The Employment Brief | Employment Law | Kollman & Saucier, P.A.

ACA's Employer Mandate Delayed For Some Businesses

Kollman & Saucier

02/13/2014

On Monday, the Obama administration delayed a significant portion of the employer mandate requirement of the Affordable Care Act. You may recall that employers with more than 50 employees were supposed to offer qualifying health insurance by 2014 or incur fines. At the request of the business community, that requirement was pushed back to 2015. On Monday, the Treasury Department postponed the deadline until 2016 for employers with between 50...

Darrell VanDeusen

02/01/2014

Disability & Leave, Employment Discrimination

It was pretty clear under the ADA that a temporary impairment was not a covered “disability.” But that was before Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act (the “ADAAA”) in 2008, expanding the scope of protection. Now, the Fourth Circuit has become the first appellate court to address the issue of “temporary impairment” under the ADAAA. Summers v. Altarum Inst., Corp., (4th Cir. January 23, 2014). Reversing...

Darrell VanDeusen

01/29/2014

Supreme Court Decisions, Wage & Hour

The issue of what constitutes “compensable time” under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) is, for most employers, not so difficult to figure out: you clock in, you work, you get paid. There are, however, some occupations where things are less clear. What if you have to put on a uniform (a police officer or fast food server)? Well, if you can put it on at home and drive to work, you do not get paid for “doffing and donning,” as it is...

Darrell VanDeusen

01/27/2014

FMLA

Employers who decide to fire an employee for a work rule violation usually feel pretty secure in the decision when the employee has admitted to the infraction. But it is important to remember that, in discrimination or retaliation cases, the real question is “how has the employer treated other employees in similar circumstances?” The need to focus on this “similarly situated” factor, as well as the possible “bad facts” in a case, was...

Kollman & Saucier

01/23/2014

Employment Discrimination

When the Washington Bullets (remember them?) won the 1978 NBA Championship, Coach Dick Motta inspired fans with the phrase "the opera ain't over till the fat lady sings." That phrase came to mind this week when I read about a decision reversing a $1.6 million dollar verdict against CSX Transportation in a race discrimination case. Bennett v. CSX Transportation, 4th Cir. No. 12-2477 ( unpublished 1/21/14). In Bennett, an African-American former...

Kollman & Saucier

01/21/2014

Litigation

As any employer who has been through a federal court lawsuit can attest, litigation costs make the defense of employment lawsuits a costly proposition. In many cases, the costs of defense are greater than the potential recovery if the employee wins the case. Perhaps the biggest driver of litigation costs is what has become known as "electronic discovery" or "e-discovery." This is the process of preserving, reviewing, and disclosing emails...

Kollman & Saucier

01/17/2014

Agency Activity, Labor Law, Supreme Court Decisions

It turns out that schoolchildren aren’t the only ones who care about how long recess is. On Monday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning, No. 12-1281, a case that is expected to decide how to allocate power between the President and Senate when it comes to recess appointments and could result in the invalidation of hundreds of NLRB decisions . For those unfamiliar with the case, by January 3,...

Kollman & Saucier

01/15/2014

Employment Discrimination, Litigation

Baiting your supervisor to make racially offensive comments while secretly recording the conversation might seem like a great way to score a big settlement out of your employer. However, that strategy can prove to be something of a double-edged sword -- at least in the eyes of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Johnson v. STRIVE E. Harlem Emp’t Grp., No. 1:12-cv-04460 (S.D.N.Y. Jan. 2, 2014). Rob...

Kollman & Saucier

01/13/2014

Agency Activity, Pregnancy Discrimination

As we have previously reported, on October 1, 2013, the Reasonable Accommodations for Disabilities Due to Pregnancy Act took effect for Maryland employers who have 15 or more employees. The new law requires that, unless an employer can show undue hardship, it must provide pregnant employees with various categories of accommodations upon request, including: changing the employee’s job duties; changing the employee’s work hours; relocating the...

Frank Kollman

01/10/2014

Frank Kollman's Blog

There was a thoughtful piece in the Wall Street Journal today written by Joni Eareckson Tada, who happens to be quadriplegic. She was commenting on a recent "wrongful birth" case and efforts by some legislatures to legalize euthanasia of people with disabilities. I think the following paragraph summarizes her thoughts: This winter, the American Medical Association classified obesity as a disability. We need to make up our minds. We cannot...

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Email Updates

ACA's Employer Mandate Delayed For Some Businesses

Fourth Circuit FindsTemporary Impairment Covered by ADAAA

Supreme Court Unanimous: Steel Workers Were Just Changing Clothes

FMLA Case Goes to Jury, Says Tenth Circuit

Fourth Circuit Overturns $1.6 Million Dollar Verdict in Race Discrimination Case

Federal Courts Considering Revisions to Electronic Discovery Rules

Supreme Court Hears Arguments on Validity of NLRB Recess Appointments

Recording Supervisor's Racially Offensive Remarks Leads to Reduced Jury Verdict

Maryland Commission on Civil Rights Issues Poster for New Pregnancy Discrimination Law

Some Thoughts on the ADA

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