André Koehne, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons Early in my career, I learned that it’s bad form for a lawyer to accuse another party of having “lied.” Judges generally frown upon this. So, you can imagine that my interest was piqued when I read an Eighth Circuit decision issued…
The Employer Handbook Blog
Rip this FMLA policy out of your employee handbook. And burn it with fire.
Employers that maintain a policy of treating any employee unable to return to work following the expiration of FMLA leave as having voluntarily resigned are begging for trouble. But don’t just take my word for it. According to a recent press release from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the…
Court to feds: You can keep using salary to measure which workers should receive overtime
Emphasizing that the Department of Labor has used a minimum salary requirement to help decide who is overtime-eligible, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals recently determined that the Fair Labor Standards Act authorizes this benchmark. As it had done many times before, the DOL determined in 2019 to raise the minimum…
FTC: It may be more than a year before a court greenlights our non-compete rule — if at all
The Federal Trade Commission, the architects of the sweeping noncompete ban that a federal judge in Texas set aside last month, told a federal judge in Pennsylvania yesterday that an appeal of the Texas decision “would likely take months to fully brief and could take a year or longer until…
EEOC sues company for supposedly imposing a one pregnant-employee limit for its workforce
***checks notes*** unlawful In a press release issued on Monday, the EEOC claims that an employer violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which makes it unlawful to discriminate based on pregnancy, when it failed to hire an applicant as a hair braider because she was pregnant.…
This employer went to the hospital and fired its employee while in psychiatric treatment. Then it defeated his FMLA claim.
So much about what I’m about to tell you is messed up. Last night, I read a Sixth Circuit opinion about a maintenance technician whose job involved servicing and maintaining a fleet of police vehicles, as part of which he agreed to install new dashboard cameras in four police cruisers.…
An employer’s offer of remote work from the office may be an ADA reasonable accommodation alternative to work from home
Let me set the scene for you. A teacher who had just taken leave under the Family Medical Leave Act during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to undergo heart and kidney transplant surgeries learns that the school where he teaches is requiring in-school teaching. Because he is immunocompromised, his…
Did you know that even temporary impairments like a back injury can qualify as disabilities?
Back in the day, it could be difficult for a plaintiff claiming disability discrimination even to prove that they had a disability. Before Congress amended the Americans with Disabilities Act in 2008, the Supreme Court held that an impairment must be “permanent or long term” to qualify as a disability.…
It turns out that an employee planning her “exit strategy” with her attorney wasn’t constructively discharged from her job.
I’ll go ahead and file this one under: “Ya think?” But perhaps I’m getting out over my skis. So, let’s see what you think. The employee was a bank teller who filed a charge of discrimination with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against her employer. She later resigned, claiming…
Share this post with someone who (mis)uses the term “salary exempt.”
Because I’m here to remind you (and tell them) that “salary exempt” generally means nothing unless the employee performs certain duties. But let’s start with the basics. The Fair Labor Standards Act requires most companies to pay their U.S. employees at least the federal minimum wage for all hours worked and overtime…