Federal employment discrimination law is not one statute but a layered system, and this UpLaw guide maps the whole of it. It traces the statutory grid — Title VII, the ADEA, the ADA, Section 1981, the Equal Pay Act, GINA, and the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act — and explains who each law covers and where the coverage thresholds bite. It then works through the proof frameworks that actually decide cases: McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting and the pretext fight that ends most of them, the mixed-motive route Congress opened in § 2000e-2(m), and disparate impact from Griggs through the business-necessity defense and the alternative-practice rebuttal. It explains what Muldrow v. City of St. Louis did to the "adverse employment action" requirement, how harassment claims work and how the Faragher/Ellerth defense defeats them, why retaliation is both easier to plead and harder to cause, and how accommodation duties run under the ADA after the ADAAA, under Title VII after Groff v. DeJoy, and under the PWFA. It closes with the EEOC charge process, the deadlines that quietly kill good claims, and the remedies and § 1981a caps that determine what a win is worth. A running hypothetical involving a fictional employer, Kestrel Logistics, grounds every framework in a real failure-to-promote and retaliation dispute.