The Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) requires state and federal courts to defer to private arbitration agreements entered into between parties, including employers and employees. Employers often use arbitration agreements to...more
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Groff v. DeJoy upended long-held assumptions over the legal standard used to review employers’ responses to employees’ requests for religious accommodations under Title VII....more
7/10/2023
/ Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) ,
Civil Rights Act ,
De Minimus Doctrine ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Groff v DeJoy ,
Reasonable Accommodation ,
Religious Accommodation ,
Religious Discrimination ,
SCOTUS ,
Substantial Burden ,
Title VII ,
Undue Hardship ,
USPS
For many employers, mandatory arbitration agreements have become a popular alternative to judges and juries hearing employment disputes. These employers view arbitration as a more predictable alternative than jury pools found...more
On June 29, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously clarified the legal test used by courts to determine whether an employer has complied with its obligation under Title VII to respond to an employee’s request for a workplace...more
On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in Groff v. DeJoy, a case widely expected to reset the standard courts apply to employers’ obligation to provide religious accommodations to employees under Title VII. The...more
On Wednesday, in a 6-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed a lower court decision finding that a highly compensated employee who was paid a day rate did not qualify as exempt from the overtime requirements of the Fair...more
As discussed in last week’s EmployNews, the U.S. Supreme Court’s upcoming consideration of the standard for considering religious accommodation requests may expand employers’ obligations to agree to employee requests,...more
Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that may determine whether employers can claim the overtime exemption under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) for highly compensated workers who are not paid...more
11/18/2022
/ Corporate Counsel ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Employment Litigation ,
Exempt-Employees ,
Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) ,
Federal Labor Laws ,
Helix Energy Solutions Group Inc v Hewitt No 21-984 ,
Highly Compensated Employees ,
Oral Argument ,
Over-Time ,
SCOTUS ,
Wage and Hour ,
White-Collar Exemptions
Following its loss at the Supreme Court last week, one might expect the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to throw its hands up and abandon efforts to treat COVID-19 spread as a workplace safety concern. Early...more
On January 13 in two highly anticipated decisions, the U.S. Supreme Court first reinstated an injunction blocking implementation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s COVID-19 emergency temporary standard...more
1/14/2022
/ Administrative Authority ,
Biden Administration ,
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) ,
Constitutional Challenges ,
Coronavirus/COVID-19 ,
Employer Mandates ,
OSHA ,
SCOTUS ,
Stays ,
Temporary Regulations ,
Vaccinations ,
Virus Testing
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to an expedited review of legal challenges to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s emergency temporary standard (ETS) requiring employers with 100 or more employees to...more
12/30/2021
/ Compliance Dates ,
Coronavirus/COVID-19 ,
Employer Mandates ,
Masks ,
OSHA ,
SCOTUS ,
Statutory Authority ,
Temporary Regulations ,
Vaccinations ,
Virus Testing ,
Workplace Safety
On December 13, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of a decision upholding New York state’s recent COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health care workers. The plaintiffs challenged the mandate based on its lack of...more
The federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 (CFAA) put into place criminal and civil remedies to counter what was then the new phenomenon of computer hacking. While directed toward outside agents, over the years...more
In its 2012 Hosanna-Tabor decision, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court recognized that religious organizations have the ability to select, discipline, and discharge employees who perform ministerial duties – without being...more
7/9/2020
/ Age Discrimination ,
Appeals ,
Disability Discrimination ,
Employment Discrimination ,
First Amendment ,
Freedom of Religion ,
Ministerial Exception ,
Our Lady of Guadalupe School v Morrissey-Berru ,
Religious Schools ,
Reversal ,
SCOTUS ,
Teachers
