It’s not enough for employers to make nondiscriminatory promotion decisions. They also must prevent their managers from making comments that create a perception that discrimination is in play. Recently, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the…

When do legitimate reasons to terminate an employee become pretext for disability discrimination? In Burton v. Freescale Semiconductor, Inc., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit considered this question, as well as whether two…

Can an employer require an employee to undergo a fitness-for-duty evaluation? Or does such a demand violate the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)? The appellate court in Wright v. Illinois Dept. of Children and Family Services…

The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act requires employers to notify employees at least 60 days before a mass layoff. But as Calloway v. Caraco Pharmaceutical Laboratories shows, this is often easier said than done. In…

Lora M. Jennings, Attorney

Effective January 11, 2016, federal contractors are subject to Executive Order 13665 – known as the “Pay Transparency” Executive Order – which prohibits federal contractors from discriminating against employees…

One might think that an attorney performing contract work for a law firm is indisputably engaged in the “practice of law.” But this was indeed a matter of dispute in the case of Lola v. Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP. At stake…

An employer that provides an accommodation to an employee under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) may think it’s out of the woods. But employees aren’t always satisfied even with reasonable accommodations. The recent case of…

When one employee constantly complains, an employer may be tempted to take a “boy who cried wolf” approach and ignore those protestations. But doing so can lead the complainer to a lawsuit and the employer to court. Such were the…

The Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA) provides for the recovery of attorneys’ fees from the government when it acts in bad faith or pursues a matter that isn’t substantially justified. In the case of Gate Guard Services, L.P. v. Perez,…

Critical thinking is an important skill for every employee, including managers. But a supervisor’s ill-timed disapproving remarks about his employer’s hiring process can be misconstrued and may expose the organization to legal…