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.
Continue reading
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 get nearly as many clicks. Continue reading
Today, I will tell you about an employee caught sleeping on the job.
Several times. Continue reading
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 protect individuals with actual disabilities who lose their jobs for testing positive because the ADA does not protect individuals engaging in “the illegal use of drugs” within the meaning of the statute.
But what if the employee does not have an actual disability? Continue reading
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. Continue reading
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. Continue reading
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, the EEOC published its final Guidance on harassment in the workplace, “Enforcement Guidance on Harassment in the Workplace.” Continue reading
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 did not oblige.
And now, 17 states are suing. Continue reading
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. Continue reading
Have you ever heard of me-too evidence? Continue reading
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