Round One in “Fight Like a Mother,” Where Mothers Are in Your Corner

Got screwed at work.

Wondering if you have a case?

Lawyers Amy Carter and Heather Davis

break down the real life legal nightmares

that make you say what the,

because mothers don't play nice,

they fight for what's right.

Hey everyone, welcome to

our inaugural podcast,

Fight Like a Mother,

the podcast.com where you go to

get motherly advice if your mom's a

lawyer and maybe a little

unhinged. So with that opening,

we should probably.

Explain why we are we doing

our first day of filming on

which is also our holiday

firm's Christmas party.

So we are all decked out in our

very ugly Christmas sweaters,

although I love the

Grinch, so mine's cute.

I bought mine last night because I don't

really own an ugly Christmas sweater,

but I don't know about you guys, but

I don't love the holidays and so.

I do.

You'll learn that we are diametrically

opposed and lots of things and this is

one of them. So anyway, welcome

to the inaugural podcast,

which will be shown to you in January

and it's very on brand for us to be

wearing Christmas sweaters and wishing

you a merry Christmas in January.

We did have a moment where we were like,

are we going to bring other clothes for

the podcast filming before the party?

And we were like, you know what? I feel

like this is how it's supposed to be.

And so this is how it will be.

Anyway, my name is Heather Davis.

I am a partner and chief operating

officer at Carter Law Group,

started by Amy Carter right here.

And I am Amy Carter

and we're both lawyers,

so that's part of our

qualifications for this.

But I am the mother of two grown

children who are mostly productive

adults. So I feel like

that's a good qualification.

And Heather here is in the midst of, I do.

I also am a lawyer. Spoiler alert,

and I have three children

all under the age of 10.

So I don't know if I would qualify them

as productive human or participants of

society yet, but they're not. Well,

I was going to say they're not menas,

but honestly,

anyone who knows my children

might disagree with at

least two of them when I say

that they're good people and they're fun

to have around and I love them dearly.

They're.

Great entertainment value.

They are, they're solid

entertainment value. Alright,

so we haven't figured out

all the different ways that

things are going to work,

but one of the things that we will be

doing on this podcast is talking about

real legal issues and from the

perspective of moms and from the

perspective of lawyers, from the

perspective of maybe overworked,

unhinged people. So.

That how this kind of came to be is Amy

and I obviously both work at Carter Law

Group. We've worked here for years,

we've been in attorneys for years.

I'm on my 11th year. I don't know if you

want to participate in that. I don't.

Actually know. I was licensed

in 97, I graduated in 97.

I was licensed in February of

98. I took the longer than 11.

Years. It's.

Really been a long.

Time. So we celebrated our sixth

anniversary this year, which was great.

And we do personal injury and we started

doing employment a couple years ago

and employment discrimination practice.

And we have been talking on and off about

this for years and that we feel like

there's a really big gap in

accessibility for legal services.

And obviously none of this podcast

is the legal advice. We're not your.

Lawyers. But lemme say that one

more time. This is not legal advice,

but it is.

We will be talking about things that we

see coming up a lot to give you sort of

background information so that you can

call a lawyer and know what questions to

ask about the facts of your case.

Podcast is very hot right now.

A lot of lawyers have podcasts

talking to other lawyers,

and we wanted to start a podcast

talking to non-lawyers as

kind of moms and big sisters.

And this is the information that we

would want you to know if you were one of

our loved ones because you are.

I don't know you that well,

so I wouldn't go that far.

But I will say one of the segments that

we're going to have consistently on the

podcast,

I don't know what we're going to name

it typically it's called "Am I the

Asshole?" And I'm actually

probably fine with that,

where we find something on Reddit or

somewhere on the internet and sort of talk

about that scenario and what our

motherly advice is and what our

lawyerly advice is and maybe at the

end what our unhinged advice is.

So I pulled up one last night from

Reddit and it says, lawyer says,

I have no case.

This is a title lawyer says I have no

case sexual harassment at workplace.

And then it says I was sexually

assaulted at my workplace,

went on stress leave and been

diagnosed with PDSD from it.

Multiple other people have also

been sexually assaulted company,

had no sexual harassment policy

in place currently on work cover.

