On occasion, employers defending lawsuits filed by their employees raise questions over the legal validity of what most attorneys consider to be settled law. A good example comes from a recent decision by the U.S. Court of...more
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
Successful women have long been the subject of rumors that promotions or other career advancements were the result of their “sleeping their way to the top.” Earlier this month, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals (which...more
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to settle deep divisions between federal appellate courts on the question of whether an employee’s or applicant’s sexual orientation or gender identity are protected under Title VII’s sex...more
In recent months, EmployNews has reported on a series of federal appellate decisions dealing with administrative prerequisites for filing lawsuits claiming employment discrimination. Some courts have stated that an EEOC...more
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
Employees who believe they have been paid less based on their gender have two federal legal remedies. They can pursue claims under Title VII and under the Equal Pay Act (EPA). While the two laws have somewhat different legal...more
Over the past decade, federal courts have gradually reduced the evidentiary burden necessary for a plaintiff to reach a jury trial on claims involving sexual or racial harassment. The relevant legal standard calls for the...more
One of the most important developments in employment law over the past several years has been the expansion by some federal courts of Title VII’s sex discrimination prohibitions to encompass sexual orientation and gender...more
In a recent EmployNews article, we reported on a federal appellate circuit split over how courts should dispose of employment discrimination suits where the plaintiff fails to file an EEOC charge within the required statutory...more
2/26/2019
/ Appeals ,
Charging Party ,
Employment Discrimination ,
Employment Litigation ,
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) ,
Filing Deadlines ,
Jurisdiction ,
Public Employees ,
Remand ,
Retaliation ,
Reversal ,
Title VII
Over the past several years, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals (which includes North Carolina and South Carolina) has significantly lowered the bar for plaintiffs to get to a jury trial on their claims of sexual or other...more
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
When a current employee files an EEOC charge or other legal claim against his or her employer, the company sometimes learns that the employee has been taking company documents and providing them to persons outside the...more
Earlier this year, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission persuaded the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals that a funeral home’s termination of a transgender employee violated Title VII’s prohibition against sex...more
11/5/2018
/ Appeals ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Discrimination ,
Employment Litigation ,
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) ,
Gender Identity ,
Hiring & Firing ,
Sexual Orientation Discrimination ,
Title VII ,
Transgender ,
Trump Administration
Over the past decade federal courts have demonstrated a decreasing willingness to tolerate the use of racist language in the workplace. In repeated circumstances, courts have found even a single use of a racial slur...more
In the hospitality industry, it is fairly common for a hotel to retain a management company to run housekeeping, food and beverage, and other functions. While the management company may supervise and direct the work of hotel...more
10/1/2018
/ Adverse Employment Action ,
Civil Rights Act ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) ,
Harassment ,
Hiring & Firing ,
Hospitality Industry ,
Hotel Management Agreements ,
Hotels ,
Retaliation ,
Sexual Harassment ,
Title VII
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects employees from workplace harassment. As most employers know, these protections apply not only to behavior by co-workers and supervisors but also to harassment by customers,...more
Plaintiffs who want to file lawsuits alleging discrimination under federal civil rights laws such as Title VII must first file an administrative charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission before proceeding to...more
In its 1998 Oncale decision, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized that same-sex sexual harassment can violate Title VII’s gender discrimination prohibitions. However, the court noted that in order to demonstrate violation of the...more
Under Title VII, employers are generally strictly liable for harassing conduct by supervisors. In its Faragher and Ellerth decisions, the U.S. Supreme Court developed a limited defense for employers accused of supervisor...more
8/1/2018
/ Anti-Harassment Policies ,
Appeals ,
Dismissals ,
Employee Handbooks ,
Employee Training ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Harassment ,
Remand ,
Retaliation ,
Reversal ,
Sexual Harassment ,
Supervisors ,
Title VII
Here is an alleged fact pattern that if true, will almost guarantee that an employer will write a large check to a former employee:
..Her supervisor had made well-known her objection to African-American employees in the...more
Over the past several years, we have reported an increasing number of federal appeals court decisions that have characterized even single instances of certain racial slurs as sufficient to constitute hostile environment...more
As anticipated, the losing employer in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals’ Zarda v. Altitude Express decision has filed a petition for certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court. If accepted by the court, this case could...more
The legal line between race and national origin discrimination claims continues to fade as federal courts take an increasingly expansive definition of the term “race.” Last month in an unpublished decision, the Fourth Circuit...more
Disparate impact discrimination claims involve allegations of bias based not on intentional conduct, but rather otherwise neutral policies that have a statistically significant negative result with respect to persons in a...more