A recent federal appellate court decision is an important reminder to confirm early—not later—whether the employee suing your business signed an arbitration agreement. The plaintiff had signed an agreement with an arbitration provision that covered his subsequent claims for disability discrimination, which he filed in federal court. But the employer…
I’m going to tell you about a transgender man who worked for three years as a sergeant for a state prison. While working at the prison, he began the process of medically and socially transitioning to align with his gender identity. He underwent hormone replacement therapy, obtained a legal name…
Imagine being an employer-defendant and reading that sentence as the lede in a court’s summary judgment opinion. Ouch! But that’s precisely what an Indiana federal judge wrote about a defendant who fired an employee after it appeared to the company that the worker had amassed too many absences related to…
In a recent Fourth Circuit decision, the plaintiff learned this lesson the hard way. The plaintiff, a lawyer who later earned a promotion to Town Manager, suffered from anxiety, depression, and high blood pressure. He alleged in his complaint that the defendant knew about these disabilities. In January 2018, a…
“Miscarriages can be personally devastating. No one should have to choose between getting the pregnancy care they need and losing a job.” That quote comes from a senior U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission trial attorney as part of a press release announcing a settlement of pregnancy and disability discrimination claims…
Earlier this year, I wrote about a white employee in Colorado who claimed his former employer subjected him to a hostile work environment by requiring him to attend anti-harassment training. According to the plaintiff, this training included “sweeping negative generalizations regarding individuals who are white, and other gross generalizations about members…
Employment lawyers and human resources professionals regularly preach that managers must document employee performance issues as a best practice so that if/when that manager wants to terminate the employee, the company has the “receipts” to justify the decision. Suppose that the employee later sues for age discrimination. He may be…
(At least I didn’t say, “It depends.”) Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employers from retaliating against employees who oppose a practice that Title VII forbids, such as discrimination or fostering a hostile work environment based on race, color, national origin, sex, or religion. An internal…
Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons I read a recent NJ federal court decision where a plaintiff began working for the defendant in New Jersey but later requested and received a transfer to Pennsylvania. And that’s when things went awry. The plaintiff alleged that, at an operation leadership meeting,…
Spoiler alert: it often doesn’t end well for the plaintiff or their lawyer. For example, let’s discuss this Second Circuit decision in which a plaintiff had sued her employer and two of its employees, asserting claims of sexual harassment during and retaliatory discharge from her employment. For a time, it…