New Jersey Gender Discrimination Lawyer Representing Employees in Sex, Pregnancy, and Equal Pay Matters

Reviewed by Jonathan I. Nirenberg, a New Jersey employment discrimination attorney and Partner at Rabner Baumgart Ben-Asher & Nirenberg, P.C. Last updated September 3, 2026.

Most people who call us about gender discrimination do not arrive with a single dramatic incident. Rather, they arrive with a pattern they have been explaining away for months. A promotion that went to someone with less experience. A higher salary the employer paid to a peer, learned by accident. An undeserved negative performance review from a new supervisor. Rabner Baumgart Ben-Asher & Nirenberg, P.C. represents employees across New Jersey in employment discrimination matters, and much of our time goes to working out whether what a client is describing is something the law prohibits.

What Counts as Gender or Sex Discrimination Under New Jersey Law?

Gender discrimination is adverse treatment at work because of an employee’s sex, rather than because of job performance or qualifications. Under N.J.S.A. § 10:5-12, it is an unlawful employment practice for an employer to refuse to hire, fire, or discriminate in compensation or other terms, conditions, or privileges of employment based on gender. The prohibition is not limited to explicit hostility, but also reaches decisions grounded in assumptions about what work a person of a given gender will want, or will be able to achieve.

Pregnancy or breastfeeding, affectional or sexual orientation, and gender identity or expression are each separately enumerated in the same subsection of the LAD. They often are related to sex discrimination, and can arise alongside it.

The LAD has no minimum employee count, so it covers small employers that fall entirely outside of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a federal law that also prohibits gender discrimination.

Proof of sex discrimination rarely arrives as an admission. Rather, it often is built from comparison of how the same employer or supervisor treated similarly situated employees of a different sex, and whether the employer’s stated reasons for its actions are true.

Unequal Pay for Substantially Similar Work

Pay discrimination remains common. The New Jersey Division on Civil Rights reported in its 2020 enforcement guidance that women in New Jersey earned 81.3% of what their male counterparts earned in 2018. It also is a form of discrimination that an employee is unlikely to discover unaided, since pay rarely is discussed openly. As a result, a disparity can persist for years.

N.J.S.A. § 10:5-12(t) makes it unlawful for an employer to pay a member of a protected class less than employees who are not members of that class for substantially similar work, viewed as a composite of skill, effort, and responsibility. In contrast, the federal Equal Pay Act, 29 U.S.C. § 206, requires only equal pay for equal work, so the New Jersey standard is broader in what counts as comparable work.

Under the LAD, an employer can defend a pay differential, but the routes are limited. It may show the difference follows a seniority or merit system, or that it rests on legitimate, bona fide factors other than the protected characteristic, such as training, education, experience, or quantity or quality of production. An employer out of compliance may not fix the pay disparity by cutting anyone’s pay, since the statute expressly prohibits doing so.

The remedies are what give the LAD’s equal pay requirement its force. Under N.J.S.A. § 10:5-13, if a jury finds an employer violated the statute’s equal pay provision, the judge is required to award the employee three times their monetary damages. This trebling is mandatory, rather than discretionary. Back pay can reach as far as six years before the lawsuit was filed if the violation was continuous and continued within the two-year statute of limitations, and runs forward through the trial. The statute also preserves the continuing violation doctrine and the discovery rule, which potentially can extend the statute of limitations.

Pregnancy and Breastfeeding Discrimination

Pregnancy, including breastfeeding, is its own protected category under the LAD. N.J.S.A. § 10:5-12(s) does two separate things. First, it bars treating an employee who is pregnant or breastfeeding less favorably than other employees who are similar in their ability or inability to work. Second, it requires the employer to provide reasonable accommodations for needs related to pregnancy when the employee requests them on the advice of a physician.

The statute provides examples of reasonable accommodations for pregnancy, including bathroom breaks, breaks for increased water intake, periodic rest, assistance with manual labor, job restructuring or modified schedules, and temporary transfers to less strenuous work. For an employee breastfeeding an infant, it includes daily break time and a suitable private location, other than a toilet stall, near the employee’s work area. An employer may resist providing an accommodation on the grounds that it would impose an undue hardship, but that is a defense the employer must establish.

Sexual Harassment as a Form of Sex Discrimination

Sexual harassment is a form of sex discrimination. The conduct does not have to be sexual in nature to qualify. Rather, what matters is that the employee was targeted because of their sex. In Lehmann v. Toys ‘R’ Us, Inc., 132 N.J. 587 (1993), the New Jersey Supreme Court set the hostile work environment standard: conduct that would not have occurred but for the employee’s sex, and that a reasonable person of that sex would find severe or pervasive enough to alter the conditions of employment. As a result, not only can a single very serious incident establish a harassment claim, but an accumulation of much smaller ones also can do so.

Employer liability for a supervisor’s sexual harassment follows its own rules, set out on our page covering workplace sexual harassment. New Jersey separately protects victims of domestic violence or sexual violence from adverse treatment tied to time off related to the abuse.

Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Discrimination

Similarly, affectional or sexual orientation and gender identity or expression are each protected in their own right under N.J.S.A. § 10:5-12(a). An employee who is fired after coming out, or who is repeatedly misgendered and then reassigned, or unjustifiably excluded from meetings, could have a claim under those categories.

What Damages Are Available, and How Long Do You Have to Sue?

An employee has a choice of forum. Under N.J.S.A. § 10:5-13, they can file a verified complaint with the DCR, or a lawsuit directly in the Superior Court where they have the right to a jury trial.

Recoverable damages ordinarily include back pay, front pay, and emotional distress damages, as well as punitive damages if the conduct was egregious and upper management participated in it or was willfully indifferent to it. The statute also shifts attorney’s fees to a prevailing employee.

It is important to consider the deadlines first. Typically, an employee must file a lawsuit under the LAD in the Superior Court within two years, a period the New Jersey Supreme Court fixed in Montells v. Haynes, 133 N.J. 282 (1993), by borrowing the general personal injury limitations period because the LAD contains none of its own. An administrative complaint with the DCR carries a much shorter 180-day window. The two clocks are independent. Missing the shorter deadline to file with the DCR does not forfeit the longer deadline to file in court. Likewise, each adverse action, such as a demotion, pay cut, or wrongful termination, has its own separate clock.

What Evidence Decides a Gender Discrimination Case?

These cases turn on many factors, often including documents that exist before anyone contemplates a lawsuit, and comparisons the employer did not expect to have to justify. Compensation records typically are the foundation of an equal pay claim, and the analysis requires more than a salary column: job descriptions, actual duties, bonus and commission structures, and starting offers all can bear on whether an employee was paid less than their peers, whether work is substantially similar, or whether the employer’s claimed seniority or merit justification is real. Performance reviews written before the protected characteristic became salient, set against reviews written after an internal complaint, often show the shift more clearly than a more direct statement.

Contemporaneous communications also carry weight because they were not composed for litigation. Emails, chat messages, and calendar entries fix dates and record what was said at the time. Internal complaints and the employer’s response to them can establish notice, the pivot of a retaliation claim. Comparator evidence, meaning how the employer treated similarly situated employees outside the protected class, does the work that direct evidence of discriminatory intent rarely does.

How We Approach Gender and Sex Discrimination Claims

We begin by listening carefully to your story, and evaluating your potential legal claims. A pay disparity, an unaccommodated pregnancy, and a hostile work environment are three different claims resting on different provisions of the law, with different proof requirements, damages, and in the case of an equal pay violation a different back pay reach.

We then evaluate the employer’s stated reason for its actions, since that usually is where the case is won or lost. Employers often offer an explanation that we have to evaluate against your facts, what the documents show and how other employees were treated. Our attorneys have represented thousands of New Jersey employees and have recovered tens of millions of dollars for our clients, much of it by establishing that the employer’s stated reason for its actions does not hold up.

Not every matter should become a lawsuit, and we say so when we think so. For example, an employee who still is employed faces a different analysis than one who already has been fired. The differences include the damages available and the risk of retaliation.

What to Do if You Believe You Were Treated Differently Because of Sex

A few steps often are worth taking before anything else:

• Unless it would violate company policy or the law, forward key emails, messages, and documents to a personal account before your employment ends, while you still have access to them.
• For key meetings and events, write down the relevant dates, participants, and what was said, as close to the events as possible. A contemporaneous record is more accurate and persuasive than a later reconstruction.
• Keep every performance review, including favorable ones from earlier years, since the comparison across time frequently can support your claim.
• If applicable, note what you know about how comparable colleagues were paid, promoted, or disciplined, and how you learned it.
• Do not sign a severance agreement or release before having it reviewed by an employment lawyer, since a release can give up an equal pay claim reaching back six years.

Common Questions About Sex and Gender Discrimination Claims

Does the Law Against Discrimination Apply to Small Employers?

The Law Against Discrimination reaches employers of every size. It contains no minimum employee threshold, which distinguishes it from Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964’s 15-employee floor. An employee of a three-person New Jersey company has the same substantive protection against sex discrimination as an employee of a much larger corporation.

Can a Man Bring a Sex Discrimination Claim in New Jersey?

Yes. Sex is a protected characteristic under N.J.S.A. § 10:5-12(a) without regard to which sex the employee is. Likewise, the equal pay provision at N.J.S.A. § 10:5-12(t) protects any member of a protected class paid less than a comparator outside that class, including both men and women.

Related Employment Law Matters

A gender discrimination claim frequently sits alongside a claim under a different protected category, such as a pregnancy, gender identity, or sexual orientation claim, as well as other protected categories like age, race, national origin, disability, or religion.

An unequal salary raises questions covered on our pay discrimination page. Adverse treatment tied to a pregnancy announcement, a leave request, or a return to work is addressed under pregnancy discrimination.

Where the conduct concerns an employee’s sexual orientation, the analysis is set out on our page covering sexual orientation discrimination.

Contact a New Jersey Gender Discrimination Lawyer