Yesterday was the funeral for Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man. Last month, Memphis police pulled over Mr. Nichols for allegedly reckless driving. But body camera footage captured five police officers beating Mr. Nichols following the stop. He later died. The five officers were charged with murder, and protests took place across the country. Continue reading
No workplace is perfect. And the one I read about last night was far from it. Continue reading
It’s 2023.
When are employees going to learn that while the First Amendment does guarantee freedom of speech, there is no constitutional right to a job, and employers don’t have to tolerate employee hate speech?
Continue reading
Unless you run a dental practice, I can’t imagine why a fetching, toothy smile would be a job qualification. But, apparently, a large chain of gas/convenience stores has that policy. Continue reading
Yesterday, I told you about the EEOC’s new resource document for assisting individuals with hearing disabilities. Today, I’ll tell you how the Second Circuit Court of Appeals breathed new life into the failure-to-accommodate claims of a deaf individual who worked as a case manager for a city’s Human Resources Administration (HRA).
So, thank you, blogging gods, for the impeccable timing.
If you’re an employment law nerd like me, in addition to being the envy of your neighborhood, you also know that the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission does not shy away from bringing failure-to-accommodate claims on behalf of deaf individuals. Look at all of them! Continue reading
A couple of years ago, I blogged (here) about a company that installed spyware to monitor an employee’s Facebook Messenger activity, discovered a nefarious plot to secure client information and intellectual property, and obtained an injunction to stop the employee from starting a competing business.
But there are legal limits to employer sh*tbaggery surreptitiously monitoring employee communications. Continue reading
When a longtime government agency employee sued her employer for violating the Equal Pay Act, she argued that the defendant paid her male coworker more for “essentially the same job.” In her mind, their roles “were complementary and [their] duties equal.”
But that’s not enough to show prevail under the Equal Pay Act. Continue reading
Over the past few years, employers encountered a spate of religious accommodations requests from employees seeking religious exemptions from getting the COVID-19 vaccine. Last week, plaintiffs filed a series of new lawsuits against a national drugstore chain, accusing it of failing to accommodate the religious beliefs of employees who objected to prescribing contraceptives and abortifacient drugs. This week, the Supreme Court has agreed to reexamine Title VII’s undue hardship standard, which may soon require more than a de minimis cost to the employer.
With so much going on with religious discrimination, the timing is perfect for welcoming EEOC Commissioner Andrea Lucas as today’s guest on The Employer Handbook Zoom Office Happy Hour at Noon ET. Continue reading
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