The folks over at Blogging4Jobs.com have compiled a selection of the best blog posts on discrimination, contracts, & compliance for the December ’14 edition of the Employment Law Blog Carnival.
Be sure to check it out.
If you entered a time machine a few months ago and came out today to read this post, you missed a lot.
The Kansas City Royals made the World Series. Grammy Award winning rapper Eve wed entrepreneur Maximillion Cooper at Cala Jondal Beach in Ibiza, Spain. And a big-time Ebola scare.
Yeah, that Ebola scare was really something. But, it kinda just came and went, didn’t it? We haven’t had a new Ebola case in the U.S. in months, which makes the timing of Monday’s release of “Public Guidance on Protecting Civil Rights While Responding to the Ebola Virus” from the U.S. Department of Justice a bit off.
Just seems like common sense to me, especially where the employee seeking the accommodation would have to operate a motor vehicle.
Wait a minute!
Did an employee with a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act really think it would be reasonable for his employer to allow him to take narcotic pain medication so that he could operate a company vehicle pain free?
More after the jump…
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Little known fact: Pythagoras invented the Pythagorean theorem around 500 BC, which he nearly dubbed the Chicken Pot Pie theorem, because he loved CPPs so much. That same year, Pythagoras’s brother, Sarogahtyp, discovered that, when one man tweaks another man’s nipple, it’s not sex discrimination. But, it will get you a black eye — especially when the recipient is your brother and he’s finalizing his legendary theorem when finishing off a flaky CPP.
Thousands of years later, it still holds true that when a man delivers a purple nurple — some of you know it by a more boorish synonym — to a male subordinate, it may be “manifestly inappropriate and obnoxious,” as one federal appellate court ruled last week, but it’s probably not sex discrimination.
More after the jump…
Under federal law (Title VII), employers cannot discriminate because of one’s sex. While Title VII does not explicitly coverage transgender employees (i.e., someone born female who presents male, and vice-versa; also known as gender identity), the EEOC’s position is that transgender employees are protected too. Indeed, they’ve begun filing federal lawsuits on behalf of transgender employees who claim to have been discriminated against.
But, Courts have not uniformly accepted the EEOC’s position. Indeed, the state of the law here is very much unsettled.
Just before Thanksgiving, a Texas federal court considered whether an employer can discriminate under Title VII based purely on gender identity…and get away with it.
More after the jump…
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[Because “The one about the guy who got fired and then requested a reasonable accommodation” isn’t clickbait enough].
More on the timing of ADA accommodation requests after the jump…
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is obsessed with wellness programs.
Or, as the EEOC likes to describe them “‘so-called’ wellness programs.” And not in a “yay, so-called wellness programs are super” kinda way.
No, in recent months, the EEOC has initiated litigation against companies (example, example, example) claiming that they violate the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Genetic Information Non-Disclosure Act by both requiring medical examination and penalizing employees who decline to participate.
Yesterday, the EEOC issued its FY 2014 Performance Report. Here is a link to the press release.
Now, I’ll admit it. I didn’t read the whole report. Blogging has got me all messed up. I can’t read anything that’s more than 250 words. So, I just stopped at the part in the report where it said that total charges dropped by 5,000 in FY14. So, I didn’t get to the part of the report that credits this blog, in particular, for the drop in charges. But, I assume it’s in there somewhere.
I also wanted to give a nice shout-out to the EEOC’s national mediation program, in which I participate as a pro-bono mediator. Of the 10,221 mediations conducted in FY14, 7,846 of ’em settled. Based on the math I just did in my head, that’s a success rate of 97%. Ok, 77%. But, that’s still pretty darn good. Shaq’s free throw percentage is jealous.
Just another HR Pro Tip from your old buddy, Meyer. Hey, what would you guys do without me?
Sage advice for American businesses coming up after the jump…
What else is there to blog about after reading a federal court opinion about Yolo (You Only Live Once) and sexual harassment?
Geez. Last night, I could have peed plutonium while flaming monkeys sprang forth from my word hole, and I still would have blogged Yolo.
More on Yolo after the jump…
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The Employer Handbook Blog