I don't know what work cover means.

I have spoken to a lawyer and they

have told me I have no case against the

company because they did not know about

the manager's behavior. Is this true?

So there's a lot there to unpack.

I feel like we should start

with the emotional part of it.

That's always what gets

me first. As Amy knows,

I get very invested in all of these cases,

which is why we're careful about the

number of cases that we have at any time

because they involve a lot of emotional

attachment because clients deserve that.

Especially the sexual assault cases.

So there are some sort of key things

about this post. The first one,

just talking about the emotions around

reporting because depending on the

facts of your case,

it can be really important whether you

reported it to your employer when you

were sexually harassed.

I was thinking about this

recently inherited from my sister,

my 16-year-old niece and 9-year-old

son. And my youngest is 25,

so it's been a minute since I've

been doing the parenting thing.

But I was picking her up from her

first day at a new high school.

She just moved in with me and I

was like, how's it going, whatever.

And she was talking about in a

very sort of stoic way about her

art class and the special needs young

man in her arts class who had decided on

the first day that he was enamored

with her. And then the next day she

was like, I'm trying to be nice,

but I don't really know what to do.

And he had made art for her and he

kept playing with her hair and she was

clearly uncomfortable and I was trying

to decide what I was going to do from a

parenting standpoint with reporting,

and she didn't really

want me to escalate it.

And ultimately the art teacher

recognized what was going on and talked

to the special needs teacher

in the class and said,

we have to move him because she

observed that my niece Bella was feeling

uncomfortable,

which is the best case scenario in that

situation because it's a public school,

everyone gets to go to school

and they sort of saw the issue

and addressed it without anyone

having to report anything.

That doesn't always

happen in the workplace.

Has.

Anything like that ever happened to you?

So something like that did happen to me

in high school where there's a special

needs child who decided that I was

the love of his life. And again,

a teacher noticed the issue

before I had to do anything.

But when you're in that

situation, it's very much like,

am I overreacting? Is this as

bad as I'm thinking that it is?

What if they don't believe me? If I say

something, what if they just tell me,

Ugh, it's okay. You're just

going to have to deal with it.

All of those things kind of rush through

your head, especially when you're 15,

16, 17. Those things carry into adulthood.

And so the issue with reporting is that

you're inherently asking a victim to

feel comfortable enough

to go to somebody and say,

this bad thing is happening

to me and I need your help.

And not all workplaces or school

systems or families to be fair

allow for that kind of

communication. So one,

if you're in charge of that

in your workplace, fix it.

Make sure that you have a comfortable

environment where employees feel like they

can come and talk to you about issues.

But as an employee who has no control

over that situation, you're really stuck.

You're stuck with whatever

situation that you're dealt with.

And thankfully there's been

recognition here recently,

I would say going back, but five or

six years or so, maybe closer to 10,

my whole.

Even in Texas, which is not the most.

Progressive state facts, that

it can take victims a long time.

It can take them a long time to not

only remember what happened themselves,

but recognize it and process it in a

way that would allow them to talk to

somebody else about it and then actually

take the steps to go and talk to

somebody else about it.

And so you've seout to accommodate for

the fact that it can take people a while

to feel comfortable to want to report.en

a whole movement of states that are

pushing out statutes of limitation

and pushing out these kind of notice

requirements and stuff like that,

even when it comes to notifying about

filing administrative claims for sexual

harassment,

pushing all those deadlines and stuff

out to accommodate for the fact that it

can take people a while to feel

comfortable to want to report.

And so it's really hard to

talk to people who are like,

I just came around to recognizing what

happened to me and you're telling me that

it's too late. That doesn't seem fair

and it's not fair. And it sucks. It does.

And I will say this about the

law, we joke all the time,

if you ask a lawyer a question,

we're not going to give an answer.

This person was like, is that true?

The answer is always going to be,

it depends because the law is supposed

to be a balancing act and it's been sort

of a living creature

that's developed over time.

And so it's always sort of balancing

people's rights versus the other side's

rights and trying to

figure out how to balance.

How that.

Yeah. And in this case,

so Texas has extended to the deadline

for you to make a claim with the EOC or

the TWC for sexual harassment,

but it still requires you to

talk to your employer before you

quit or have a lawsuit.

