• The HR Specialist - Print Newsletter
  • HR Specialist: Employment Law
  • The HR Weekly

Discrimination / Harassment

Second chances, patience make discharge decision stick

05/06/2015
Courts often reward employers for offering second chances to employees who might otherwise be fired.

Single comment doesn’t justify hostile environment case

05/06/2015
Rest easy: As long as you take appropriate action to stop racially charged comments, the first one won’t land you in court. The key is to take every complaint seriously and immediately investigate any complaints. Then discipline the person who made the comments and warn against further comments.

Employee treated like a ‘nobody’? That’s not enough justification for a lawsuit

05/06/2015
When a worker is fired, he or she may look for a potential lawsuit. A visit to a lawyer may be enough to stir memories of alleged discrimination. Every little incident then becomes the basis for a discrimination claim. Fortunately, unless the fired worker complained earlier about the alleged discrimination or has a plausible explanation for why he didn’t, courts toss most such cases out.

Part-timers can file age discrimination claims, too

05/06/2015
Part-timers enjoy the same protection from age bias as full-timers do.

Activist’s challenge to equal rights rule fails

05/04/2015
An antigay activist has failed in his attempt to defeat the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance, which would recognize sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes.

Court holds firm on 180-day deadline for filing discrimination complaints with TCHR

05/04/2015

A Texas court has refused to give workers additional time to file discrimination lawsuits based on a so-called “discovery” rule. The case involved an employee who argued he had more time to sue because he did not realize he had been discriminated against during the 180 days immediately following the alleged discrimination. He said it took longer than that for it to become obvious that bias had occurred.

Sorry, it’s never acceptable to make jokes comparing employees to animals

05/04/2015
If you want to lose a hostile environment lawsuit, go ahead and ignore complaints and let managers act like bigots and racists. A recent case illustrates just how big a mistake tolerating such nonsense can be.

Texas leads nation in number of EEOC charges

05/04/2015
More EEOC charges originated in Texas in fiscal year 2014 than any other state.

Supremes: Courts may review EEOC for good faith

05/04/2015
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled April 29 that courts have the authority to review whether the EEOC made a good-faith attempt to conciliate discrimination complaints before suing employers, as required by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The unanimous decision in Mach Mining v. EEOC is a limited win for employers.

EEOC: Title VII covers transgender employees

05/01/2015
Arguing that Title VII’s prohibition on sex discrimination covers transgender employees, the EEOC successfully pursued a bias claim filed by an employee who was fired shortly after beginning a transition from male to female.