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Discrimination / Harassment

EEOC suit says school system made teacher choose: faith or job

04/14/2011

Safoorah Kahn was a middle school math coach in the tiny Chicago suburb of Berkeley. As a devout Muslim, she looked forward to making the hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca, something Muslims are expected to do once during their lifetimes. Kahn asked the school district for three weeks of unpaid leave to make the journey. The school district refused the request …

Neutral comment doesn’t prove pregnancy discrimination

04/14/2011

When an em­­ployee announces she is pregnant, the only appropriate re­sponse is “Con­grat­ulations!” Then give her the information she needs so she can take any leave to which she is entitled. Negative comments can be used to prove pregnancy discrimination, but neutral ones cannot.

The best reason to retain personnel documents: Employees–and courts–have long memories

04/14/2011
Employees are often only too happy to go back years to come up with circumstantial evidence that their employers are biased, citing incidents that on their own could not be the basis for a lawsuit.

It’s a man’s world? Be ready to ‘man up’ in court

04/11/2011
Reductions in force (RIFs) are fertile ground for employee lawsuits to sprout up. But as this ruling last month shows, even when a company conducts a perfectly good RIF procedure, it can be torpedoed in court by a manager’s untimely comments …

He said/she said: Gauging credibility in harassment cases

04/08/2011
Most employers understand the importance of doing a fair and thorough in-house investigation when they receive complaints of on-the-job harassment. But many investigators falsely believe they can’t conclude that harassment occurred unless they have independent witnesses to the allegations. So what should you do when confronted with conflicting stories?

Amityville Fire Department settles age bias lawsuit

04/06/2011
A group of volunteer firefighters for the Amityville Fire Department will share $209,280 after they settled a lawsuit alleging discrimination in the way cash bonuses were handed out.

Don’t ignore lawsuit! It won’t go away

04/06/2011

Pass along this reminder to supervisors: Any legal documents they receive must be forwarded right away to HR and your attorney. Other­wise, you could miss important deadlines. Worse, you could automatically lose the case, even if it has little merit.

Quick self-audit may allay discrimination fears

04/06/2011
When an employee complains about some form of discrimination, review the record to help you assess the claim. For example, if the employee says he didn’t get a promotion because his fe­male supervisor favors women, looking over her promotion practices won’t take long and can reassure you that the employee has no case.

Firing for poor work or rule breaking? Clear business reason will beat lawsuit

04/06/2011
Most workers are at-will employees, who can be fired for any reason or no reason at all, as long as your actions don’t violate anti-discrimination laws. That can tempt some supervisors to get lazy and fire a difficult employee without documenting exactly why. That’s a big mistake.

Courts to serial litigants: Enough is enough! Lawsuit-happy employees may face fines

04/06/2011

Some employees and applicants think that if they sue often enough, they’ll eventually end up collecting the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Fortunately, judges don’t like wasting valuable courtroom time on meritless cases. More and more, they are blocking efforts to file additional lawsuits by employees acting as their own lawyers.