I’m pretty sure that’s where we left off yesterday. Let me check my notes. ✅give HR a coronary about ways to get fired (clickbait!), ✅blog about that 11th Cir. decision, ✅Day 1 “Manager Exception”; Day 2 “past employment,” ✅become their lord and savior (sacrilegious?) advocate. Yesterday, we explored a case…
Last night, I read this recent decision from a three-judge panel on the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. It involves a human resources manager who claimed that her current employer fired her after it learned that she had earlier given deposition testimony in a pregnancy discrimination lawsuit against her former…
The general rule in employment law is that an employer’s inconsistencies and contradictions breathe life into discrimination claims. But there are some exceptions. Proving pretext. For example, last night, I read this federal court decision involving an employee fired shortly after complaining to HR about an offensive comment from a…
A plaintiff asserting a retaliation claim against his employer must establish three elements: A protected activity (such as complaining about discrimination), A materially adverse employment action (such as a termination of employment), and A connection between the first and second element (i.e., an employer fired him for complaining about discrimination)…
Print this post if you want to discourage your managers and supervisor from putting dumb sh*t in emails that might one day get shown to a jury and end up costing your business a mint. Last night, I read this opinion from a federal judge in Wisconsin. It’s about an…
Yesterday, several news outlets reported that Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer will retire at the end of this term. President Bill Clinton appointed Justice Breyer in 1994. Justice Breyer sided with OSHA and HHS in the vaccine mandate cases earlier this month. Indeed, Breyer is considered one of the more…
Image Credit: finger pointing by BomSymbols from the Noun Project While nerds like me were flooding LinkedIn with status updates about Sixth Circuit this and OSHA ETS that, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was hosting a secret “virtual dialogue” with the employer Illuminati about retaliation updating its COVID-19 Technical…
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…