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Discrimination / Harassment

S.F. firefighters’ age bias suit goes down in flames

04/30/2018
The decade-long age discrimination litigation saga of 15 San Francisco firefighters has come to an end.

Worker taking high road can still quit & sue

04/26/2018
Typically, workers sue after being fired or otherwise subjected to an adverse employment action such as a demotion. But sometimes, aggrieved employees can quit and still sue, alleging that their working conditions were so severe that they had no choice but to leave.

Now more than ever, rein in sex harassment

04/26/2018
#MeToo spawned the multimillion-dollar #TimesUp fund that pays lawyers to help working-class women press sexual harassment claims in court. For employers, that means you can’t afford to ignore a single sexual harassment complaint.

Women much more likely to perceive pay bias

04/24/2018
Nearly a third of women (32%) do not think they are making the same pay as men in their organization who have similar experience and qualifications, compared to 12% of men.

Tough new supervisor? That doesn’t prove bias

04/19/2018
Sometimes, new bosses crack the whip harder than the previous supervisor did—and hand out harsher performance appraisals, too. But absent specific evidence to the contrary, new and more rigorous standards don’t usually signal that the new boss is motivated by discriminatory intent.

9th Circuit: EPA requires ignoring past pay

04/19/2018
Employers that set pay based on past salaries are just as guilty of sex discrimination as those past employers who set a discriminatory rate of pay in the first place.

Snapshot: Where does most sexual harassment happen?

04/17/2018
About two-thirds of women who say they have been sexually harassed say it happened at work.

Document all details about employee discipline

04/16/2018
It’s impossible to predict which employee will sue and why. That’s why you must carefully document every disciplinary action, including enough specific information to later justify those decisions.

The fact of pay bias matters, not what motivates it

04/16/2018
Employees suing under the Equal Pay Act who can prove that they held a substantially similar job but were paid less than a member of the opposite sex don’t have to prove that the employer intended to discriminate.

No anonymous employment lawsuits allowed

04/16/2018
Sometimes, filing a lawsuit and airing dirty laundry in a public forum can be embarrassing and uncomfortable for an employee. That doesn’t give her the right to bring the case using a pseudonym, a federal court has ruled.