Employers, take warning! A federal judge in Illinois refused this week to dismiss a class action lawsuit brought under the Americans with Disabilities Act based on a "voluntary" wellness program.
Employers should review...more
Employers who (allegedly) didn't file are being sued. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced on Wednesday that it has filed suit against 15 employers in 11 states and in a variety of industries for failing to...more
Pregnancy regs, harassment guidance under fire. Not long ago, I reported that a number of state attorneys general had filed suit seeking to block the final regulations interpreting the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. Their...more
A handy guide on what not to do. A federal judge in Florida has ruled that a former Human Resources manager for a law firm will get a jury trial on her claims related to her termination right before she was due to return...more
A lot has changed since Mother's Day 2023. Happy Mother's Day weekend, all, including you dads and kids (we couldn't have done it without you)!
How much do you know about pregnancy in the workplace in 2023? Take our quiz...more
5/10/2024
/ Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) ,
Documentation ,
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) ,
Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) ,
Healthcare ,
Lactation Accommodation ,
Pregnancy ,
Pregnancy Discrimination ,
Pregnant Workers Fairness Act ,
Providing Urgent Maternal Protections for Nursing Mothers Act (“PUMP Act”) ,
Reasonable Accommodation ,
Title VII
Last fall, I reported on a proposed Enforcement Guidance issued by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on workplace harassment. I gave the proposed guidance a good review overall, although I had some disagreements...more
*And are sorry you asked. Last Friday, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission published its final regulations on the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. The regulations will take effect on June 18, just under a year since...more
4/26/2024
/ Abortion ,
Adverse Employment Action ,
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) ,
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) ,
Pregnancy ,
Pregnant Workers Fairness Act ,
Providing Urgent Maternal Protections for Nursing Mothers Act (“PUMP Act”) ,
Reasonable Accommodation ,
Reproductive Healthcare Issues ,
Title VII ,
Undue Hardship
Just a little harm will do. On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Title VII does not require a plaintiff to show that a discriminatory transfer to another position caused her to suffer “significant” or...more
4/19/2024
/ Adverse Employment Action ,
Civil Rights Act ,
Employee Transfers ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Employment Litigation ,
Hiring & Firing ,
Lateral Transfers ,
Muldrow v City of St Louis ,
SCOTUS ,
Sex Discrimination ,
Title VII
What's good for the goose . . . A person who is discriminated against for not being transgender can have a valid claim under Title VII for “sex” (really, gender identity) discrimination.
In McCreary v. Adult World, Inc., a...more
What's legal, and what's not? Diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in employment are increasingly being challenged in the courts. How much do you know about the legalities? Take our quiz and find out! This is a hard...more
At least one judge thinks so. A federal judge in Lubbock, Texas, has permanently enjoined the federal government from enforcing the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act against the State of Texas and its agencies and divisions....more
3/1/2024
/ Consolidated Appropriations Act (CAA) ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) ,
Permanent Injunctions ,
Pregnant Workers Fairness Act ,
Providing Urgent Maternal Protections for Nursing Mothers Act (“PUMP Act”) ,
Quorum ,
Reasonable Accommodation ,
Sovereign Immunity ,
Standing ,
Texas
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission will begin accepting employers’ 2023 Component 1 EEO-1 data starting Tuesday, April 30. The last day to file the data is June 4.
The EEOC anticipates that its Component 1...more
The unconditional offer of reinstatement. Are you perfect? So am I. But I’ve been told that there are people in the world who sometimes make mistakes.
Sometimes employers do things that they think they have a perfect right...more
What takes priority? There was a social media storm this week after a large non-profit organization terminated a volunteer after the volunteer questioned the point of having preferred pronouns in signature blocks.
The woman...more
These steps could help keep you out of trouble.
An employee in a safety-sensitive job who has been diagnosed with cancer is selected for a random drug test. The test result comes back positive for TCHA...more
2/9/2024
/ Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) ,
Cannabis Products ,
Civil Rights Act ,
Department of Transportation (DOT) ,
Documentation ,
Drug Testing ,
Employment Policies ,
Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) ,
Hiring & Firing ,
Marijuana ,
Medical Marijuana ,
Reasonable Accommodation ,
THC ,
Wage and Hour
We gotcher employment law news right here.
The email platform that we use to send out our legal bulletins had issues in the past week, which we did not discover until late Wednesday. While the technical difficulties were...more
Don't shoot from the hip.
Let's say you have an employee who is in Week Six of "employee's own serious health condition" leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act.
Her co-worker comes to you and tells you that the...more
Expect to see more of this.
A judge in Connecticut recently dismissed a lawsuit filed by a 26-year employee who developed early-onset Alzheimer's disease. According to the court's opinion, the employee had performed well...more
With some help from Charles Dickens.
Marlie was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of her burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge...more
12/22/2023
/ CFOs ,
Exempt-Employees ,
Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) ,
Federal Labor Laws ,
Hiring & Firing ,
Hostile Environment ,
Human Resources Professionals ,
Sexual Harassment ,
Threshold Requirements ,
Wage and Hour ,
Willful Violations ,
Working Time Regulations
The teacher had a religious objection.
The Virginia Supreme Court yesterday found in favor of a West Point public school teacher whose employment was terminated because he would not address a transgender student by the...more
12/15/2023
/ Bostock v Clayton County Georgia ,
Demurrers ,
Documentation ,
Due Process ,
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) ,
Free Exercise Clause ,
Free Speech ,
Groff v DeJoy ,
Motion to Dismiss ,
Religious Accommodation ,
Religious Beliefs ,
Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) ,
School Boards ,
Teachers ,
Termination ,
Transgender ,
VA Supreme Court ,
Written Descriptions
You won't want to miss this!!! You all probably read respectable news sources. I subscribe to a number of "sober" mainstream publications, but have a sick attraction to the Daily Mail and the New York Post....more
12/8/2023
/ Age Discrimination ,
Complaint Procedures ,
Employment Discrimination ,
Employment Policies ,
Harassment ,
Hiring & Firing ,
Job Applicants ,
Performance Reviews ,
Performance Standards ,
Protected Class ,
Recruitment Policies ,
Termination ,
Wage and Hour
She was 93. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman on the U.S. Supreme Court, died last Friday.
Justice O'Connor was appointed to the Court by President Ronald Reagan in 1981, and was a role model to many of us women...more
Even if you didn't do it.
The recent proposed Enforcement Guidance on Harassment in the Workplace published by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has some good recommendations for harassment training topics....more
Ex-CEO's lawsuit against the comedian/activist will proceed. Who ever thought personal jurisdiction could be interesting?
In April 2021, the CEO of a telehealth company was eating dinner with his wife at a hotel in a suburb...more
11/3/2023
/ Activist ,
Appeals ,
Appellate Courts ,
CEOs ,
Cyber Threats ,
Due Process ,
Harassment ,
Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress ,
Personal Jurisdiction ,
Social Media ,
Tortious Interference ,
Twitter
Better to have the courage of your convictions.
I'm sure you've heard of "quiet quitting," when an unhappy employee does the bare minimum to get by and keep drawing a paycheck, but doesn't care much about the job beyond...more