Long story short someone I know is going through a bitter divorce. According to their “consultations with attorneys” they are claiming that they were told they can “sue their spouse for discrimination” mainly because both spouses were of different races and they claim they have proof the other spouse was being “discriminatory” towards them during their entire marriage. Note they were told they can she for “Discrimination” not racism because apparently you can’t sue for racism but you can sue for discrimination.
This sounds like the most out-there concept I’ve ever heard of and Google brings up nothing but who knows what crazy divorce laws they may be looking up.
I cannot imagine how this would work as a legal concept. Maybe if one spouse employed the other (e.g. the wife ran a business and the husband worked for her) then maybe you could get to discrimination.
But only in a marriage? I cannot see how that would work as a legal matter. If it succeeded that would open a huge can of worms.
This comes with the caveat that anyone can sue anyone for anything. It might be stupid and go nowhere but they can try.
The obvious question is “discrimination for what?” It’s not like the one spouse had multiple other spouses and favoured one over the other. (That would suggest religious discrimination?) “He was being mean to me” is not discrimination - how would you prove that a “spouse of a different colour” would fare better? Poor treatment by the other spouse is a normal thing to bring up in divorce, but I fail to see how discrimination could play a role - after all, they got married, so there’s a certain element of acceptance implied.
It wasn’t mentioned in the OP, but I could imagine at least a circumstance in which it applied, to wit, children.
So if one spouse had children by a prior message that were mon-racial (not that the term means anything, but for purposes of the thread), and then had additional children by current marriage that were identified as bi-racial, and then gave obvious preference to the first set with some form of identifiable and confirmable racial bias, then I could see this working. Especially if it was distinctly financial: setting up a savings fund for the first child’s college education, but not doing the same for the newer children.
Still think it would be a bit of a stretch, and in no way do we have evidence that this is going on in the OPs case, but again, could see grounds for a more viable lawsuit on a “discrimination” basis.
As with the discussion of children above, you could contrast the treatment of a later spouse to an earlier spouse.
Lets say Spouse #1, of the same race as the person being sued, was routinely featured in business or political ads, where they were trying to set up a “Good Family Man” kind of image. But then, Spouse #2 is “mysteriously” never included in any later ads, even though the person is still in business/running for office. That would be at least some evidence that there was some racial bias going on. Not a slam dunk, but possibly worth trying out in front of a judge.
“Discrimination” is not a common law cause of action. It’s created by statute, and it applies in certain specified circumstances. (Title VII, for example, only applies to employers with 15 or more employees) There are all kinds of things wrong with treating some kids better than others based on their racial makeup, but it is not something you could sue about under the label “discrimination.” I know of no statute that would allow you to (successfully) sue a spouse for racial discrimination in the home.
Of course, if someone were trying to be a politician and portray themselves as a “family man” then the ex-spouse they are in the process of having ugly legal battles with probably won’t be in any ads. (Loved that line in Back to the Future where Doc in the 1955 finds out Reagan is president and yells “… so Jane Wyman is first lady?”)
This just strikes me as the kitchen sink defense - throw everything you can think of at the ex. Besides common complaints on child neglect or abuse, excessive drinking, bringing other women or men into the house, there have been cases where a spouse will call smoking as child abuse, junk food as child abuse, not to mention disputes over the religion of the children.
You can sue another person for just about anything in the US. How strong your case is and whether a court would hear it, is another matter.
The attorney that is advising your “friend” may be advising this tactic as a means of encouraging the client’s spouse to reach a settlement vs. going to trial with even more legal issues.
I’m sure the other spouse has attorneys who will tell these attorneys “get real…”
More likely, the spouse has a specific incident or incidents that can be dragged into court as specific instances that imply the other spouse has a racial bias, in hopes of swaying the judge to be more sympathetic to their case - “see what a horrible person A is!” That’s about all I can imagine discrimination would actually mean.
Given that only somewhere around 5% of all divorces in the US actually see the inside of a courtroom, the attorneys on both sides are primarily focused on negotiation tactics working toward a settlement.