And the idea behind that is

the employer purportedly,

the employer is supposed to have

an opportunity to fix it again,

like Bella's situation, your situation

in high school, it would be much better.

This is my opinion because

I'm a more progressive person.

But if the employer was responsible

for sort of paying attention and

identifying, oh,

this might be an issue and doing something

about it without requiring the victim

to report, but that is

not where the law is.

No. And I don't think it'll

ever, if we're being honest,

I don't think it'll ever get to that

point. If you pull the emotion out of it,

you can kind of see some of the logic.

But I always want to first

address the emotion of that post.

It's a really hard situation.

Something bad obviously happened.

She tried to do the best thing that she

thought in not only processing what she

went through, but making sure

that she was protecting herself.

And then to be told, the first person

that you talked to, you fucked this up.

That's rough.

And I will say,

Heather and I have talked about this

a lot about what we tell people.

One of the things that we tell people

a lot who've reached out to us before,

anything's changed in their

work circumstances, they're

being sexually harassed,

sexual assault and sexual harassment

are very different things in Texas,

and we will talk about

that in just a minute.

But they're being sexually

harassed and we are saying to them,

before we can do anything for you,

you have to go report it. Honestly,

I would like to be able to say,

and usually the employer does the right

thing and they do an investigation and

whatever, but realistically speaking,

because what happens is they do an

investigation, they go talk to people.

Your workplace is going to know that

this happened sort of situation.

We tell people,

you really need to be prepared to find

another job because it will either be

uncomfortable for you or a

lot of times the employer,

your supervisor is friends with the

person. That's why they were getting away

with it in the first place. And so then

they start retaliating against you.

HR is its own thing over

here and it's saying,

we're going to do an investigation,

we're going to go talk to people,

but we all know the people you work

with have emotions about it too.

It may have emotions about the perpetrator

and might start taking it out on you.

And so there is a separate cause of

action for retaliation. And honestly,

those are the more typical cases

and the best cases legally.

So what we tell our potential clients is

you have to go report it and go through

that whole process. And a lot of times

I feel like we're revictimizing people.

Well, we are. And I will say Amy and I,

we make a concerted effort to educate

all of the members on our team and our

clients on not re-traumatizing

our clients when they call in.

It's very important to me.

I give CLEs about it in different

bar associations across the state.

It's very important, but there's an

element of it that you can't avoid.

I have to know what happened.

You have to report it.

These are requirements and it stinks.

But it is one of those unavoidable

aspects of the entire situation.

That sort of,

I guess the mom advice of this

episode is that I know that it's hard.

I know that it's uncomfortable and you

may want to talk to a lawyer about the

specific facts of your case

before you go report it.

Because a lot of times you do just

have to suck it up and go make the

report to HR and then let the

chips fall where they may.

If you talk to an attorney and you find.

Somebody who's on your side, I think

it does help if you feel like, okay,

well even if HR doesn't believe me,

or even if whoever gets mad at me or my

coworkers get pissed and start making

it, at least I've got

somebody in my corner.

And if you found a good

plaintiff's attorney,

they'll make you feel comfortable that

they're in your corner no matter what

else happens.

Right? Unfortunately,

I mean that's sort of our motherly

advice for the day is that you do have to

report before you can move

forward in most cases.

But if you want to see if that's

required, reach out to a lawyer.

Most lawyers in that space give free

consultations and we'll kind of walk you

through what's required

for the facts of your case.

Now looking at the facts of this case,

Heather and I were talking about it and

we were like, we would take that case.

In a heartbeat. I would sign that case.

Up without her having gone to hr.

And there are a few reasons why.

So what I remembered is that

the attorney told her there

wasn't any notice, but she specifically,

and I'm only working with the facts of

what were online from this anonymous

post, right?

But she specifically said in the post

that there were other people who had been

sexually harassed. Even if that's all

the information I got on an intake form,

we have a questionnaire on our

website that people can fill out,

even if that's the only

information that I had,

I'm still signing that

case up to investigate it.

And she also said that it was because

they did not know about the manager's

behavior, which kind of makes it

seem like the harasser was a manager.

