The devastating loss of jobs and permanent business closures, which may not yet be over, are clearly the most significant but not the only bitter products of the coronavirus pandemic affecting U.S. workplaces. The widespread unemployment it has created, as well as cost-cutting measures taken by businesses to survive, could lead to a sharp rise in claims of employment discrimination in the near future. 

The possibility of such claims has likely been exacerbated by the recent national focus on actual or perceived social and racial injustice in our society in general. Any one of these unrelated circumstances could create the potential for claims of workforce discrimination on the basis of one or more of the several statuses protected under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.