An employee returned from his third round of FMLA leave and found a performance improvement plan waiting for him. That looks terrible. But a jury will never hear about it.
An engineer got fired for making offensive comments about his non-Christian co-workers, then sued for religious discrimination. There was just one problem: he wouldn’t show anyone the EEOC charge he filed.
A police department ran a volunteer program that looked and felt a lot like a job, complete with uniforms, badges, ranks, performance reviews, and a paramilitary chain of command. Three young women in the program alleged sex discrimination and retaliation, got dismissed, waited over two years to file charges, and then sued under Title VII. The court shut it all down. Continue reading
An employee complained to HR about discrimination. About two and a half months later, the employer skipped progressive discipline, gave no warning, and fired her the same day over emails. Most people would expect that case to go to a jury. It didn’t. Continue reading
A weekend schedule change. A Sunday church conflict. And apparently no one at the company thought to have a conversation about it. Continue reading
A new manager walks in, looks at a long-standing accommodation, and decides it’s over. The employee had been doing the job successfully for years. That’s where the risk starts.
One racial slur. One termination. Zero liability. The Third Circuit’s newest hostile work environment decision is a masterclass in what prompt employer action actually looks like.
President Trump’s new executive order for federal contractors bans something called “racially discriminatory DEI activities.” Read the definition and you’ll find it’s just discrimination — conduct Title VII has prohibited for sixty years. What the order actually adds is a new enforcement mechanism, and that’s what federal contractors need to understand. Continue reading
The Third Circuit just predicted that New Jersey’s “reverse discrimination” rule is incompatible with the NJLAD. Federal courts in New Jersey are no longer applying it.
Put simply, a performance improvement plan is designed to improve performance, not expose employers to liability. Courts used to see it that way too. That changed when the Supreme Court redefined what counts as an adverse employment action — and suddenly PIPs were in play.
TL;DR: An IT employee placed on a three-month performance improvement plan that she successfully completed did not suffer an adverse employment action under the ADEA. The First Circuit, applying the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Muldrow v. City of St. Louis, held that a PIP constitutes an adverse action only if it actually changes the terms or conditions of employment — and this one didn’t. The court also rejected the employee’s constructive discharge claim, finding that quitting ten months after finishing the PIP, with no one telling her to leave and no evidence of intolerable conditions, did not amount to a forced resignation.
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