A familiar sight behind the scenes at many employers is the mandatory publication that describes employee rights and remedies under various federal statutes. The EEOC has a new version of the poster entitled “Know Your Rights: Workplace Discrimination is Illegal.” The new version uses “plain language and bullet points” to hopefully make the laws easier to understand. The
Does a plaintiff have to specify not only the facts but also the law that applies? In Bye v. MGM Resorts, Inc., the Fifth Circuit looks at a common pleading issue: What do you do when a plaintiff pleads facts that may or may not state claims under more than one statute but only
Can a social media firestorm be the basis for an employment decision? Although it may seem like a lifetime ago, in the spring of 2020, the internet’s attention turned to a viral video of a white woman in Central Park who called 911 about a black man who she said was threatening her life. Enter
Is the “Stop WOKE” Act dead in Florida? Not yet, but in Honeyfund.com, Inc., et al v. Desantis, et al, one federal district court has certainly put the brakes on it. On March 29, 2022, we informed everyone about Florida HB 7, also known as Florida’s “Stop WOKE” bill, and how it would
An employer establishes a weekend work policy where only male employees can take both days off, and female employees can only take one weekend day off. Sounds like gender discrimination maybe? Well, in Hamilton, et al. v. Dallas County, dba Dallas County Sheriff’s Department, the Fifth Circuit recently declined to go that far — yet. The judges
If a letter from the EEOC is in your virtual mailbox but you never open it, have you received it? Most of us are familiar with the requirement that a claimant who files an EEOC charge has 90 days to file a lawsuit after receiving what is usually required a “right-to-sue” letter from the agency.
Let’s say you are tired of your current position and want to try something new with the same employer. You apply for a job transfer, and you are turned down. Then you find out that other people were able to make the move more easily. If those other people are of a different race or sex or other
For the past three years, Mississippi remained the only state in the country that did not have a bill prohibiting pay discrimination based on gender. This all changed on April 20, 2022, when Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves signed House Bill 770, also known as the “Mississippi Equal Pay for Equal Work Act,” into law.
Guaranteed confidentiality with regard to employee disputes may be becoming a thing of the past if the current tide of legislation continues. As we blogged about several weeks ago, Congress just banned arbitration agreements for sexual harassment claims. Even more stringent than that new federal legislation, Washington and California have both recently passed a “Silenced
This week, the EEOC issued new guidance regarding pandemic-related caregiver discrimination. The EEOC assumes (probably rightly) that caregiving obligations are more likely to fall on women so discrimination against caregivers often looks like sex discrimination. While the updated guidance is specific to COVID-19, is it packed full of good practices to follow regardless of the