A judge joked about his female employee’s sexuality and kept a mug decorated with cartoon genitalia in his own courtroom. The same judge required her to burn a full day of sick leave every time she needed an hour off for a medical appointment. A federal appeals court still ruled none of it was enough to reach a jury.
A supervisor approved the employee’s hairstyle at her interview, then sent her home for wearing it on day one. A federal appeals court says the case over what happened next isn’t finished, for either side.
An employee’s attempt to end fifty years of discrimination-law precedent went nowhere on appeal. But, two of the three judges who rejected it wrote separately to say they’d take another case just to do it.
A supervisor swore in an affidavit that he had no idea an employee was disabled. His own meeting notes said otherwise, and that contradiction just cost a Texas community college its win.
One racial slur wasn’t enough to put a company on notice. A federal appeals court explained why and upheld the jury’s verdict for the employer.
An employer told the EEOC one story to get a discrimination charge dismissed as too late. It told the court a different story to win summary judgment. The judge noticed.
Roughly one in ten of a railroad’s train and engine employees marked off using FMLA leave on Christmas Day. The railroad ran that spike through an algorithm, then a hearing, then a dishonesty finding, and a federal court just said a jury needs to check that whole chain.
She reported the harassment and lost her job. Her supervisor testified that the man she reported wasn’t disciplined; he got training instead.
Last year, a jury hit the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the professional association many HR practitioners look to for certifications and guidance, with a $10 million punitive damages verdict. Now its own insurance company says that’s SHRM’s bill to pay, not theirs.
Let’s be honest: nobody dreams of ending up on the wrong end of an employment lawsuit. And yet, every year, well-meaning HR teams and in-house counsel find themselves scrambling to answer the question, “Wait, how did this become a case?” Continue reading
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