-million dollar results on behalf of clients across the full range of employment claims, including whistleblower retaliation, discrimination, harassment, wrongful termination, and equal pay cases, representing employees, executives, and senior professionals against corporations, law firms, and public entities alike. The Boston office is located at 101 Federal Street, Suite 1900. Contact an employment attorney in Boston from Greenberg Gross LLP for a free case review.