So let's talk about that first.

I said before that there's a difference

between sexual assault and sexual

harassment In Texas, all the case

law says it's the groman of the case,

meaning that it's what does groman.

Mean? Again, really like the

ultimate issue. So caveat here,

we're obviously both attorneys in Texas,

Amy's also licensed in California,

but when we talk about this

is what the law generally is,

most of the time it's going to be Texas

and a lot will clarify if it's not,

and a lot of places it's very similar,

but Texas is the majority

of our background.

Gravamen is the heart of the

issue, the meat of the issue.

What is it stripping everything else away?

What is it truly at the end of

the day? And so it's this topic,

we've talked about this before, can

be 47 episodes, the sexual harassment,

sexual assaults, the gray areas there.

But the true issue in Texas when you're

dealing with a sexual assault in the

workplace is Texas case

law is going to look at,

it's like a multifactorial

test and be like,

was it really harassment that

evolved into sexual assault?

In which case we're going to treat it

as harassment under the Texas Labor Code

and that stuff,

or was it an actual sexual assault?

And so we're going to treat it as a

civil case under those statutes and.

Remedies. Some examples of this

from cases that we've dealt with,

we had a young woman who

her first day on the job,

she was attacked by a coworker

who wasn't a manager and that

we treated like sexual assault.

Other cases we've had some

cases involving under,

it gets really gray when you're

dealing with underage victims.

And if it happens over time,

if it's grooming or if it escalates over

time where it starts with something a

little off color or she asks you

out on a date and you say no,

and then it's uncomfortable and then they

continue doing it and it escalates to

a place where it's assault,

meaning that they physically

touched you in an unwanted way,

the law is probably going to

deal with sexual harassment.

And this notice issue is different for

those two different kinds of cases.

Yeah, for sure. Sorry,

I'm also realizing as we're doing this

that my A DHD is going to become very

apparent throughout the filming.

So I apologize, I cannot sit still.

A DHD Queens will help me out on that.

I'll try my best in most situations,

but I'm going to fail. So let's pretend

like I didn't even make that promise.

I think that we've got three cases that

obviously we really can't talk about the

situations of it,

but keeping it at like 30,000 feet

really play out the differences in these.

So we've got us call her Janie.

We've got Janie who she true

kind of sexual assault. Yes.

Okay.

It's hard when you're trying to make up

non case telling facts off the top of

your head. You do it.

So the case we just talked about

with an actual sexual clear sexual

assault, my first day of work, someone

pulls me into the bathroom and rapes me.

That is a sexual assault case.

And the notice requirements

to the employer for that

are usually new or should

have known.

The whole idea of notice is that you're

giving the employer an opportunity to

fix the problem either before it

happens or immediate for it to not

go forward. You're giving the

employer a chance to fix the problem.

So in that case, with a sexual

assault, it's new or should have known,

which means that the employer

knew that this guy or this gal

is a predator or they should have

known because it's a situation where,

and there's been a lot of movement in

the law about what employers have to do

from background checks

and that kind of thing.

So should they have run a background

check and known that this guy was a

convicted sexual

predator? Or in this case,

were there other situations where the

employer should have discovered that this

person is a sexual predator?

And it sounds like there at least could

have been because it sounds like the

other people had reported.

So the worst sort of facts for that

is a number of people were sexually

assaulted by this guy, but then nobody

ever reported it. So the employer says,

oh, we never knew. That becomes much

less believable at some point. And.

So it becomes untenable. For

instance, in another case that we had,

there was a situation where the

facts developed where the manager

had heard rumors that an

employee had previously

been convicted of sexual abuse of a child.

And as the facts developed in

that case, it was like, okay,

we ended up eventually

taking the deposition of the

manager. The manager's like,

oh yeah, well, I had rumors of X,

Y, and Z. Well then what did you do?

Did you do a background check at that

point? Did you do anything to follow up?

So the more and more you kind of

unravel those strings, it becomes.

More untenable so that he's got worse.

Because she also had heard rumors that

he was dating the underaged girl that he

was managing and had heard rumors that

he was a sexual predator of children and

chose not to do anything.

