Villanova is a university community spread across two townships, which makes it an unusual place to work and an unusual place to bring an employment claim. The workplaces here range from academic and campus employment to the offices and businesses that surround it, and campus-adjacent work has its own texture. Roles are frequently defined by term, department, or grant rather than by an open-ended arrangement, and a decision not to renew can be presented as a scheduling reality rather than a decision about a person. That framing does not put it beyond examination. If an appointment ended, hours were cut, or a role stopped being offered after you reported harassment or discrimination, the timing matters. So does how comparable colleagues were treated. Those are answerable questions and a good reason to talk to someone before accepting the explanation you were given.
Villanova straddles Lower Merion Township in Montgomery County and Radnor Township in Delaware County, so which courthouse hears a matter depends on the specific address. A case may belong in the Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas in Norristown or the Delaware County Court of Common Pleas in Media, and that is determined by facts about where the work was performed rather than by a mailing address or a general sense of where Villanova is. Federal employment claims go to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, which covers both counties. Pinning down the correct county early is one of the more useful things that can be done at the start of a Villanova matter.
Employment in and around a university community often involves layered supervision, where a department, a program, and a central administration each hold part of the authority over someone's position. Complaints can be routed through internal processes that run for months and conclude with findings the complainant never sees in full. Those processes are not a substitute for legal rights, and participating in one does not sign anything away. What internal review does produce is a documentary record, and that record can be valuable later. Whether the issue is harassment by a supervisor or colleague, unequal treatment on the basis of a protected characteristic, or retaliation for reporting either, the internal file is usually where the case starts.
For Villanova clients specifically, our employment work most often covers: Workplace Discrimination Lawyers, Workplace Sexual Harassment Lawyers, Wrongful Termination Attorneys, Hostile Work Environment Attorneys, Racial Discrimination Lawyers, Religious Discrimination Attorneys, Workplace Retaliation Lawyers, Sexual Orientation Discrimination Lawyers and Whistle Blower Protection Lawyers. Whichever of these brings you to us, the same firm-wide approach applies: you work directly with our attorneys and paralegals, the initial case review is free and confidential, and we prepare from day one as if the matter is going to trial.
