If an employee misses work to attend church on Sunday morning and the company subsequently fires her, is that religious discrimination? A jury in Texas recently said yes and awarded the plaintiff close to $350,000. The verdict is a reminder to employers to remember your religious accommodation obligations.
The era of #MeToo has caused employers to hyper-focus on harassment claims. They have fine-tuned their policies, investigated claims more carefully, and acted swiftly and sometimes even in a draconian fashion upon finding any level of harassment. In most situations, these actions can effectively eliminate an employee’s viable claims of harassment. We are seeing this
In a case that garnered big headlines, the Supreme Court weighed in yesterday on whether a claimant’s failure to amend her EEOC charge divests the federal court from hearing part of her Title VII claim. While the decision makes some strong statements about the purpose of an EEOC charge in Title VII litigation, it is
You finally settled that tough discrimination or harassment claim. Now you just need to ink the settlement agreement, and obviously it will include a standard non-disclosure clause to prevent your claimant from ever talking about the events or settlement amount ever again – right? Well, depending on the state you are in, not so fast.
Employment lawyers and most HR professionals are familiar with the Faragher-Ellerth defense to a claim of sexual harassment. In short, if an employer can show that (1) it exercised reasonable care to prevent and correct promptly any sexually harassing behavior, AND (2) the employee unreasonably failed to take advantage of available preventive or corrective opportunities,
In the wake of the #MeToo movement, I have clients wanting to know what they can do both to improve their workplace and protect themselves. They all have good policies and regularly train supervisors and employees on them. So what’s next? Although there is no silver bullet, I suggest you start with the following three
In this #MeToo era, employers are, understandably, a little sensitive when someone raises a claim of harassment. Even with the heightened sense of peril, companies should remember that if they are doing the right thing—having effective policies in place and handling complaints appropriately—they can still prevail. A recent decision, Peebles v. Greene County Hospital Board
Like every other employment lawyer in America, I have been giving a good bit of thought to #MeToo and what it means for my clients. Many (although certainly not all) of the stories under this hashtag are about unreported harassment—egregious behavior that people did not feel comfortable reporting. My clients want to hear about a
Happy New Year! We hope you had a joyful holiday season and your 2018 is off to a good start.
As you know, over the last few months, sexual harassment allegations have surfaced all over the place, from Hollywood to Capitol Hill to the Today Show. The hot topic of harassment in the workplace has
The Fifth Circuit has issued another opinion in the continuing saga of Jackson State University and its past athletic director, Dr. Vivian Fuller—this one about retaliation against a witness. To refresh everyone’s memory: A secretary at JSU filed an EEOC charge claiming that AD Fuller sexually harassed her and then fired her. During its investigation,