Author: Kollman & Saucier

I wrote about this last year, because in 2010, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission received nearly 100,000 new charges of workplace discrimination, the highest figure ever.  In the Baltimore Region, there were approximately 3,300 pending charges and about 13 investigators to handle them.   Well, 2011 was another banner year for charges being filed, and particularly in the Baltimore area.  The back log still exists and there is no quick...

In Coleman v. Maryland Court of Appeals, 626 F.3d 187 (4th Cir. 2010), the Fourth Circuit joined five other appellate courts in holding that the self-care provision of the Family and Medical Leave Act, does not apply to the states because Congress did not properly abrogate the states’ Eleventh Amendment immunity.  Despite the lack of any apparent Circuit split on the issue, the Supreme Court granted Coleman’s petition for a writ of certiorari to...

Mixed-motive theory was legislated into Title VII with the 1991 Civil Rights Act.  The theory provides that an employee may prevail in a case in which she demonstrates that illegal considerations were “a motivating factor” in the adverse employment decision, even where the employer would have made the same decision absent the illegal considerations. There is no similar provision under the FMLA (or any other anti-discrimination law for that...

Some members of the plaintiff’s bar characterize the creation of a private cause of action under Article 49B as a “leveling of the playing field” after years of fighting for respect in the federal courts.  Not surprisingly, I suspect, I have a different take.  “Employer friendly” decisions from the federal courts often come about because of the quality (or the lack of quality) of the case brought.  The notion that  Maryland’s courts...