You are severely mistaken. At will doesn't mean you can fire people for any reason without liability. Wrongful termination is a thing that companies are terrified of. There are so many protected classes in CA, and firing someone in a protected class can have dire consequences. I've witnessed it first hand.
It's not a mistake, and it isn't severe. You're talking about exceptions to the law, not the law itself. The law is exercised thousands of times a day and wrongful termination lawsuits account for single-digit percentages.
As the plaintiff in such a case you need to be able to provide evidence that it's "reasonable to believe" that you were fired because of whatever protected class you fall into.
It can be difficult to do, especially if you're blindsided and escorted out of the building and cut off from any sort of evidence (tip: if you think you could be fired because of who you are, start keeping receipts before you're fired).
Previous to winning my own discrimination case, I was a juror in a case where an employer almost got away with blatantly discriminatory firing. They thought they were being sly by sacrificing another non-protected employee at the same time... but then bragged about it to an employee they didn't realize would rat them out. If it wasn't for that email there wouldn't have been enough evidence to know for sure.
That aside, if you're not a protected class (the majority of people aren't)... good luck. You can be fired without cause at any given moment.
> You're talking about exceptions to the law, not the law itself.
Yeah, exceptions are the problem, there are many.
> That aside, if you're not a protected class (the majority of people aren't)
80% of the people I work with are in a protected class.
> Previous to winning my own discrimination case
All the suits filed against my company in the last 35 years (2) were frivolous and we settled both of them. Good for you for winning a non-frivolous one, but in my experience (talking with other COO's) frivolous cases are very common.
It's fear of these frivolous cases that drive LOTS of behavior.
EDIT: there were threats of other suits (3-5). All frivolous.
It’s true, but it misses the point that they can be sued for age discrimination, violating their own governance policies, not properly training the worker, intentional infliction of abnormal stress, etc. BTW, I couldn’t downvote you if I wanted. Lots of Apple people involved in this site.