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Employment Law

Accommodate neurodiverse employees

04/10/2024
Most organizations probably have at least one employee who fits under the neurodiverse umbrella and who may be entitled to workplace help. While each condition labelled as neurodivergent differs, all share a number of common management strategies that can prove useful in the workplace.

New hires can’t use religion as reason to withhold SSN

04/10/2024
You must offer religious accommodations when possible, but not if it would cause you to break the law.

When one employee sues for race bias, brace yourself for a class-action lawsuit

04/10/2024
A California judge has given the go-ahead for a massive class-action race discrimination lawsuit against Tesla that may bring over 6,000 Black employees into the lawsuit. It’s the latest legal setback for the automaker, following years of lawsuits alleging Tesla tolerates racial discrimination and harassment at factories in California.

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 That’s especially true if a supervisor tries to enforce out-of-date and potentially discriminatory standards.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.