And so in those cases,

while our client did not

report the behavior to anyone,

the employer still had notice.

And that's true for a sexual harassment

case there too, as the ongoing behavior,

if we can show that the employer should

have known because of a string of

situations that this person was

a problem or that there was a

specific issue. Let's talk

about notice in a different.

Context.

We've had another case where

we represented a man or

represented a man who had

witnessed the sexual harassment

and assault of a coworker,

basically went to report that,

but in the context of that

is no longer working there.

And so the question in that

entire situation is, well,

if that person had never done it before,

then we never had the ability to fix it,

and if we didn't have

the ability to fix it,

then we didn't do anything

wrong because you didn't work.

And so the fact that you don't

work there anymore isn't our fault.

For retaliation. I don't remember

the case that you're talking about.

I'm assuming he no longer

works there. He was fired.

So retaliation covers protected activity.

So it could be that I as a sexual

harassment victim go in and

report it to HR and then they start

retaliating against me. Maybe not hr,

but instead my supervisor who

was friends with the guy who was

harassing me starts doing

anything that actually changes my

work situation. So it's, it's things

like demotions before you have a lawsuit,

there's a whole sort of range

of things that are required,

but you start seeing things

that feel retaliatory.

That is one kind of retaliation case.

Another is what you were talking about.

I'm not the person who was harassed

or was discriminated against,

but I went and reported it to hr,

which is a protected activity and then

became the victim of a retaliation

case. And I was fired because they were

like, we don't want to talk about this.

We don't want to deal with this. And so

then that person has a retaliation case.

The victim may still have a sexual

assault or sexual harassment case,

but the person who did the reporting

will have a retaliation case if they were

retaliated against after

engaging in protected activity.

Now,

there's one more circumstance that we

know of that we're going to talk to you

about where notice is not really required.

And that's flagged in this post too.

It is. So in this post,

we have the employer,

she talks about it being a manager.

This is another one of those situations

where it's easier to talk to a lawyer

about the facts of your case. And again,

we're not giving legal advice because

every fact scenario is so different.

And this is another situation where

the law has developed over time,

and it's not like it can depend on little.

Specific.

Facts about whether or not the

person who actually committed

the transgression was a manager

for purposes of liability.

So in Texas, it's like a

principal or a vice principal,

not in a school context,

but were you high enough up in the

company to where basically your

actions can be imputed or

taken to be a company's action

almost, right? And so

when you have a manager,

an owner, an executive type thing,

we're always going to run through this

analysis of can they be a principal

or vice principal? Can they be held

liable even when there's no notice?

Because I can basically put you in

the company's shoes as that actor

and kind of tag it that way. So her post,

just for the basic

facts that she provided,

raises enough questions where I'm like,

we need to sign it up and investigate.

Maybe she's in a state where

this isn't true. I don't know,

but I would certainly have a different

opinion than the attorney in that post.

So there are multiple

layers in all of this.

Another reason to sort of talk to

lawyers, but one of the things that we do,

and we have on our firm website,

I don't think we have it

on our podcast website.

We have a downloadable sort of PDF

on how to report and the things that

you need to be doing after

you've reported. So again,

the tough advice is yes,

to maintain a lawsuit

and to protect yourself,

you really do need to report to

HR to your supervisor or whatever.

It's funny because companies have these

zero tolerance policies. Yeah, I'm.

So sorry.

I'm going to backtrack here real quick

and I want to highlight something else

that's in her post. Girl,

sexual harassment policy anymore?

That's basic.

So going all the way back to creating

an environment where your employees

feel like they can come and

talk to you about this stuff.

Not having a sexual harassment

policy feels crazy to me at this

point. I think any.

Large corporation is going to have

a sexual harassment policy. We have.

10 How many employees?

Like 10 employees. We have a, we're

a law firm who does this, right?

So I think yes, if you work

in a large corporation,

I think in some ways that will give you

a one 800 number or something like that

and you can make an, you maybe

even be able to do it anonymously.

It really depends on how

your company handles it.

We've had some cases where they can make

anonymous complaints about stuff and

they just have to put in

some basic information so

that people can investigate.

And so that's fine too. I'm sorry if

that came across as judgy or shaming.

