The Center for WorkLife Law (WorkLife Law or WLL) is a nonprofit research and advocacy group with a unique “six stakeholder” model that reflects our belief that many different stakeholders are ready, willing, and able to play a role in sparking social and organizational change around work/life issues. WorkLife Law works with employees, employers, plaintiffs’ employment lawyers, management-side employment lawyers, unions, and public policymakers, to educate each group about the prevalence of family responsibilities discrimination, and to develop effective measures to eliminate FRD. WLL also works with social scientists to spark interdisciplinary studies of bias against caregivers, and works extensively with the press.

WLL was founded as the Program on Gender, Work & Family in 1998 at American University Washington College of Law, and changed its name to The Center for WorkLife Law in October 2003 to better reflect its emphasis on identifying and preventing discriminatory employment practices against caregivers. Since 2005, WorkLife Law has been housed at the University of California Hastings College of the Law. WLL's work is made possible through generous support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, The Rockefeller Family Fund, The Wallace A. Gerbode Foundation, the Women's Bar Association of D.C. Foundation, Abigail Disney, and the University of California Hastings College of the Law.

WorkLife Law studies and tracks family responsibilities discrimination case law and policy. The goal of WorkLife Law is to identify and prevent the discrimination from occurring in the first place, thereby alleviating the need for employees to resort to the courts for protection and allowing businesses to be more productive. WorkLife Law seeks to eliminate caregiver discrimination by:

• assisting caregivers who may be experiencing discrimination at work;
  
• working with employers to identify and prevent discriminatory practices;
  
• providing technical guidance to state and federal policy makers who seek to develop public policies to prevent caregiver discrimination;
  
• providing technical guidance to lawyers who advise employers on how to avoid employment discrimination, and to lawyers representing employees who believe they have been discriminated against; and
  
• working with researchers and the press to document common challenges facing caregivers, and to highlight employers and policies that have successfully overcome such challenges.

For WLL's Honorary and Advisory Boards, click here.

To meet our staff, click here.

To see WLL’s speaking engagements and presentations, click here.

To find out how you can help WLL continue its important work, click here.


Contact Us