I’ve seen weaker lawsuits. But let me explain why the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals recently affirmed that asking a female colleague to babysit, once hitting her posterior with a rubber band, and even failing to use her proper title is not enough to create a hostile work environment based…
Over the weekend, several news outlets ran this story about a white television news anchor in Mississippi who went viral for using one of rapper Snoop Dogg’s catchphrases, “Fo shizzle, my nizzle,” during a live broadcast. This unexpected comment appeared to stun the station’s meteorologist, who is black. Just look…
As we wait patiently for the comment period on the Federal Trade Commission’s proposal to ban employers from imposing non-competes to close next month, I’m here to tell you now that your business’s non-competition agreements may be dead on arrival anyway. I’ll explain why. Most states that greenlight non-competition agreements do so with…
Last month, I told about a National Labor Relations Board decision to ban certain nondisparagement and confidentiality provisions in a severance agreement that businesses give to rank-and-file employees (i.e., non-supervisors) in both union and non-union workplaces. But there remained some open questions. For example, does the decision apply retroactively to old agreements?…
When employees allege discrimination, they must prove an employer’s discriminatory motive and connect it to a particular adverse employment decision. An adverse action requires evidence of a significant change in employment status, benefits, or pay. Usually, the proof comes in the form of failure to hire, a firing, failure to promote,…
Can an employer have a categorical policy of hiring the most qualified candidate when a qualified disabled employee requests reassignment to a vacant role, even if he or she is not the most qualified applicant? The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says no. But the EEOC doesn’t wear the black…
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…
If you haven’t done FMLA training for your supervisors, hopefully, this post will motivate you to get some on the calendar. The case I want to share with you today involves a lab tech with several disabilities. As they worsened, she was often late to work due to her disabilities.…
Those were the critical issues in a precedential decision that the Third Circuit Court of Appeals issued yesterday. So let’s talk about it. Generally speaking, a federal law called the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) says that people who earn an hourly wage can get overtime (one-and-a-half times their regular hourly wage for…
The plaintiff in this action has worked as a human resource specialist. She claimed that, beginning in 2019, her male supervisor made unwelcome sexual comments to her, and, when she reported those comments to his direct supervisor, they were ignored. So the plaintiff says she filed an Equal Employment Opportunity (“EEO”) complaint.…