U.S. Department of Labor, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons Over the weekend, Lilly Ledbetter, a woman who unintentionally became a champion of equal pay for men and women, died at 86. Ms. Ledbetter worked for Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company (Goodyear) from 1979 until 1998. During much of this time,…
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employers from discriminating against employees and applicants based on sex. In 2020, the Supreme Court interpreted Title VII’s ban on sex discrimination to include employer bias based on sexual orientation. But, did you know that in about half the country,…
If your business provides a self-funded health insurance plan to its employees, that health plan covers “medically necessary” services, and you’re not keen on defending sex discrimination claims, then keep reading. Yesterday, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court ruling that an employer cannot exclude coverage for…
In 2013, a healthcare provider hired a white man—let’s call him plaintiff—as its Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications. And he crushed it, receiving strong performance reviews and gaining national recognition for himself and the marketing program he developed. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, he was fired. As…
The words “cisgender” or “non-transgender” employee appear nowhere in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the federal workplace law that outlaws gender discrimination. But, according to a Pennsylvania federal judge, “that does not preclude the possibility that discrimination against both a cisgender male and cisgender female may…
In 2022, Florida passed The Individual Freedom Act. But most people know this law as the “Stop W.O.K.E. Act,” which stands for “Stop the Wrongs to our Kids and Employees.” Whatever we call it, the Act says employers cannot subject “any individual, as a condition of employment,” to “training, instruction,…
Notice anything potentially unlawful here? Yesterday, several of us spoke with The Philadelphia Inquirer about the problem with a local restaurant’s job ad discouraging trans men (and any women) from applying.
A federal law called the Equal Pay Act requires that men and women in the same workplace receive equal pay for equal work. The jobs need not be identical, but they must be substantially equal. While women often seek relief under this statute, a state government agency learned the hard…
Among the top employment issues that companies will need to navigate in 2024 is enforcing laws that have more recently taken effect. Take the PUMP for Nursing Mothers Act, for example. The PUMP Act, which amended the Fair Labor Standards Act, took effect in December 2022. It provides additional workplace…
If only a federal appellate court had reacted that way when a female plaintiff claimed an equal pay violation because she and other females were paid less than the “local industry standard.” But, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals wasn’t buying the ‘back-of-the-envelope math’ the plaintiff was selling. Allow me to…