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Most employment discrimination discussions focus on who an employee is: their race, their sex, their age, their disability. Washington, DC extends its anti-discrimination protections to include something different: how a person gets their money. The DC Human Rights Act prohibits discrimination based on source of income, and while this protection is most commonly encountered in housing law, it also applies in the employment context. A wrongful termination attorney DC employees reach out to after financially-connected firings encounters this provision most often when an employer takes adverse action upon learning that an employee receives government benefits, housing assistance, or income from a source the employer found objectionable. It is an unusual protection nationally and one that reflects DC’s specific legislative priorities around economic equity.
The source of income provision in the DCHRA is genuinely distinct from anything in federal employment law. It is not a restatement of something that already exists. For DC employees whose employment was affected by what their employer thought about where their money came from, this protection may be the only legal basis for a wrongful termination or discrimination claim.
What “Source of Income” Means Under the DCHRA in the Employment Context
The DCHRA defines source of income broadly as the point of origin of one’s income, including income from federal, state, or local government benefit programs, as well as alimony, child support, any judgment for money, lottery winnings, and any other lawful source. The breadth of this definition is intentional. DC’s legislature extended protection to virtually any legal source of income, not only government assistance.
In the employment context, source of income discrimination occurs when an employer makes a job decision, including a termination, demotion, or change in working conditions, based on the nature or origin of an employee’s income rather than on the employee’s job performance or qualifications. The decision does not need to be made with overt hostility. It can arise from assumptions about an employee’s reliability, financial stability, or priorities that are based on the fact that they receive a particular type of income.
The application that comes up most frequently in DC employment cases involves government benefits. An employer who learns that an employee receives disability benefits, housing vouchers, or public assistance and who then initiates adverse action based on assumptions connected to those benefits has engaged in source of income discrimination. The assumptions are the problem: that a person receiving disability benefits cannot perform the job’s physical demands, that a person on housing assistance will be unreliable, or that a person receiving government support is somehow less suitable for the role. These assumptions are exactly what the DCHRA is designed to prohibit.
How Source of Income Discrimination Arises in DC Workplaces
The most direct scenario involves an employer who discovers during the course of employment that a worker receives a particular type of income, and whose attitude or behavior toward the employee changes after that discovery. An employee who disclosed during an FMLA or disability accommodation process that they receive disability benefits and was subsequently placed on a performance improvement plan, assigned to less desirable shifts, or terminated may have a source of income discrimination claim running alongside the disability accommodation claim.
A second scenario arises in DC’s hospitality and service industries, where employers sometimes develop informal policies against retaining employees who receive housing vouchers or public benefits. When these employees are terminated or pushed out through schedule manipulation, hour reductions, or disciplinary pretexts, and the pattern of who is targeted tracks with benefit recipient status, the source of income protection provides a basis for challenge.
A third and less obvious scenario involves income from secondary employment or freelance work. The DCHRA’s source of income protection covers all lawful sources of income, and an employer who fires an employee after discovering they have a second job or freelance income may be taking adverse action based on source of income, particularly if the secondary work did not compete with the employer’s business and there was no legitimate business reason to object to it. The interaction between this scenario and DC’s non-compete ban is also relevant: an employer who cannot legally prohibit most secondary employment under DC’s non-compete law may also lack the basis to terminate an employee for having that secondary income without running afoul of the source of income provision.
How Source of Income Discrimination Intersects With Other DCHRA Protections
Source of income discrimination rarely operates in isolation from other protected characteristics. In practice, it frequently intersects with disability discrimination, race discrimination, and family responsibilities discrimination in ways that make the combined legal position stronger than any single theory alone.
An employee who receives disability benefits is, by definition, a person with a disability, medical history, or qualifying condition. When an employer takes adverse action after learning about the disability benefit, the claim may involve both disability discrimination under the ADA and the DCHRA and source of income discrimination under the DCHRA. The dual theories address different aspects of the employer’s conduct: the disability claim addresses the employee’s status; the source of income claim addresses the employer’s response to how that status is financially supported.
Race and source of income discrimination can intersect in DC’s housing voucher context. The Section 8 housing voucher program, which the DCHRA specifically identifies as a covered source of income in housing law, is disproportionately used by Black and Hispanic residents in DC. An employer whose adverse employment decisions correlate with housing voucher status is potentially engaging in conduct that is simultaneously source of income discrimination and race discrimination with a disparate impact. Both theories can be pursued simultaneously under the DCHRA.
Family responsibilities discrimination and source of income discrimination can intersect when an employer takes adverse action against an employee who receives child support, alimony, or other court-ordered income associated with family structure. The DCHRA’s family responsibilities provision and its source of income provision can apply to the same underlying conduct from different angles.
How Source of Income Discrimination Cases Are Evaluated Evidentially
Source of income discrimination claims follow the same evidentiary framework as other DCHRA claims. The employee needs to establish that the employer knew or had reason to know about the source of income, that an adverse employment action occurred, and that there is a causal connection between the two. Temporal proximity, pretext in the employer’s stated justification, and comparative treatment of employees whose income came from different sources are all relevant.
Direct evidence in these cases is unusual, though employer statements that reflect assumptions or biases connected to benefit recipient status do appear. More commonly, the claim is built circumstantially: the employer learned about the income source, the employment relationship changed around the same time, and the employer’s stated reason for any adverse action does not hold up when examined against the employee’s prior performance record or the treatment of comparators.
Documentation to preserve includes any communications in which the income source was disclosed or discussed, any changes in how the employee was treated or evaluated around the time of the disclosure, and any evidence about how other employees who did not have the same income source were treated under similar circumstances.
Consult a Wrongful Termination Attorney in DC If Your Firing Was Connected to Your Income Source
Source of income protection under the DCHRA is one of the least discussed but genuinely operative employment protections in DC, and it applies to a range of situations that employees in other jurisdictions have no legal basis to challenge. Whether the income source that triggered the employer’s adverse action was a government benefit, housing assistance, secondary employment, or court-ordered payment, the DCHRA’s protection deserves evaluation as part of any DC wrongful termination analysis.
The Mundaca Law Firm’s wrongful termination attorney DC practice evaluates source of income discrimination claims alongside disability, race, family responsibilities, and other applicable DCHRA theories, ensuring that DC’s full spectrum of anti-discrimination protections is part of the analysis. If you were fired or subjected to adverse action in DC in circumstances connected to your income source, contact The Mundaca Law Firm to schedule a consultation. The OHR’s one-year filing deadline controls, and understanding the full scope of your potential claims begins with that first conversation.
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