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The Employer Handbook Blog
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The “harassing, stalking, disturbing, and menacing” plaintiff lost her discrimination case. Go figure.
It’s bad enough when a federal judge refers to a plaintiff-employee’s behavior towards her manager as “harassing, stalking, disturbing, and menacing.” And, I apologize that I didn’t have enough room in the title of this blog post to mention the plaintiff’s profanity and fighting at work, or her arrests for drunk driving and drug possession.
So, you’d think that the plaintiff would cut and run after the district court dismissed her claims for pregnancy, sex, race, and religious discrimination claims. But, the plaintiff who referred to herself at work as “crazy” and “psycho” decided to appeal to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals.
And how do you think that went for the plaintiff? Continue reading
Folks, it’s never a joke when employees use the N-word at work. Make sure your managers know that.
Image Credit: PeakPX.com – License to use Creative Commons Zero – CC0
Every so often, I receive a Google Alert about some knucklehead who writes something inappropriate — usually a racial slur — on a restaurant receipt. Often, the knucklehead tries to explain her or his actions away as a joke.
This great federal court decision I read offers seven keys to a proper severance agreement
Image by Andreas Breitling from Pixabay
A lawyer claimed that his employer had discriminated against him based on his race, color, gender, and age, when it terminated his employment and filled a position nearly identical to that which he held prior to his termination with a younger, African-American woman. So he sued.
Oh, I forgot one important fact. By the time he sued, the lawyer-plaintiff had already signed a severance agreement and release (the “Release”). Continue reading
You be the judge: Does this sound like race discrimination to you?
Highway Patrol Images [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Six million reasons to remember that the EEOC continues to take your company’s background checks seriously
On April 25, 2012, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued its Enforcement Guidance on the Consideration of Arrest and Conviction Records in Employment Decisions Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The EEOC believes that the use of criminal record history and other background checks can have a disparate impact by disproportionately screening out certain minorities without any business-related need.
After several potholes and speedbumps trying to enforce its guidance in the courtroom against employer-defendants, the EEOC has finally won a big race. Continue reading
This leaked deposition transcript from a race discrimination case is like a bizarro embassy scene from Lethal Weapon 2.
Image Credit: YouTube.com
Do you know that scene from Lethal Weapon 2? The one where Joe Pesci (Leo Getz) tells the representative from the South African embassy to convince his friend Danny Glover (‘Alphonse’) not to move to South Africa because he’s black.
I’ll pause for a sec while you watch it.
Common sense prevails! School reinstates black man it fired for repeating a racial slur directed at him as he told the person to stop
Image Credit: Photofunia.com
Yesterday, I blogged here about a black man who was fired for repeating a racial slur directed at him as he told the person to stop. According to multiple reports, his employer’s position was that it had a zero-tolerance policy on racial slurs in the workplace — inexcusable, regardless of context.
Well, the school hired him back.
Still, I asked readers of this blog how they would have handled a similar situation in their workplace. Continue reading
A black man was fired for repeating a racial slur directed at him as he told the person to stop
Last week, I quizzed you on how to handle a request for a religious accommodation to be excused from attending a weekend company holiday party. That was easy.
Today’s ‘what would you do’ is much more difficult. Continue reading
NJ issues “Guidance on Race Discrimination Based on Hairstyle”
Image Credit: YouTube
Just before Christmas last year, a referee in a high school wrestling match in New Jersey told an African-American wrestler that he must cut his dreadlocks or forfeit the match. This made national news.