What are “Damages”?
Damages are what you lose because of the discrimination. Discrimination victims typically lose wages, benefits and emotional well-being as a result of discrimination.
What are economic damages?
Economic damages are the amount of wages and benefits lost as the result of discrimination. Victims who prevail at trial are entitled to be “made whole”, or put in the same place economically that they would have been without the discrimination. This includes benefits and seniority.
Victims of discrimination have a duty to mitigate economic damages. This means that they must use reasonable efforts to find comparable employment and accept such employment if it is offered to them. In other words, the law helps those who help themselves.
How does the EEOC measure emotional damages?
Emotional damages do not have a precise monetary measure. They are based on testimony of medical professionals or acquaintances of the victims who observe changes in the victim’s behavior and mood. Like pain and suffering in personal injury cases, compensation for emotional damages is based on what the jury considers fair. As a general rule, the higher the monetary damages, the greater the award for emotional damages.
If you have not suffered damages, you cannot win a discrimination suit. This could be the case, for example, if you were the victim of blatant discrimination, but quickly found a higher paying job that you liked better than the job you lost due to the discrimination.
What about punitive damages?
If you prove every other part of your case, you might get punitive damages. Punitive damages are awarded to punish an employer for discriminating and to deter it and others from discriminating in the future. Federal courts limit the amount of emotional and punitive damages that discrimination victims can recover to $50,000 to $300,000, depending on the size of the employer.
