Or what do you do when the reason is something somewhat objective like "performance" because you didn't meet your deadlines or something. Can you claim discrimination then?
Otherwise what's stopping everyone from claiming discrimination every time they get laid off?
You can claim discrimination, but then you'll need somebody (usually an attorney you hire) to file a lawsuit against the company. I'm not a lawyer, but I believe you'll also need to cite a specific type of discrimination for your case to have standing.
If there is no reason, why were you fired?
You can easily google/ask chatgpt the answer to your questions - the answer is that some companies are nowadays very risk averse in laying people off precisely because they are afraid of discrimination lawsuits, which is why they generally have very solid documentation of performance problems (hence the reason for the modern Performance Improvement Plan as a papertrail)
Behause they can? To cover their ass? I duuno.
I'm asking since I live in an EU country where you can get laid off for no reason and employers usually provide no exact reason in writing precisely to potentially avoid getting sued.
They just terminate your contract and let you know they terminate your contract by giving you your notice and that's that, you're gone in 30-90 days, no need to provide an explanation as to why they decided to terminate you since they're not required by law.
So I'm asking to know how it's like in the US if it's like here. If employers aren't required by law to provide termination reason, why would they?
What EU country is that?
Usually if that's the reason the company will go to great pains to document it and fire you properly, for cause. This is where PIPs (performance improvement plans) come in—they document the specific areas where performance is lacking, set specific targets for improvement, show that those targets were not met in the time allotted, and then fire you.
If a company doesn't do that then yeah, they're leaving themselves open to a discrimination suit. It doesn't usually happen because lawsuits are expensive and unemployed people tend to not have the resources to fight back, but larger companies will usually take pains to be sure they're covered.