Allow me to be serious for a moment…
Moment’s passed, eh? Ok. Let me bring it back…
Last week, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled (here) that discharging a female employee because she is lactating or expressing breast milk is sex discrimination and, therefore, violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII).
If the movie “Office Space” has taught me anything, it’s to wear 37 pieces of flair to work — do more than the bare minimum — and to use a cover sheet with my TPS reports.
And never mess with a man’s stapler. That too. Especially when you’re also moving the man’s desk four times and sending him to the basement. Because that could be age discrimination.
No, seriously. I was reading this decision from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. It involves claim of age discrimination where, the over-40 plaintiff claimed that he was “functionally replaced” by an employee who was substantially younger than him.
Last week, before the Memorial Day weekend, Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber signed into law this bill, which prohibits employers from requiring or requesting that employees or applicants for employment:
- Provide access to personal social media accounts,
- Add employers to social media contact lists, or
Yep.
And not even the Associate General Counsel at the National Labor Relations Board could save this employee.
In Tasker Healthcare Group, d/b/a Skinsmart Dermatology, the Charging Party — and nine other people (of whom seven were current employees) participated in a private group message on Facebook. During that sesh, the Charging Party started mouthing off about his employer, saying, “They [the Employer] are full of shit … They seem to be staying away from me, you know I don’t bite my [tongue] anymore, FUCK…FIRE ME….Make my day…”
Over the weekend, Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper signed a bill making Colorado the eighth state to have a social media workplace privacy law. (The others are MD, IL, CA, MI, UT, NM, and AR). You can view a copy of the new CO law here.
The new law places three restrictions on employers with respect to access of employee and applicant social media accounts:
- No requests for social media user names and passwords;
By now, the whole teacher blasting her job on Facebook is like death and taxes to me. I can’t a go a week or so without reading about a teacher posting photos of duct-taped students or a teacher wishing that her “devils spawn” students would drown in the ocean.
Well, here’s a new one.
Last week, a court ordered the NY school to re-hire the teacher it had fired for wanting to send her hellish kids to their watery graves.
I don’t know much about Arkansas. My knowledge consists of Gennifer Flowers, Wal-Mart, and this handy-dandy iPhone app for harvesting deer. I also hear that the official state beverage is milk.
How about that?
But now I know one more thing: Arkansas has a new social media privacy law, which prohibits an employer from requiring or requesting that a current or prospective employee do any of the following:
Robert Mariotti was the vice-president and secretary of the company his father founded. Not only was he a corporate officer, but Mariotti also served as a member of the board of directors, and was a shareholder who could only be fired for cause.
In 1995, Mariotti had a spiritual awakening, which he claims resulted in a resulted in “a systematic pattern of antagonism” toward him in the form of “negative, hostile and/or humiliating statements” about him and his religious affiliation. Mariotti claimed that this behavior ramped up for over a decade and, ultimately, resulted in his termination. Thereafter, he sued his former employer for religious discrimination. The company moved to dismiss the claim on the basis that a shareholder-director-officer is not an “employee” under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and, thus, has no standing to assert a claim for religious discrimination.
What happened you say? Well, even if you read the lede, click through for full analysis…
Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, better known as CISPA. CISPA provides for the sharing of certain cyber threat intelligence and cyber threat information between the intelligence community and cybersecurity entities, and for other purposes.
However, the majority vote was not without a speed bump, according to this report from Josh Wolford at WebProNews:
Colorado Democrat Ed Perlmutter attempted to tack on a provision to CISPA that would make it illegal for employers to require prospective employees to hand over their social media passwords as a condition of acquiring or keeping a job.
Perlmutter’s amendment was voted down 224-189.
Today we have a guest blogger at The Employer Handbook. It’s Noah Kovacs. Noah has over ten years experience in the legal field. He has since retired early and enjoys blogging about small-business law, legal marketing, and everything in between. He recently purchased his first cabin and spends his free time remodeling its kitchen for his family. Twitter: @NoahKovacs
(Want to guest blog at The Employer Handbook? Email me).
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