Articles Posted in Retaliation

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When a plaintiff sues, alleging a supervisor subjected them to a hostile work environment, the defendant may avoid liability — even if the harassment actually occurred — if it took prompt remedial action to protect the plaintiff. Also, if a plaintiff fails to take advantage of corrective opportunities the defendant provides, the defendant wins.

But not always. Continue reading

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Employment lawyers and HR professionals generally preach that employees view “it’s not a good fit” to explain their termination of employment as code for discrimination or retaliation.

It’s HR101.

But yesterday, a federal court of appeals explained that this well-intentioned but often misconstrued rationale isn’t always a thinly-veiled, pretextual excuse to fire someone. Sometimes, people aren’t “good fits.” Continue reading

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They were so bad that a federal judge applied a rarely-used rule of civil procedure to consider summary judgment on its own after identifying for the parties material facts that may not be genuinely in dispute.

Boy, that was about as witty as Groundskeeper Willie’s standup routine at Springfield Elementary.

(Note to self: take after the Clown.) Continue reading

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I get that employee handbooks are not contacts and are subject to change and all that stuff. But, companies should be prepared to enforce any existing policy in an employee handbook as written.

A multi-billion-dollar company with an overly broad attendance policy learned this lesson the hard way recently. Continue reading

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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. According to the plaintiff, nearly two years later, she faced a proposed letter of reprimand. 

A proposed what now? Continue reading

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On Wednesday, I blogged about a woman who worked as a “helper” for a construction company. She alleged that she had to endure misogynist comments from her general manager, who told her in front of others that, since she had “t*** and an a**,” she could not perform certain functions of her job that would otherwise position her for advancement within the company.

But that isn’t the half of it. Continue reading

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Sometimes, when deciding whether to blog about a recent federal court decision, I skip the “Factual Background” section and go right to the “Discussion.” That’s where I usually find the most concise, “meat-and-bones” explanation of what the case is about. Continue reading

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