When an employee requests an accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act, this sets into motion an interactive process intended to determine whether the requested accommodation is both reasonable and effective....more
Employers sometimes believe that eliminating a job position instead of terminating an employee for poor performance gives them a "get out of jail free" card for purposes of avoiding legal claims associated with the decision....more
5/2/2025
/ Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) ,
Appeals ,
Disability Discrimination ,
Employee Rights ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Employer Responsibilities ,
Employment Discrimination ,
Employment Litigation ,
Hiring & Firing ,
Reasonable Accommodation ,
Termination
The Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits employers from requiring employee medical examinations absent business necessity. The ADA provides a back pay remedy for violations, but limits these damages to discrimination on...more
4/4/2025
/ Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) ,
Appeals ,
Back Pay ,
Damages ,
Disability Discrimination ,
Employee Rights ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Employment Discrimination ,
Employment Litigation ,
Federal Labor Laws ,
Medical Examinations
Last year in a rare victory for the Department of Labor, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a claim by a Dairy Queen franchisee that the Fair Labor Standards Act prohibits DOL from establishing any minimum salary for...more
2/21/2025
/ Appeals ,
Chevron Deference ,
Department of Labor (DOL) ,
Employment Litigation ,
Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) ,
Final Rules ,
Franchises ,
Minimum Salary ,
Over-Time ,
Regulatory Authority ,
Wage and Hour ,
White-Collar Exemptions
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many employers established internal procedures to evaluate employees' requests for religious and medical-based exemptions from vaccination mandates. ...more
1/10/2025
/ Appeals ,
Civil Rights Act ,
Coronavirus/COVID-19 ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Discrimination ,
Employee Rights ,
Employment Discrimination ,
Employment Litigation ,
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) ,
Religious Accommodation ,
Title VII
The Family and Medical Leave Act provides unpaid job-protected leave for a qualified employee to care for a spouse, parent, or child with a serious health condition. This means that FMLA protections do not extend to employee...more
12/20/2024
/ Appeals ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Employment Litigation ,
Employment Policies ,
Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) ,
Hiring & Firing ,
In Loco Parentis ,
Parental Responsibilities ,
Special Needs Adults ,
Wrongful Termination
Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), employers are required to provide reasonable accommodations to disabled workers, but not necessarily the accommodation favored by the employee. ...more
In the days before cellphones, employees required to remain on-call for work were generally entitled to compensation for time spent at home waiting for the landline to ring. Given the ubiquity of mobile communication...more
When litigating claims under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), litigants are aware of long-standing case law that essentially awards a prevailing plaintiff with their attorneys’ fees absent extraordinary...more
The "Same Actor Inference" is a legal principle that recognizes the logical gap when an employee alleges that they were terminated based on membership in a protected classification, by a manager who recently hired them with...more
On Monday, a unanimous panel of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals refused to reverse an injunction barring enforcement of portions of Florida’s Individual Freedom Act. The law in question would bar employers from...more
When advising employers about the legal risks associated with a business reorganization, we generally advise that discrimination claims are less likely when a company closes an entire facility or department as compared to...more
2/23/2024
/ Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) ,
Appeals ,
Disability Discrimination ,
Dismissals ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Employment Litigation ,
Hiring & Firing ,
Reasonable Accommodation ,
Remand ,
Reorganizations ,
Retaliation ,
Reversal ,
Risk Management ,
Summary Judgment ,
Termination
Last week, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected claims from a university professor that she had been subjected to a series of retaliatory acts in the two- and one-half year period following her filing an Equal...more
We have become involved in an increasing number of disputes between companies and their former employees over ownership and use of personal social media accounts. In a typical situation, the employee will use their personal...more
When faced with potential employee organizing activity, some employers react by trying to address worker grievances through alternatives to union representation. Sometimes these approaches involve establishing an internal...more
1/19/2024
/ Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) ,
Appeals ,
Communication Workers of America ,
Complaint Procedures ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Employment Litigation ,
Federal Labor Laws ,
Grievance Process ,
NLRB ,
Remand ,
Special Committees ,
T-Mobile ,
Union Organizers ,
Union Representatives ,
Unions
When facing requests from a qualified disabled worker, the Americans with Disabilities Act allows employers to choose an effective accommodation, even if it is not the one preferred by the employee. Earlier this week, the...more
In last term’s decision in Groff v. DeJoy, the U.S. Supreme Court significantly increased employers’ obligation to consider religious exemption requests under Title VII. Rather than the previous de minimus burden standard,...more
12/8/2023
/ Appeals ,
Civil Rights Act ,
Coronavirus/COVID-19 ,
Dismissals ,
Employment Litigation ,
Groff v DeJoy ,
Healthcare Facilities ,
Healthcare Workers ,
Reasonable Accommodation ,
Religious Accommodation ,
Religious Discrimination ,
SCOTUS ,
Title VII ,
Undue Hardship ,
Vaccinations
Two of the biggest employment law fallacies we encounter relate to employees’ beliefs about the impact of their off-duty behavior on their careers. First, we see situations where the workers claim that employers have no right...more
12/1/2023
/ Appeals ,
Bias ,
Corporate Executives ,
Discipline ,
Dismissals ,
Employment Litigation ,
Employment Policies ,
First Amendment ,
Free Speech ,
Off-Duty Employees ,
Podcasts ,
Racial Bias
We often hear claims from employees who threaten to sue their employer for creating a “hostile work environment.” When we dig into the complaints, often the employee is alleging that their manager is mean or unfair to them,...more
8/25/2023
/ Appeals ,
Burden of Proof ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Dismissals ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Employment Litigation ,
Gender Discrimination ,
Harassment ,
Hostile Environment ,
Race Discrimination ,
Title VII
The Family and Medical Leave Act prohibits employers from interfering with or retaliating against an employee who requests FMLA leave. Last week, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals (which includes North Carolina, South...more
In 2021, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division issued new regulations dealing with the Fair Labor Standards Act’s tip credit. The tip credit allows employers to pay a $2.13 hourly minimum wage to tipped...more
5/5/2023
/ Appeals ,
Department of Labor (DOL) ,
Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) ,
Food Service Workers ,
Hospitality Industry ,
Injunctive Relief ,
Restaurant Industry ,
Reversal ,
Tip Credit ,
Tipped Employees ,
Tips ,
Wage and Hour
Over the past decade, federal courts have repeatedly reviewed religious-affiliated employers' ability to avoid federal discrimination claims. Courts recognize a "ministerial exception" that prevents discrimination claims by...more
Workers’ Compensation law is a double-edged sword. While employers cannot avoid Comp liability based on the employee’s negligent behavior, the injured employee cannot sue the employer outside of the Comp system for damages...more
These days, efforts by the federal government to mandate COVID-19 vaccinations for various groups seem like ancient history. Nevertheless, federal courts continue hearing challenges to the mandates filed by state governments,...more
Under the “stray remarks” doctrine, courts can conclude that an employer’s expressions of frustration, or comments by a manager not involved in an adverse employment decision, are not persuasive evidence of...more