In today’s litigious society it’s best for employers to set some ground rules on office romance. Adopt an anti-fraternization policy that bans relationships between employees who hold a boss/subordinate relationship. But take note: Employees who aren’t involved in an affair with the boss won’t necessarily win a sex discrimination lawsuit if they don’t get the perks their co-worker got.

Employees can always sue if they haven’t been paid for their work—even if they’re in the country illegally and not eligible to work in the United States. Employers can’t use their undocumented status as an excuse for not paying minimum wage and overtime under the FLSA.

Employees and former employees have just 300 days to file their initial EEOC discrimination complaints. But that countdown doesn’t start until the “adverse employment action” they want to challenge has occurred. That means that the moment employees know they have been fired, the clock starts ticking.

A federal judge has approved a $6.2 million settlement agreement between Chicago-based retail giant Sears and the EEOC. The settlement comes after the commission determined last year that Sears’ policy of terminating disabled employees rather than negotiating reasonable accommodations violated the ADA.

Unplanned absences can disrupt even the best-run workplaces. Of course, you don’t want truly sick employees to come to work if they have some contagious illness. Nor do you want to discourage employees from taking legitimate FMLA leave. Your challenge as an employer: Craft and enforce an attendance policy that allows or even encourages legitimate sick leave use while discouraging abuse.

Job restructuring is one of the reasonable accommodations listed in the ADA, and many disabled employees do ask for their duties to be modified as part of the reasonable accommodations process. If you reject such a request, be sure to document exactly why doing so would be unreasonable under the circumstances. You can use cost, inconvenience and anything else that might make drastically changing the job an undue hardship.

Some discrimination cases have a way of resurfacing even after you thought you had settled the matter. That can happen when the litigious employee reapplies for work. If you’re going to settle a case, consider including a clause that guarantees the former employee will never apply again. That might have been prudent in the following case:

Government employees retain the right to free speech, and they can’t be punished for speaking out on matters of public importance. But if it’s part of an employee’s job to speak up, that protection doesn’t apply. Those employees are merely doing their jobs.

Chicago-based aerospace giant Boeing has agreed to pay $380,000 to settle two sexual harassment complaints filed by employees at its Mesa, Ariz., plant.

Automotive supplier Eagle Wings Industries has agreed to pay a class of female employees $428,500 to settle sexual harassment charges stemming from illegal practices at its Rantoul location near Champaign.

In Turner v. The Saloon Ltd. the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit recently ruled that in a sexual harassment claim based on a hostile work environment, if at least one act of alleged harassment occurred within 180 days of an EEOC filing, courts can consider the entire time period of the hostile environment in determining an employer’s liability.

Q. Last month we reinstated an employee who was on military leave for six months. It’s the same position, with the same pay he received before he went on military leave. Effective Jan. 1, 2010, all employees in his department received a 4% pay raise in recognition for their hard work in 2009. Does the law require us to pay him at this increased rate?

Here’s a twist, courtesy of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2009 Gross v. FBL Financial Services age discrimination decision. The court ruled that employees have to show that “but for” their age, their employer wouldn’t have fired them.

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that Miami-Dade County’s ordinance requiring construction cranes to be able to withstand 140 mph winds is invalid. Construction firms had challenged the law, arguing that it would cost jobs, hinder workplace safety and was beyond the county’s (or the state’s) ability to regulate compliance.

If you grant time off to employees who aren’t yet eligible for FMLA leave, take note: If they’re on your payroll, their time off counts toward FMLA eligibility. That means that once they hit the one-year mark, they become entitled to those 12 unpaid FMLA weeks—and terminating them could launch an FMLA lawsuit. That wasn’t always the case ...