The striking down of the Privacy Shield by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) last week may have significant consequences for UK and EU employers which are headquartered in the US or which otherwise transfer the personal data of their employees to that country. Brief history – the original EU Data Protection … Continue Reading
In a previous blog, we discussed Darby v. Childvine, a decision from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio in which the court considered whether an otherwise healthy person with a genetic mutation meets the definition of disabled under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”). As a reminder, the ADA … Continue Reading
The religious education and formation of students is the very reason for the existence of most private religious schools, and therefore the selection and supervision of the teachers upon whom the schools rely to do this work lie at the core of their mission. Judicial review of the way in which religious schools discharge those … Continue Reading
“Today, we must decide whether an employer can fire someone simply for being homosexual or transgender. The answer is clear. An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable … Continue Reading
Resolving a question that previously had vexed lower courts and resulted in inconsistent rulings across the country, on Monday, June 15, 2020, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the prohibition against sex-based discrimination in employment set forth in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 includes claims of sexual orientation and gender … Continue Reading
We all know that employers have a legal obligation under federal law, as well as under various state and local laws, to provide their employees with a safe work environment free from sexual harassment, and that under certain circumstances, an employer can be held legally responsible for harassment directed at its employees. However, do companies … Continue Reading
With the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) now 30 years old, most people, and certainly all HR professionals and employment lawyers, know that it is unlawful to discriminate against employees (and applicants) on the basis of a physical or mental disability. What is less widely known, however, is that the ADA not only prohibits discrimination … Continue Reading
UPDATE: June 1, 2020: The NLRB announced via a press release and General Counsel memorandum that notwithstanding the judge’s order remanding the rule to the NLRB for reconsideration, “it will implement in full all of the rule changes unaffected by the recent U.S. District Court order.” Accordingly, the following provisons in the rule are in … Continue Reading
Quite a fun little case on TUPE this week, if you like that sort of thing (and on the upside, even if you don’t, at least it has nothing to do with COVID-19). Regulation 4(4) of TUPE states that TUPE-related changes to terms of employment are void in most circumstances. This has long been read … Continue Reading
With almost all of the current news being focused on coronavirus-related topics, it’s easy to forget that courts and agencies continue to do their jobs, issuing decisions and opinions. On occasion, one of those decisions is significant enough to warrant a distraction from all things COVID-19. A recent National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or Board) … Continue Reading
Our colleague at Squire Patton Boggs’ Sports Shorts blog discussed the recent ruling in the Equal Pay Act and Title VII case brought by members of the U.S. women’s national soccer team against U.S. Soccer alleging that they were discriminated against by being paid less than their male counterparts. On Friday, May 1, 2020, Judge … Continue Reading
Sunny Anthony worked for TRAX International as a technical writer. During the course of her employment, she asked TRAX to accommodate her disabilities–post-traumatic stress disorder and related anxiety and depression—by letting her work from home, which TRAX denied or otherwise declined to allow.[1] So Ms. Anthony sued TRAX, alleging that it violated the Americans with … Continue Reading
On April 16, 2020, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the First District Court of Texas held that an employer could compel a former employee to arbitrate her wrongful termination case, even though it had not signed the arbitration agreement, because the evidence demonstrated that the employer intended to be bound by … Continue Reading
Earlier this week, Mr Justice Snowden gave the first judgment on the Government’s Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme [here]. Rather than bask in the Bank Holiday sunshine digging into his Easter eggs, he sought to bring clarity to some of the more murky aspects of the scheme – specifically, how the Scheme operates when the employer … Continue Reading
Back in 2016 we commented on the increasing breadth of the vicarious liability concept as seen in a claim against supermarket chain Morrisons [here]. The store was held liable to a customer who was violently assaulted by one of its petrol station attendants in direct contravention of the criminal law, his training and all reasonable … Continue Reading
In non-coronavirus related developments, on March 16, 2020, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or Board) issued a decision in Baylor University Medical Center, reversing an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) decision that found certain severance agreement provisions to be unlawful under Section 8(a)(1) of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Section 8(a)(1) prohibits employers from … Continue Reading
Our colleague Justin DiCharia at Squire Patton Boggs’ Sixth Circuit Appellate Blog recently discussed the Sixth Circuit’s decision in a case involving an employee’s request to work from home as a disability accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act. As Justin notes below, this decision came prior to the recent COVID-19 pandemic and the massive … Continue Reading
If one of your employees is arrested and charged with something more than usually distressing and distasteful, the question will inevitably come up of whether he can be dismissed. The driver for that inquiry will often be a fear on the employer’s part of adverse publicity arising from its continued employment of him against that … Continue Reading
In a recent blog, we wrote about the stringent language requirements in Belgian employment: how documents drafted in the wrong language are null and void but that this sanction of nullity may not be to the detriment of the employee, meaning that the employee can do a “cherry picking” of the provisions that are most … Continue Reading
As discussed in our prior posts on obesity and disability law, there is continuing disagreement in the courts concerning whether obesity alone constitutes a disability, or whether obesity must result from a physical disease or condition in order to be a disability. On February 27, 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit … Continue Reading
In Woolf v. Strada, decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in February 2020, the court considered whether the plaintiff’s inability to perform his particular job as a result of migraines and stress arising from the circumstances surrounding his job gave rise to a qualifying disability under the Americans with Disabilities … Continue Reading
Here’s a question. Employee Mr U is accused of sexually assaulting A. She goes to the Police about it and simultaneously U’s employer starts an investigation into his conduct. The investigator J concludes that there is a case to answer, based in part on A having gone to the Police. On the back of J’s … Continue Reading
As soon as your employee announces that he is suffering from a mental health condition, there is a temptation on the part of both employer and employee to assume that he is thereby necessarily disabled under the Equality Act and so that with immediate effect he is entitled to all the protections available under it. … Continue Reading
As we previously reported here, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the Washington Supreme Court have been wrestling with whether obesity qualifies as a disability under the Washington Law Against Discrimination (“WLAD”). The dispute involves an applicant for a position with a railway company who sued in 2010, alleging that the … Continue Reading
