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The Employer Handbook Blog
Articles Posted in Hiring & Firing
Mechanical Bull Bartending and the Age Bias Lawsuit That Never Got Off the Ground
The job requirements were… a lot: craft-beer exams, choreography, flair tricks, social media posts, and a “weight proportional to height” standard. Oh, and a mechanical bull. Eighteen longtime bartenders said the whole thing skewed younger. The court said their lawsuit had a more basic problem. Continue reading
Is Your Hiring Assessment a Lie Detector in Disguise? It Could Be a Class Action Time Bomb⏰💣
Many employers rely on hiring assessments to gauge fit. But what if those tools are viewed as unlawful lie detector tests? A recent Massachusetts ruling should give you pause before you rely on a “workstyle” assessment. Continue reading
Shifting Reasons and Skipped Steps — and Why the Employer Still Won
Two arguments show up in almost every termination lawsuit: that the employer’s reason changed, and that it didn’t follow its own policy. The Eleventh Circuit recently explained why neither argument, without more, is enough to get a case to a jury. Continue reading
Fasten Your Seatbelts: The Honest Belief Doctrine Lands Again
Not every workplace conflict that creates turbulence makes it to a jury. This one didn’t. The employer’s investigation held up under the honest-belief doctrine. Continue reading
Claude, ChatGPT, and Privilege: Proceed With Caution, Employers
A recent Southern District of New York decision is being described as “AI destroys privilege.”
That’s not what the court held. But employers using consumer AI tools in connection with employment decisions should pay attention. Continue reading
When an Ultimatum Turns a “Resignation” Into a Jury Question
Constructive discharge is a high bar. But an ultimatum, delivered the wrong way and on the wrong timeline, can be enough to clear it.
That was the lesson from a recent federal court decision involving a pregnant employee who was told she could either keep working under at-will conditions or take six weeks of pay and leave immediately. The employer framed it as a choice. The court said a jury could see it as no choice at all. Continue reading
How Not to Handle Suspected FMLA Abuse
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: it’s the Monday after the Super Bowl, an employee with approved intermittent FMLA leave asks for a personal day, gets denied, switches to FMLA, and later finds himself terminated for “abuse.”
That is not a hypothetical. It is essentially what happened in a recent decision out of the Southern District of West Virginia, where a federal court refused to throw out an employee’s FMLA retaliation claim and sent the case to a jury. Continue reading
How a Drug Test Exposed an ADA Compliance Gap
Hiring can feel like a checklist: background check, drug test, start date. But when an applicant raises a disability-related issue, those boxes stop being routine, and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) starts asking questions. Continue reading
When an employee says “I need to get home,” you may already be in FMLA territory
Sometimes a routine overtime dispute turns into an FMLA problem because no one stops to ask the right questions. A new Eleventh Circuit decision shows how easily that can happen.
Continue reading