Last month, I explained how easy it is for an employee to plead a discrimination claim under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. Yet, last night, I read an opinion in which the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had to correct not one but two judges on the pleadings standards.…
Employers cannot interfere with employee rights under the Family and Medical Leave Act. However, the FMLA doesn’t exonerate employee misconduct, including when an employer discovers it during the leave. I’ll give you an example from a federal court decision I read last night. The plaintiff needed knee replacement surgery and informed…
This one is a bit of a total stretch. It’s about an employment law-adjacent lawsuit. The owner of a limited liability company filed suit under 42 U.S.C. §1981, claiming that another company discriminated on account of race by evicting the LLC for failure to pay rent. The district court dismissed…
A federal appellate court recently breathed new life into the discrimination claims of a tanker driver alleging that his race motivated his employer to terminate his employment for it deemed reckless driving. His evidence? His employer had treated him differently than other tanker drivers who engaged in conduct that was…
See what you think of this. An employee who recently returned from breast cancer surgery complains to her manager that her job “was hard for her physically,” she “was struggling” and “needed some time to get back to normal.” The employee added that she had worked 53 hours the week…
The Americans with Disabilities Act requires employers to make reasonable accommodations for a qualified individual with a disability unless doing so will impose an undue hardship on its business. A plaintiff who claims that their employer failed to accommodate them must initially establish that they could perform the position’s essential…
Last week, the Federal Trade Commission responded to efforts by a Texas business and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to convince a Texas federal judge to block the Federal Trade Commission’s final Non-compete Rule, which would impose a comprehensive ban on new non-competes with all workers, including senior executives. The FTC’s brief is…
A plaintiff claiming age discrimination at work must ultimately prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that age was the ‘but-for’ cause of whatever adverse employment action the plaintiff claims to have suffered. However, a recent Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals decision reminds us that merely pleading allegations of age…
The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), with nearly 340,000 members in 180 countries (of which I am one), filed an amicus brief last week in a lawsuit pending in Texas in which it supported efforts to block the Federal Trade Commission’s final non-compete Rule. The FTC seeks to impose a comprehensive…
In employment discrimination cases where a defendant-employer articulates a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for the employment action, the plaintiff has the burden then shifts to the plaintiff-employee to establish that the employer’s reason was a pretext for discrimination, i.e., the defendant’s reason for, say, terminating the plaintiff’s employment is false. Without…