I'm certainly not trying to, but

you got to, if you own a company,

and by that I mean you have one employee,

even one, even if it's yourself,

I would just write, it's no skin of here.

Write a sexual harassment policy,

develop a procedure so everybody knows

and everybody feels comfortable and

everybody knows also that

you're taking it seriously.

I feel like I saw this

TikTok today where it was,

we hear a lot where it's like one in four

women are sexually assaulted in their

life. One in six men are going to

be sexually assaulted in their life.

The statistic we don't hear

on the other side is how many,

you don't hear the one in whatever men are

perpetrators. That statistic

isn't one that we hear.

And I think we've been doing

a really, and women too,

one in however many women are

perpetrators or predators.

We've been doing a really good job,

I think as a society of pulling towards

trusting victims, believing victims,

giving victims a space to talk

comfortably and honestly and openly

about what's happening and

not immediately shaming them.

I'm not going to say every part of the

world or country or Texas is like that,

but there are good pockets and I

don't know where those pockets are.

But okay,

The good pockets. Yeah,

I still really think it is

incredibly difficult and you

can expect to not be believed.

And I do believe that a lot

of times the really egregious

actors are people with a lot of power,

and so it's even harder to

report. And so that's true.

If you work at a large conglomerate,

then calling the HR people or whatever,

you're still going to have to deal with

your small team of people once you've

made the report.

But I think it's much more difficult

in a business where some guy started a

business and he's the owner

or his son is working.

We had these situations where the

sun is working there and gets drunk

at the Christmas party.

And the true fact at the end of the

day, we said this in the beginning,

is that we tell all of our clients, if

you're going to move forward with this,

you need to be prepared

to find another job.

And that just for a lot of them

feels like a whole other blow. Like,

I didn't do anything wrong. I

didn't do anything to bring this on.

I didn't make any mal

action. I didn't do anything,

and I am going to be the

one that suffers. Again,

because how many settlement agreements

have you seen where it doesn't end in a

mutual separation?

I have zero. I have not seen any.

I haven't seen any, and I haven't heard

of any. I haven't talked to an attorney.

I have heard of some, but they're

usually federal employees, honestly.

So I think that the realistic

sort of nitty gritty advice

is that you do have to report to

have a lawsuit, and when you report,

you should at least expect some

bad things to sort of happen.

And so finding another, just being

prepared to end your employment, not.

Finding another job, right? Let's

clarify that, right? You can't,

before you just walk in and

quit, please talk to an attorney.

This.

Goes back to the whole notice issue.

Of if something happens at work. I mean,

these cases are really hard because that's

another piece of advice that we have

to give to people constantly.

So you've reported and they've

done their investigation,

and now they've started retaliating

against you, but they haven't fired you,

so it's just uncomfortable.

Your supervisor is saying shit under

his breath about you in meetings.

They're not inviting you to.

Lunch anymore.

They moved you to a different place.

All these people are blaming you.

Everybody really loved the aggressor,

and so it's your fault that they're not

there anymore. It happens all the time.

And so then you have to go report

that so that they can fix that.

Because if ultimately you just say, I

can't do this anymore, I'm quitting.

That's called constructive

discharge. And while it doesn't.

Make it not a case, it makes it

a lot harder. And so our law mom,

advice to you is please just talk

to somebody before you do that.

We have loved ones, very close, loved

ones who just quit in blazes of glory.

I'm not saying that they quit after

a sexual harassment or anything,

but don't be that person. Don't just

walk in and quit in a blaze of glory.

Think about yourself first and

in thinking about yourself first.

You have to protect yourself, your

future, your claims, and talk to an.

Attorney about that.

It is a very sort of complicated area

where the law has unfortunately given the

employer a bunch of different steps

where they get out of jail, free card.

So you kind of have to

navigate that whole process,

and that includes reporting everything,

keeping a journal of everything that's

happened so that you have sort of it in

real time. And you can remember

keeping anything in writing.

I would say we have a lot of people

who secretly record conversations,

and that can be a problem.

And so before you go in and

you're recording conversations,

you need to talk to a lawyer about

whether that's legal in your state,

whether that's appropriate, whether

that'll be held against you in some way.

