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The Employer Handbook Blog
Articles Posted in Discrimination and Unlawful Harassment
With so many religious holidays coming up, make sure your managers don’t do THIS.
Many of your employees and applicants will celebrate religious holidays between now and the end of the year. Today, for example, is the first day of Rosh Hashanah, which began last night at sundown. Continue reading
The EEOC just sued some employers for preventing transgender employees from using restrooms consistent with their gender identity
In 2015, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission determined that a federal agency that denied an employee equal access to a common bathroom/facility corresponding to the employee’s gender identity discriminated based on sex and could not restrict a transgender employee to a single-user restroom. About five years later, the Supreme Court ruled that discrimination based on transgender status is sex discrimination in violation of Title VII.
Yesterday, the EEOC announced a lawsuit against several employers claiming that forbidding transgender workers from using restrooms consistent with their gender identity contributed to a hostile work environment based on their sex.
Continue reading
If your pregnant employee experiences a stillbirth or miscarriage, whatever you do, don’t do this
Today’s lesson is about the interplay between the Americans with Disabilities Act, which requires employers to accommodate known disabilities absent undue hardship, and the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which took effect last year and also requires an employer to accommodate known limitations related to, affected by, or arising out of pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions unless doing so will result in an undue hardship. Continue reading
THIS must be part of your 2025 anti-harassment training if it’s not already,
In the past week, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has brought two lawsuits against employers that allegedly violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act by discriminating against transgender employees.
Do we have to hire the best candidate for the job … if they have a visible Swastika tattoo?
I’ve read this post and this post about this recent lawsuit about seven current and former employees who claim they were forced to work with ‘Nazi sympathizers.’ They allege that the company hired and promoted a white employee with a swastika tattoo on his face and ties to a white nationalist group.
If true — and remember that these are just allegations in a complaint — that’s awful.
But let’s change the facts. Continue reading
A 100%-healed policy may 100% violate the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Family and Medical Leave Act
Last week, we discussed an FMLA policy that your business needs to rip from its employee handbook and burn with fire. This week, we revisit an Americans Disabilities Act policy that should end up on the paper shredder: the 100% healed policy.
Why would an employee sue his employer for offering him 100% telework as a disability accommodation?
Folks, I’ve lost track of the number of disability accommodation requests on which I’ve counseled human resources concerning employee requests to work full-time from home. So, when I came across a recent decision from the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit involving a failure-to-accommodate claim where the employer insisted on a 100% telework accommodation, I read with interest, as we lawyers like to say.
Lying lawyer loses lawsuit. Let’s look.
André Koehne, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Early in my career, I learned that it’s bad form for a lawyer to accuse another party of having “lied.” Judges generally frown upon this.
So, you can imagine that my interest was piqued when I read an Eighth Circuit decision issued yesterday weighing “the appropriate sanction for a plaintiff who lied in a deposition and withheld information.”
Rip this FMLA policy out of your employee handbook. And burn it with fire.
Employers that maintain a policy of treating any employee unable to return to work following the expiration of FMLA leave as having voluntarily resigned are begging for trouble.
But don’t just take my word for it. Continue reading