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Employment Law

Design benefits plans that equally and fairly serve employees of all ages

04/10/2024
When tailoring benefits to appeal to younger members of your workforce, remember your older employees, too. It’s illegal to exclude employees from using any of your benefits on the basis of age.

Ensure dress code doesn’t cause discrimination

04/08/2024
If you haven’t reviewed and revised your employee handbook’s dress and grooming policy lately, now is a good time to look for antiquated rules that could trigger lawsuits. That’s especially true if a supervisor tries to enforce out-of-date and potentially discriminatory standards. That’s a lesson one employer recently learned when a supervisor insisted women wear pantyhose and forego cosmetic embellishments that had religious and cultural significance to an employee.

Beware data-collecting email from your ‘boss’

04/08/2024
If you get an email in the next few days that seems to be from your CEO requesting a list of employees and their Social Security numbers, watch out! It may be part of an elaborate phishing scheme in which con artists harvest employees’ personal data, use it to file fraudulent tax returns and then pocket income tax refunds.

Federal court says technicality makes PWFA unconstitutional

04/05/2024
A federal trial court in Texas has dealt a blow to the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, ruling on a technicality that the federal law requiring most employers to reasonably accommodate pregnancy-related limitations is unconstitutional.

Who qualifies as ‘family’ for FMLA purposes? It could be anyone

04/05/2024
The FMLA allows employees to take up to 12 unpaid weeks of job-protected leave when they’re needed to care for a close family member such as a child or parent. The eligibility criteria seem simple. Surely a child is one’s offspring and a parent is one’s biological or adoptive mom or dad. Using a Latin phrase—in loco parentis—the DOL says almost anyone can be a close family member under the right circumstances.

All the ways losing a bias case can cost you

04/05/2024
It can be frightening to hear an employee has filed an EEOC complaint or launched a federal discrimination lawsuit. Headlines emphasizing multimillion-dollar jury verdicts don’t help. Here’s what’s at stake should an employee win a discrimination lawsuit.

Disability accommodation not working? Restart interactive process before making changes

03/29/2024
Sometimes, an employee’s health condition changes, requiring a modification of a previously chosen accommodation. When that happens, the interactive process must start all over again. Employers cannot unilaterally drop an accommodation or substitute another.

Bill introduced to make 32-hour workweek the norm

03/25/2024
The Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act to cut the standard workweek from 40 hours per week to 32.

DOL lawsuit accuses farm of ‘Godfather’-style retaliation

03/25/2024
Want to know what you shouldn’t do if employees question their pay? Leave a severed pig’s head at their workstation.

DEI program survives lawsuit alleging reverse discrimination

03/25/2024
A recent 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals case may slow down the fight to kill DEI programs for employers that believe the initiatives are both necessary and serve a legitimate business purpose.