HR professionals are known for their abundant free time and total absence of compliance anxiety, so naturally next week brings two more things to add to the list. AI hiring liability and immigration updates — back to back, Tuesday and Wednesday. Could be worse. Could be a conference.
Two colleagues of mine are tackling exactly these problems, and you should show up to both. Continue reading
Granting a religious accommodation request and then placing the employee on indefinite unpaid leave can itself be retaliation. A federal district court in Illinois recently refused to dismiss a Title VII religious discrimination and retaliation lawsuit built on exactly that theory.
Who would have guessed that the most interesting religious discrimination issue of the week would show up on a Major League Baseball field?
When a coworker grabs a colleague three times, a Seventh Circuit majority says a jury could find sexual harassment. The employer still won. The reason why is more useful to HR than the result.
An excellent teacher with a progressive disability wanted paid leave to get a guide dog. Her employer offered unpaid leave instead. A federal appeals court just said that was enough.
A cocktail server with a foot disability wore Skechers sneakers for two years under an accommodation her employer granted. When new management decided sneakers didn’t meet appearance standards, the employer narrowed the accommodation and eventually terminated her for refusing to comply. Most of the lawsuit went with her.
A racial slur used in 2007 was still admissible evidence at a 2024 trial. The employer’s failure to address it helped produce a $21 million verdict.
Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Justice told the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that it has been applying its disparate-impact guidelines unconstitutionally.
That’s awkward, right?
Well, perhaps not. For most employers, it may be even less than that.
It didn’t take a formal leave request. It didn’t take a doctor’s note. One email asking for FMLA forms was enough to trigger retaliation protection.
The EEOC approved a new National Enforcement Plan last week, and for the first time in recent memory ever, the agency has put DEI programs, religious accommodations, and national origin bias against American workers on the same priority list.
The Employer Handbook Blog