In 2015, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission determined that a federal agency that denied an employee equal access to a common bathroom/facility corresponding to the employee’s gender identity discriminated based on sex and could not restrict a transgender employee to a single-user restroom. About five years later, the Supreme…
Today’s lesson is about the interplay between the Americans with Disabilities Act, which requires employers to accommodate known disabilities absent undue hardship, and the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which took effect last year and also requires an employer to accommodate known limitations related to, affected by, or arising out of…
In the past week, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has brought two lawsuits against employers that allegedly violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act by discriminating against transgender employees. In one of the lawsuits, the EEOC claims that a transgender employee complained that she believed a manager had…
I’ve read this post and this post about this recent lawsuit about seven current and former employees who claim they were forced to work with ‘Nazi sympathizers.’ They allege that the company hired and promoted a white employee with a swastika tattoo on his face and ties to a white…
Last week, we discussed an FMLA policy that your business needs to rip from its employee handbook and burn with fire. This week, we revisit an Americans Disabilities Act policy that should end up on the paper shredder: the 100% healed policy. If your business has a policy that requires…
Folks, I’ve lost track of the number of disability accommodation requests on which I’ve counseled human resources concerning employee requests to work full-time from home. So, when I came across a recent decision from the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit involving a failure-to-accommodate claim…
André Koehne, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons Early in my career, I learned that it’s bad form for a lawyer to accuse another party of having “lied.” Judges generally frown upon this. So, you can imagine that my interest was piqued when I read an Eighth Circuit decision issued…
Employers that maintain a policy of treating any employee unable to return to work following the expiration of FMLA leave as having voluntarily resigned are begging for trouble. But don’t just take my word for it. According to a recent press release from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the…
***checks notes*** unlawful In a press release issued on Monday, the EEOC claims that an employer violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which makes it unlawful to discriminate based on pregnancy, when it failed to hire an applicant as a hair braider because she was pregnant.…
Let me set the scene for you. A teacher who had just taken leave under the Family Medical Leave Act during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to undergo heart and kidney transplant surgeries learns that the school where he teaches is requiring in-school teaching. Because he is immunocompromised, his…