Or maybe you have a handbook that

specifically says X, Y, and z.

Texas is a one party state, right? There

are some other states that are too,

which means if one party

to the conversation knows

that it's being recorded,

it's okay, but that doesn't mean

that it's okay in every circumstance.

Then it doesn't mean that there aren't

more specific rules or regulations that

could apply to what you're specifically

doing. So it's all a jumble.

The one party thing is I have to be part

of the conversation If I'm recording

it, I can't put a listening device in my

asshole boss's office and record that.

So I'm really glad you said bosses

after that. I was like, whoa,

we're going to go.

Anyway.

Let's just move on past the joke that

Heather thought Amy was about to make and.

I wasn't. There was no joke. So I do. I

feel like we're rambling a little bit,

which does happen with us.

Also, we need to get a fan in here

that, okay, the moral of the story,

find an attorney who's going to be on

your side. You should be able to find one.

If you need help finding one either

in your jurisdiction or whatever,

reach out to us. We're connected to

lots of women and lots of men too.

We're very pro women over

here. We're very pro men too.

I have two sons and I'm married to a man,

but there's a really good group of

women that we're connected to across the

country who can help us

find representation for you.

So yes,

the moral of the story is talk to

a lawyer before you make any major

decisions. Typically, there are employment

lawyer associations in every state.

So Texas has the Texas

Employment Lawyer Association,

which has a list of attorneys

who handle employment cases.

If it's more of a sexual assault case,

you may want to look at

someone who handles more

sexual assault specific cases,

and unfortunately,

you're going to probably have to report

something to HR before you have a

lawsuit against your employer.

That just is the bottom line.

But you do want to talk to someone about

your case before you take that step,

even if it's really uncomfortable. We

always recommend that people don't quit,

basically, for sure,

employer to take the action to get rid

of you if that's the step that they want

to take, because that really

supports a retaliation game.

And to the anonymous Reddit

post, I would've taken your

case. I'm really sorry.

I hope you found the help

that you were looking for,

and I hope you're doing okay. Hey,

congratulations guys. Congrat,

for anybody who's still here,

congratulations on watching the

first episode of our podcast.

Congratulations to us. We did

it, Andre. We did it. We did it.

It's been a labor of love. It will

continue to be a labor of love.

It will continue to be

slightly unhinged. Yeah,

that's probably the best word for it.

That's probably the best word for it.

Like she said, the

episodes will be like this.

We won't always be talking about

sexual harassment and assault.

We've got some other segments

that we're talking about,

but realized this morning that we had

two very different thoughts on what the

names for those segments were,

so we just decided to punt on

that and we'll circle back to it.

We'll circle back. We'll circle back.

Perhaps someone will want to tell us

what our segments should be called,

some like nifty name. Right now we're

probably just going to ask Chad GPT.

But all that being said,

thank you for hanging out with us for

our inaugural ugly Christmas sweater

podcast episode.

I feel like next year when it's December,

we should bring these sweaters back and

we'll have done lots of episodes by then.

For,

I feel like I shouldn't have to wear the

sweater more than the one time today.

I.

Disagree. Lemme know in the comments.

I feel like most people would agree with.

Me, but that's fine.

All right, but if you liked this

content, this episode, our Faces,

whatever, please like,

subscribe or do all the other things that

you do to follow along with us on our

journey with our Fight

Like a Mother podcast.

You can find us on Fight Like

A Mother the podcast.com,

and there's more information available

on there. It's been a pleasure.

It will continue to be a pleasure.

As always, Amy Carter, I love you.

Merry Christmas everybody. We have a

holiday party to get to. Happy Holidays,

happy Hanukkah, happy Kwanza, happy

all the things. Happy Lunar New Year.

Probably by this time, lunar New Year

would've happened by the time it's airing.

I don't know what's

happening, but thank you.

That's it for today, but the

fight, it's never really over.

If you learned something today, share

it. Someone else probably needs it too.

Keep your coffee strong, your screenshots

organized, and your boundaries clear.

This is Fight Like a

Mother. Subscribe. Share.

Visit us at Fight Like A Mother the

podcast.com, and we'll see you next time.