Speech dialogue balloon by icon 54 from the Noun Project Yesterday, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) announced a joint initiative to raise awareness about retaliation issues when workers exercise their protected labor rights. The EEOC…
Image Credit: Photofunia.com Retaliation is the number one employment claim that workers pursue. Prevailing, however, is not that easy. To establish a claim of retaliation, an employee must produce enough evidence for a reasonable jury to conclude that (1) s/he engaged in a statutorily protected activity; (2) the employer took…
Image Credit: MaxPixel.net A white employee complains in writing that a colleague called his biracial grand-niece a “monkey” and texted him racially offensive comments about his coworkers. Within months, the employer fired the complainant. Is this retaliation? A federal court in Pennsylvania said no. It reasoned that while Title VII…
Image Credit: Piqsels.com (CC0 public domain license) Let’s answer one of the most common questions that I receive when I speak at HR events. The answer is yes, according to this recent federal court decision. I’ll explain why in a bit, but let’s start with the unique facts. The plaintiff…
Image by Please Don’t sell My Artwork AS IS from Pixabay When an employee sues for retaliation after complaining about discrimination, he must prove that he suffered “a materially adverse action” for doing so. Usually, that amounts to discharges, demotions, refusals to hire, refusals to promote, and reprimands. But, how…
forever by priyanka from the Noun Project Sometimes it’s easy to lose the forest for the trees. Last night, after uploading the recording of yesterday’s CDC Face Mask Zoom to The Employer Handbook YouTube Channel, I read this recent Fifth Circuit opinion. It involves a transgender employee suing a former employer…
Alexas_Fotos on Pixabay If I felt a little snarkier, I would have gone with this instead of the confused emoji. No, I’m pretty sure that’s not how the Americans with Disability Act (ADA) works. Under the ADA, it’s just as unlawful to retaliate as it is to discriminate. A plaintiff…
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay Rarely — and by “rarely,” I mean usually — I’ll have an employer client ask me about countersuing an employee that has just sued the company. First, you’re probably just throwing good money after bad. But, I generally don’t debate this with my more…
Image Credit: https://pixy.org/528010/ I’ve got a hypothetical situation for you. ABC employs Sally. Sally’s father, John, is a third-party vendor who sells widgets to ABC. One day, Sally files a charge of discrimination with the EEOC against ABC, claiming to be the victim of gender discrimination. Eventually, Sally resigns and…
Cskiran / CC BY-SA Good thing I added a few extra servers today, juuuuuuuust in case I had a few extra clicks on this blog post. Last week, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals wrote 150 pages (here) to address the retaliation of claims of an HR representative (let’s call…