• The HR Specialist - Print Newsletter
  • HR Specialist: Employment Law
  • The HR Weekly

Employment Law

Your choice on diabetes accommodations: Pay little or nothing now or $150K later

04/14/2025
Most disability accommodations don’t cost much at all to provide. Penalties for violating the ADA by not accommodating an employee’s health needs can be expensive indeed.

Understand how pregnancy accommodations differ from other accommodations

04/14/2025
Accommodations under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act can look very familiar at first glance. Like disability accommodations under the ADA and religious accommodations under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, pregnancy accommodations under the PWFA require having an interactive conversation with the employee designed to identify what changes the employer can make to accommodate the employee’s needs. But the similarities between the laws end there.

Electronic signatures: What employers need to know

04/09/2025
For centuries, a signature at the bottom of a piece of paper has meant someone agrees with what the document says. Can keystrokes carry the same legal weight as pen strokes? Yes. Two federal laws establish the legality of e-signatures in this country: the UETA and E-SIGN.

Racial remarks? Respond quickly and forcefully

04/09/2025
As a manager, it’s your responsibility to ensure that none of your people behave in a way that diminishes the sense of mutual respect and dignity in your unit. That’s what insensitive racial remarks do.

Schedule cut to accommodate pump breaks? Not so fast

04/09/2025
While breaks to express breast milk may disrupt the workday, they’re a legal entitlement meant to allow working mothers the ability to earn a paycheck while providing their child with nourishment widely believed to be the best food for growing infants.

Wilcox again removed from NLRB, leaving it unable to conduct business

04/07/2025
The NLRB again lacks enough members to conduct substantive business, although it continues to receive unfair labor practices complaints.

EEOC data show rise in claims alleging neurodiversity discrimination

04/07/2025
While still a small subset of EEOC disability discrimination cases, resolution of claims related to autism more than doubled between 2016 and 2023, rising from 0.4% of 1.5% disability bias cases.

Recognize legal peril of automatically rejecting requests for religious accommodation

04/04/2025
Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Groff v. DeJoy, employees and their lawyers have been testing the limits on how far employers must go to accommodate religious beliefs and practices.

Litigation alternatives: While the EEOC is dropping bias cases, other advocates are stepping in

04/04/2025
While the EEOC may not want to move ahead with cases it already filed on behalf of transgender employees, that does not mean employers are free to discriminate based on gender identity. There are still multiple avenues that employees can use to sue over the issue.

Recognize the bright line between harassment and run-of-the-mill personality clashes

03/31/2025
Employees don’t always get along—and you can’t force them to actually like each other. Take solace in the fact that unless workplace animosity creates a truly hostile environment, allegations of discrimination or harassment won’t succeed in court unless an employee can prove that a co-worker targeted him because of protected characteristics such as race, gender, religion or national origin.