An employer recently learned the hard way that a proper response to an employee’s complaint of harassment involves more than simply investigating it. I’ll explain. Last night, I read a recent decision from a Pennsylvania federal judge. The plaintiff, an Asian American, testified at his deposition that his supervisor often…
Yesterday, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee announced that it had advanced the Protecting Older Americans Act, which would invalidate forced arbitration clauses requiring employees to arbitrate age discrimination claims, whether for disparate treatment, disparate impact, harassment, or retaliation. 15 Senators voted in favor and 6 against. The legislation, introduced in…
Occasionally, I post about MONSTER discrimination jury verdicts, some in the seven and eight figures. I do it for shock value and, often, the clicks. (Guilty as charged.) But posts about the subsequent remittitur, where a federal judge slashes the compensatory or punitive damages award to $300,000 or less, don’t…
Today, I will tell you about an employee caught sleeping on the job. Several times. The first was when three coworkers observed him sleeping at his desk while not on a break, which violated the company’s conduct policy. So, with HR’s approval, the employee’s manager decided to issue him a…
Yesterday, I wrote about how the DEA’s move to ease restrictions on marijuana would change the ADA landscape for employers by requiring accommodations for employees with disabilities who use medical cannabis to treat. For now, however, marijuana remains a Schedule One drug. So, the Americans with Disabilities Act does not…
Last week, the Associated Press reported that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration would move to reclassify marijuana (cannabis), moving it from Schedule I, where it’s currently listed with heroin and LSD, to Schedule III, with as less dangerous doctor-prescribed drugs like (Tylenol with codeine) and testosterone. The AP notes that this shift comes “as marijuana…
Readers of this blog know that the EEOC recently finalized its new workplace harassment guidance and that one of the contentious issues in the guidance, according to a dissenting EEOC Commissioner, is the EEOC’s position that misgendering an employee, e.g., by consistently using the wrong pronouns, can violate Title VII.…
In October 2023, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission voted to propose new Guidance on workplace harassment, the first voted document the EEOC had issued on harassment since its “Enforcement Guidance on Vicarious Liability for Unlawful Harassment by Supervisors” in 1999. Yesterday, after receiving approximately 38,000 comments on its proposal,…
From the time it proposed regulations to implement the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act to when it issued a final rule earlier this month, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission received approximately 54,000 comments urging it to exclude abortion from the definition of “pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions.” The EEOC…
In 2013, a healthcare provider hired a white man—let’s call him plaintiff—as its Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications. And he crushed it, receiving strong performance reviews and gaining national recognition for himself and the marketing program he developed. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, he was fired. As…