The U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Bostock decision earlier this week confirmed that Title VII’s prohibitions against discrimination in employment based on sex apply to claims alleging bias due to sexual orientation or gender...more
6/22/2020
/ Altitude Express Inc v Zarda ,
Bostock v Clayton County Georgia ,
Civil Rights Act ,
EEOC v RG & GR Harris Funeral Homes ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Gender Identity ,
Hiring & Firing ,
LGBTQ ,
SCOTUS ,
Sex Discrimination ,
Sexual Orientation ,
Sexual Orientation Discrimination ,
Title VII ,
Transgender
Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race in the making of contracts, including employment contracts. Section 1981 is often used by employees suing for race discrimination as...more
4/14/2020
/ Adverse Employment Action ,
But For Causation ,
Causation ,
Discrimination ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Evidence ,
Pleading Standards ,
Race Discrimination ,
Retaliation ,
SCOTUS ,
Title VII ,
UT Southwestern Medical v Nassar
On January 17, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments over the legality of the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate. This is the third case on the mandate to receive Supreme Court review....more
The Affordable Care Act requires that employer-sponsored group medical insurance plans provide contraceptive coverage without cost sharing. Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued final...more
11/13/2019
/ Affordable Care Act ,
Contraceptive Coverage Mandate ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Cost-Sharing ,
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) ,
Employer Group Health Plans ,
Employer Mandates ,
Final Rules ,
Injunctions ,
Religious Exemption ,
SCOTUS
On June 3, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously resolved a split among federal appellate courts dealing with the question of whether Title VII’s requirement that plaintiffs file an administrative charge with the Equal...more
6/17/2019
/ Affirmative Defenses ,
Amended Complaints ,
Appeals ,
Charge-Filing Preconditions ,
Civil Rights Act ,
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) ,
Forfeiture ,
Fort Bend County Texas v Davis ,
Jurisdictional Requirements ,
Mandatory Claim-Processing Rules ,
Reaffirmation ,
Reasonable Accommodation ,
Religious Discrimination ,
Retaliation ,
Reversal ,
SCOTUS ,
Time-Barred Claims ,
Title VII ,
Waiver Rule ,
Wrongful Termination
In last year’s Epic Systems decision, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) allows mandatory arbitration agreements that preclude class or collective action claims. In other words, a party to the...more
5/6/2019
/ Ambiguous ,
Appeals ,
Arbitration ,
Arbitration Agreements ,
Class Arbitration ,
Consent ,
Epic Systems Corp v Lewis ,
Federal v State Law Application ,
Jurisdiction ,
Lamps Plus Inc v Varela ,
Motion to Compel ,
Preemption ,
Reversal ,
SCOTUS
Last Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review a trio of cases that could have a major impact on employer practices and legal risks posed by employment discrimination claims. The cases involve the question of whether...more
4/29/2019
/ Altitude Express Inc v Zarda ,
Bostock v Clayton County Georgia ,
Civil Rights Act ,
EEOC v RG & GR Harris Funeral Homes ,
Employment Litigation ,
Gender Identity ,
LGBTQ ,
Obama Administration ,
SCOTUS ,
Sex Discrimination ,
Sexual Orientation Discrimination ,
Title VII ,
Trump Administration
On January 11, the U.S. Supreme Court accepted an appeal of a Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decision dealing with the administrative prerequisites for a plaintiff to file suit against an employer under Title VII and related...more
1/25/2019
/ Administrative Procedure ,
Appeals ,
Certiorari ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) ,
Exhaustion Doctrine ,
Federal Rules of Civil Procedure ,
Fort Bend County Texas v Davis ,
Jurisdiction ,
SCOTUS ,
Split of Authority ,
Title VII
In a series of decisions over recent years, the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the use of mandatory arbitration agreements in employment disputes over the objections of employees who claimed various legal reasons...more
The Age Discrimination in Employment Act generally covers employers with 20 or more employees. On November 6, the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that ADEA also protects employees of small state and local government entities...more
In May in its Epic Systems decision, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the ability of employers to compel individual mandatory arbitration of employment disputes as an alternative to class or collective action litigation....more
7/12/2018
/ Appeals ,
Arbitration ,
Boeing ,
Class Action ,
Collective Actions ,
Epic Systems Corp v Lewis ,
Mandatory Arbitration Clauses ,
NLRA ,
NLRB ,
Remand ,
SCOTUS