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Supreme Court Rules That Courts May Review Whether The EEOC Has Satisfied Its Duty To Attempt Presuit Conciliation

Kollman, Saucier, & Jackson
04/30/2015
Agency Activity, Supreme Court Decisions
On April 29, 2015, the Supreme Court unanimously vacated a Seventh Circuit decision holding that courts cannot delve into whether the EEOC satisfied the conciliation requirement of Title VII. The EEOC has a legal duty to try settling cases first, but the question before the Court was how much a court could peer into those negotiations to ensure that the EEOC acted in good faith. Ruling against the agency, the Court gave employers a new, albeit...
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Casino Dealer “Trainees” Who Attended A 12-Week “Dealer School” Are Not “Employees”

Kollman, Saucier, & Jackson
04/29/2015
Wage & Hour
The US District Court for Maryland dismissed a complaint filed by three “trainees” of the Maryland Live! Casino’s 12-week “dealer school.” Harbourt v. PPE Casino Resorts Maryland, No. CCB-14-3211 (Apr. 21, 2015). The plaintiffs alleged that they attended the Casino’s complimentary 12-week “dealer school” training course for table games (only one of the three actually completed the course and was employed as a dealer at the Casino)....
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Supreme Court to Decide When the Filing Period for a Constructive Discharge Claim Begins

Kollman, Saucier, & Jackson
04/28/2015
Employment Discrimination, Supreme Court Decisions
On April 27 the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Green v. Donahoe to determine whether, under federal employment discrimination law, the filing period for a constructive discharge claim begins to run when an employee resigns, as five circuits have held, or at the time of an employer’s last allegedly discriminatory act giving rise to the resignation, as three other circuits have held.  See Green v. Donahoe, 760 F.3d 1135 (10th Cir....
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No Discrimination Claim For Employee Who Set Up Personal Break Room

Kollman, Saucier, & Jackson
04/22/2015
Employment Discrimination
One of the more interesting (or bizarre) “news” stories of the past few weeks was the one about the Alaska Airlines worker who fell asleep in the cargo hold a plane, awoke mid-flight, and called 9-1-1 to report his dilemma. Napping on the job, and causing a flight to make an early landing, is not good for an employee’s job security. The same is true for employees who create their own break rooms in contravention of employer policy. In a...
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EEOC Issues Proposed Rule on Workplace Wellness Programs

Kollman, Saucier, & Jackson
04/17/2015
Agency Activity, Disability & Leave
On April 16, 2015, the EEOC issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking ("NPRM") on how the ADA applies to employer wellness programs that are part of a group health plan.  The NPRM will be published in the Federal Register on April 20, 2015, and the public will have a 60 day period within which to file comments.  The EEOC may then revise the rule based on the comments before taking final action to implement it. Under Title I of the ADA, employers are...
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Business Judgment Rule Supports Best Buy's Firing of Disabled Employee

Kollman, Saucier, & Jackson
04/16/2015
Disability & Leave, Employment Discrimination, Retaliation
Every once in a while, I read a case where my first reaction is:  "how does someone like this ever hold a job?"  That was my reaction when I read the Court's April 10, 2015 decision in Sharp v. Best Buy Co., Inc. out of the United States District Court for Western District of Kentucky. In Sharp, the plaintiff was an auto technician who suffered from narcolepsy and cataplexy. Best Buy accommodated his conditions by excusing him from shift work, and...
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Court Rules Morgue Worker Injured While Transporting Cadaver Can Proceed With Pregnancy Discrimination Claim.

Kollman, Saucier, & Jackson
04/03/2015
Employment Discrimination, Pregnancy Discrimination
Tiana LaSalle is a van driver for the New York City morgue. LaSalle sued her employer alleging a variety of discrimination claims. Her chief complaint, however, appeared to be that the City refused her request for an accommodation with regard to lifting heavy objects during her pregnancy. In November 2011 Plaintiff was pregnant, and she provided her boss with a doctor's note informing him of the pregnancy. In December 2011, LaSalle told her...
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Transgender Discrimination? He Said, She Said...

Kollman, Saucier, & Jackson
04/01/2015
Gender Identity, Sex Discrimination
On March 30, 2015, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a complaint alleging that Southern Oklahoma State University (“University”) subjected Dr. Rachel Tudor, a professor who is transgender, to unlawful sex discrimination in violation of Title VII.  The University denies the allegations. Dr. Tudor is a male-to-female transgender professor who worked as a tenure track Assistant Professor in the University’s English Department beginning in...
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More on the Dangers of Unsupervised FLSA Settlements

Kollman, Saucier, & Jackson
03/26/2015
Wage & Hour
Suppose that you are an employer who has been found to have violated the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). In an attempt to curb future liability, you calculate the overtime owed to your employees who were mistakenly misclassified as exempt and print checks informing the employees that the amount of those checks represents “full payment . . . [for] wages earned, including minimum wage and overtime, up to the date of the check.” Can employees then...
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Merely Alleging Decision-Maker Bias Insufficient to State a Title VII Claim

Kollman, Saucier, & Jackson
03/20/2015
Employment Discrimination
It’s a victory for Fourth Circuit employers (Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia) as the court clarifies that a complaint alleging employment discrimination must contain facts in support of each element of a claim in order to survive a motion to dismiss. McCleary-Evans v. Maryland Dept. of Transportation, No. 13-2488 (4th Cir. March 13, 2015). In this case, McCleary-Evans, an African-American woman, applied for two...
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