Hot Spots in Employment Law 2022
High at Work? Key Considerations for NYS Employers Regarding Legal Adult-Use Marijuana
DE Talk: Disability Education & Accessibility: Overcoming the Digital Divide
Illegal or ill-mannered? Title VII meets Ms. Manners
Williams Mullen's COVID-19 Comeback Plan: Conducting Reductions in Force Post COVID-19
Podcast: IP(DC): Drug Prices, Political Pressures & Patents
II-25 – Top 10 New Year’s Resolutions for Employers in 2018
I-21 – Sexual Harassment (Still), Political Tweeting, and Intersectional Discrimination
I-16 – Kneeling, Indefinite Leave, DC Updates, Non-Compete Consideration, and Pretty as a Protected Class
The City of Minneapolis will soon be one of the few jurisdictions in the country that prohibit discrimination based on height, weight, and criminal history. On May 5, 2025, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey approved amendments to...more
The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rejected use of a special legal test for plaintiffs to prove illegal bias in reverse discrimination cases. ...more
A recent Supreme Court decision clarified that discrimination claims brought by members of majority groups in so-called “reverse discrimination” cases cannot be subject to a heightened evidentiary burden. In Ames v. Ohio...more
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order barring federal agencies from investigating or prosecuting employment discrimination using the disparate impact concept. Most discrimination claims allege that an...more
The first two months of the Trump administration saw a flurry of Executive Orders targeting private and public sector diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”) programs, and March has been no different. On March 19, 2025, the...more
On March 17, 2025, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) Acting Chair Andrea Lucas sent letters to 20 law firms, requesting information about their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) related employment...more
On October 4, 2024, the Supreme Court of the United States granted a writ of certiorari,[1] agreeing to hear arguments in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, a Sixth Circuit case that seeks to determine whether the...more
The term “animus” is often used interchangeably with “motive” by lawyers and courts, but the two words have different meanings and connotations, and confusion between them can become an unnecessary complication. None of us...more
Should an employee’s burden to plead and prove workplace discrimination differ depending upon whether they are considered in a “majority” or “minority” group? The U.S. Supreme Court is now set to decide whether an arguably...more
Title VII claims alleging employment discrimination are analyzed under the McDonnell Douglas framework which requires that the employee first show that they are a member of a protected class (race, color, religion, sex,...more
Inexorable. Something that cannot be moved, stopped, persuaded, or altered. In Title VII parlance, the "inexorable zero" is the complete absence of a protected group from a workforce or job classification. When accompanied...more
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on July 25, 2024, ruled that under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, companies can be held liable for claims of a hostile work environment if an employee shares...more
Employers are facing an increasing number of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charges and lawsuits from white employees who claim that exposure to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) training at work...more
On April 29, 2024, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued new enforcement guidance on workplace harassment, effective immediately. Guidance on this topic had not been updated since 1999. The EEOC received...more
On April 17, 2024, in Muldrow v. City of St. Louis, the Supreme Court resolved a split among the federal circuit courts over whether an employee challenging a job transfer under Title VII must meet a heightened threshold of...more
On April 17, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously lowered the burden applicable to discriminatory transfer claims brought under Title VII. According to the Court, a showing of some harm—rather than significant or some...more
SCOTUS announces ‘some harm’ standard for Title VII claims based on a mandatory job transfer. The Supreme Court in Muldrow v. City of St. Louis, Missouri, et al., 601 U.S. ____ (April 17, 2024), held that where an...more
On February 14, 2024, California State Senator Lola Smallwood-Cuevas introduced Senate Bill 1137 (“SB 1137”), a bill that would make California the first state to specifically recognize the concept of “intersectionality.”...more
We’ve been discussing the various implications of the current ‘return to work’ push. Another implication is layoff decisions and the potential for disparate impact on remote workers, who tend to disproportionally be women and...more
On September 29 the EEOC issued a press release declaring it filed “143 new employment discrimination lawsuits in fiscal year 2023, noting that is more than a 50% increase over fiscal year 2022 suit filings.” The release also...more
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) released earlier this month updated proposed guidance on harassment in the workplace, largely based on developments in applicable case law and societal trends coming out of...more
On August 18, 2023, the Fifth Circuit overturned its longstanding precedent established in Dollis v. Rubin, 77 F.3d 777 (5th Cir. 1995). The new standard created in Hamilton v. Dallas County, case number 21-10133, allows for...more
The U.S. Supreme Court’s Bostock v. Clayton County decision recognized discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity as forms of sex discrimination, essentially incorporating such claims into Title...more
In a recent decision, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held that an employer did not violate the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) despite excluding pregnant workers from its “Temporary Alternative...more
The EEOC recently issued guidance regarding COVID-19 caregiver discrimination. This guidance reiterates previously-issued guidance (Enforcement Guidance: Unlawful Disparate Treatment of Workers with Caregiving...more