A woman who was sexually harassed and allegedly raped by a boss at a Quiznos restaurant in Norwich was awarded $500,000 by the state Division of Human Rights ...

Sometimes, even the best HR professionals may feel paralyzed when faced with a major employee discipline decision, such as whether an employee should be fired. They hedge and keep asking supervisors questions, or keep an investigation open to get more information. If this sounds like your HR office when dealing with a discrimination complaint, relax ...

The ADA requires an employer that has reason to believe an employee wants an accommodation to begin an interactive accommodations process. Ignoring an accommodation request is dangerous. Instead, set up a process that logs all requests and puts the matter on the fast track to resolution ...

Q. We recently could not reach an employee who works off-site. Then we learned he was responding to customer messages by saying he was on vacation. After we learned this, he contacted his supervisor and said he had been on vacation and would be on vacation the rest of the week. His supervisor reports that he had not requested vacation time beforehand—and our policy states that vacation time must be preapproved. This employee had been a marginal performer, and now his supervisor wants to fire him. Can we fire him for this? ...

Congress just passed the nation’s first federal law prohibiting employers and insurance companies from discriminating against individuals on the basis of genetic information, a protection critics have called “a remedy in search of a problem.” Find out what the Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act prohibits, and why some believe it could cause trouble for employers.

Insist that managers tell HR when they issue any form of discipline, even an oral warning. That way, there’s a record that you can later use to explain why it only looks like a discharged employee was punished more harshly than others who committed the same offense ...

Courts often suspect the worst when employers fire severely ill employees. A judge may bend over backward trying to find a way to help the employee. An employer that can’t offer concrete, solid and compelling reasons for the termination may very well find itself trying to defend a “regarded as disabled” lawsuit ...

Q. We know that it is unlawful to discriminate against employees on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, age and disability. Do any other protected classifications exist under Texas law that might limit an employer’s right to terminate a worker employed at will? ...

But does the FMLA cover leave taken by an employee who thinks he has a serious condition and needs some tests to check it out? Yes, it does. That’s why employers should never discipline or fire employees while they’re in this “limbo” medical stage ...

To manage the workload, employers have to know who will be at work and who will not. After all, when an employee isn’t at work, someone else has to step in and get the work done. Of course, employees sometimes do get sick or have emergencies. A well-crafted call-in policy can help employers cope with unexpected absences ...

An employer often bends over backward when an employee says she’s been harassed. It feels compelled to treat the complaining employee with kid gloves to avoid possible retaliation charges. That may be a mistake, especially if the employee becomes disruptive and generally uncooperative ...`

When you fire an employee, you want the decision to stick. You certainly don’t want to use a flimsy reason for discharge and then find out later that other employees regularly ignore your rule. If the former employee is a member of a protected class, that’s a sure recipe for a discrimination lawsuit ...

Ordinarily, employers can’t punish employees who stand up for co-workers who are being discriminated against. But what if the employee speaks out against the employer’s treatment of someone who is not an employee? As the following case shows, punishing the employee probably doesn’t violate Title VII ...

What happens if management wants to fire or otherwise punish an employee for discriminatory reasons, and HR objects? Can an HR professional who is then fired for refusing to play ball proceed to file her own EEOC retaliation or protected-activity claim? ...

The ADA protects only truly disabled employees from discrimination. It isn’t enough that someone has been diagnosed with a medical condition—even a serious-sounding one like diabetes or a hepatitis infection. Each ADA case is judged on how the illness affects the individual ...