No, it isn’t. I know this because, among other things, I read this Fifth Circuit decision last night after the Philadelphia Eagles beat the New England Patriots. The plaintiff, a pharmacy technician, was pregnant when her employer hired her. Then, she chose to disclose her pregnancy to her supervisor a…
A director for a major transit authority applied for two internal promotions. She didn’t get either. Feeling that she was more qualified than either successful candidate, the director reported discrimination internally and later filed a Charge of Discrimination with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Among other things, she alleged…
On August 7, 2018, a worker sent an email. The email stated, “I fear retaliation” and “my colleagues and I have been the victims of continuous harassment, both sexual and emotional.” On August 9, 2018, just two days later, the company fired her. How do you think that turned out?…
The plaintiff in this federal court decision I read last night didn’t exactly come off as a model employee. According to the decision, others reported that the plaintiff, a security officer and transportation driver, took extended lunch breaks, made unauthorized stops while making product deliveries (including a car dealership to purchase a…
If, like me, you deal with HR compliance and employment law issues regularly, you’ve yelled the title of this blog post at others. (And if you don’t deal with HR compliance and employment law issues regularly, dude, WTH are you doing here?) I thought of this last night as I…
When a plaintiff sues, alleging a supervisor subjected them to a hostile work environment, the defendant may avoid liability — even if the harassment actually occurred — if it took prompt remedial action to protect the plaintiff. Also, if a plaintiff fails to take advantage of corrective opportunities the defendant…
Employment lawyers and HR professionals generally preach that employees view “it’s not a good fit” to explain their termination of employment as code for discrimination or retaliation. It’s HR101. But yesterday, a federal court of appeals explained that this well-intentioned but often misconstrued rationale isn’t always a thinly-veiled, pretextual excuse…
They were so bad that a federal judge applied a rarely-used rule of civil procedure to consider summary judgment on its own after identifying for the parties material facts that may not be genuinely in dispute. Boy, that was about as witty as Groundskeeper Willie’s standup routine at Springfield Elementary. (Note…
I get that employee handbooks are not contacts and are subject to change and all that stuff. But, companies should be prepared to enforce any existing policy in an employee handbook as written. A multi-billion-dollar company with an overly broad attendance policy learned this lesson the hard way recently. According…
I didn’t even have to go to law school to figure that out. Unfortunately for a plaintiff and her lawyer, they learned this lesson the hard way. Twice. The plaintiff began working for the defendant as a full-time order processor. Within two years, the defendant promoted the plaintiff to the…
