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- Available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
- - SE HABLA ESPAÑOL
Passed over, pushed out, or punished at work in Pasadena or nearby because of race, religion, age, disability, or pregnancy? We sue California employers over what FEHA calls unlawful.
NYU School of Law · Former defense at Skadden & Latham · No-charge case review · Plaintiff-side discrimination counsel
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Were you pushed out of a job in Pasadena or nearby because of who you are? Told you weren’t a “culture fit.” Written up for the first time in years right after disclosing a pregnancy, a disability, or a medical condition. Passed over for a promotion that went to someone less qualified. Targeted in a “restructuring” that somehow only hit workers over 50, or only hit women, or only hit one race. Harassed at work and then retaliated against for reporting it. If any of that is what happened to you, California law was on your side, and your employer broke it. We go after employers who make decisions based on race, sex, age, pregnancy, disability, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other protected status — and then dress those decisions up as something else. You can recover your lost pay, money for the emotional toll, attorneys’ fees — paid by them, not you. In serious cases, punitive damages on top. Simon Moshkovich — NYU Law, former Skadden and Latham — personally handles every intake. If your case has merit, we’ll tell you straight. If it doesn’t, we’ll tell you that too. When we take your case, we’re not here to settle cheap — we’re here to win it.
Mercer Legal Group is a California plaintiff-side employment practice. Every client we represent is an employee. We don’t defend companies on the side. Simon Moshkovich — our Founding Partner — is the attorney on your case from intake through resolution, and he’s the one reading your documents, deposing the decision-makers, and negotiating your settlement. We cap the caseload intentionally. It’s the only way to run each case like the one that matters.
California gives employees some of the strongest protections in the country — stronger than federal law, covering smaller employers, and reaching more categories. It’s illegal for an employer to fire you, demote you, cut your pay, pass you over for a promotion, deny you training, or push you out because of your race, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, pregnancy, age (40 and up), disability, medical condition, genetic information, religion, marital status, military or veteran status, or because you’re caring for a family member. It’s illegal even when the employer uses a “neutral” rule that falls harder on one group than another. It’s illegal to harass you based on any of those categories, and it’s illegal to retaliate against you for reporting it — whether the harassment was aimed at you or at a coworker. And the “legitimate” reasons companies put in writing — not a culture fit, low energy, attitude problems, not detail-oriented, doesn’t communicate well, overqualified — don’t protect the employer if the real reason was who you are. Those pretexts come apart in discovery. If that’s what happened to you, you have a claim, and we can make the employer pay for it.
When you win a discrimination case, you can recover the wages and benefits you lost from the day your employer crossed the line through judgment. Money for future lost earnings if your career took a real hit. Compensation for the emotional harm — which juries take seriously in these cases. Attorneys’ fees — paid by your former employer, not you. And punitive damages when the conduct was egregious enough, or when the company knew and did nothing. You don’t pay us out of pocket. We take these cases on contingency — you pay only if we win. Move now. California deadlines are strict — some claims run out in as little as a year, most within three. If you wait, the company’s HR files, decision-maker emails, hiring spreadsheets, and prior complaints against the same supervisor quietly disappear, witnesses leave, and your leverage walks out the door. And if you’re sitting on a severance or separation agreement with a non-disclosure clause — don’t sign before we talk. California’s Silenced No More law makes many of those NDAs unenforceable when harassment, discrimination, or retaliation are involved.
No-cost review for Pasadena-area employees experiencing discrimination at work. Direct read on whether the claim has merit under FEHA.
We don’t negotiate from hope. We negotiate from evidence. First, we preserve the record — your emails, texts, Slack and Teams messages, performance reviews going back years, witness accounts of biased comments, and your own written complaints to HR — before anything quietly disappears. Next, we file to protect your rights with the California Civil Rights Department or the EEOC so your deadlines stop running. Once we’re in litigation, we pull what employers don’t want pulled: HR files, decision-maker emails, prior complaints against the same supervisor, hiring and promotion data that shows the pattern, internal “workforce planning” memos, and the performance records of the people who got the job you didn’t. Then we depose the people who made the decision. Their version of why you specifically were let go, demoted, or passed over tends not to survive contact with their own internal paper trail. Strong cases settle on strong terms. When they don’t, we take them to a jury. Either way, the choice is yours, made from the position the work has already built — not from hope.
Three structural choices distinguish how we run a Pasadena discrimination case. First, the intake call goes to Simon Moshkovich, not to a coordinator deciding whether the facts merit a lawyer’s attention. Second, the firm caps the active caseload, which means that when your discrimination claim moves into discovery, the senior attorney has the bandwidth to actually read the personnel files line-by-line and prepare each deposition in detail. Third, the practice represents employees exclusively — we never represent the kinds of employers we sue, so there is never a quiet pull toward an easy settlement to keep someone else happy. For a discrimination plaintiff facing a well-resourced defense team, that combination is what changes the leverage in a case.
A few resolutions from California employment matters we’ve handled. Every case is different — past results don’t guarantee future outcomes.
A long-tenured analyst was replaced by a hire more than twenty years younger weeks after an internal reorganization. Internal emails referring to the team’s need to “get younger” were produced in discovery. The case resolved for substantial front pay, back pay, and attorneys’ fees.
A long-tenured professional was passed over for promotions and paid below comparable colleagues after a change in management. Payroll and promotion data produced in discovery supported the pattern. The case resolved on confidential terms with substantial back pay.
An employee’s role was materially changed during pregnancy leave and made untenable on return. After targeted discovery into the internal decision-making chain, the case settled on confidential terms.
Call (818) 538-3458 or fill out the form. A few sentences about what happened, what protected category was involved, and how the firing or denial came down is enough to begin the review.
Simon or a senior attorney walks through it with you and gives a straight read: does this clear FEHA’s bar, what’s the realistic damages range, what defenses to expect. We tell you when a case isn’t strong enough.
If your discrimination claim has merit, we lay out exactly what to preserve, what to stop doing, and how to handle ongoing communication with HR. Statute-of-limitations filings — CRD, EEOC — happen on our watch.
Once the record is built, the choice is yours: best settlement the file produces, or trial. FEHA’s fee-shifting and uncapped damages put real pressure on California employers; our job is to make sure that pressure shows.
Free discrimination review. Simon reads every intake before we take the case.
