Currently, about 41 million Americans provide care to an adult with limitations in daily activities such as eating, dressing, or bathing, and approximately 60 percent of these family caregivers work at a paying job. Workplace discrimination against employees who care for adult family members, called Family Responsibilities Discrimination (FRD) or caregiver discrimination, is an escalating problem that can disadvantage employees and put employers at legal risk.

This report details the ways in which state and local laws fill in the gaps left by federal law by prohibiting employment discrimination that occurs because of family caregiving. The laws vary in their scope, with most protecting only employees who care for minor children while others protect employees who care for any family member, including parents, parents-in-law, grandparents, and adult family members with disabilities. In addition to prohibiting discrimination, many of the laws let employees sue their employers in court for monetary damages and other relief—which makes the laws more useful to employees and more dangerous for employers to ignore.

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