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New York

Consider religious objections to vaccination

10/21/2021

Legal experts say employers are within their rights to fire unvaxxed staff. However, Title VII’s religious discrimination provisions still apply. That means employers must weigh whether employees with sincerely held religious beliefs against vaccination are entitled to reasonable accommodations of those beliefs.

Court: DOL can override arbitration agreement

10/07/2021

You may require workers to sign arbitration agreements to keep disputes over their independent contractor status out of the court system. Management-side employment lawyers have recommended that strategy for decades. However, that approach just ran into a major roadblock.

Set objective criteria for who loses job in layoff

08/05/2021

Use objective standards to decide who will stay or go during a reduction in force. That helps eliminate the chance that bias will taint the RIF process and trigger an employee lawsuit.

Advice to ‘put on big girl panties’ backfires

06/24/2021

When fielding a workplace harassment complaint, it may be tempting to suggest the alleged victim try to resolve the matter herself instead of filing a full-blown complaint with HR. That’s a terrible idea.

Stamp out supervisors’ racist behavior, racist slurs

12/03/2020

Make sure every supervisor understands that you do not tolerate any form of racism on the job, including use of racial slurs. Employers often pay dearly when bigotry rears its ugly head at work.

Class-action claims bias in coronavirus response

11/25/2020

As the coronavirus continues to wreak havoc in workplaces, a trickle of lawsuits that began in the spring has turned into a raging torrent. Lawyers are finding novel ways to litigate safety decisions employers made months ago, before the impact of the virus was as well understood as it is now.

Discover harassment by boss? Act ASAP

10/15/2020

There is almost no way for an employer to defend against an employee’s claim that she was the victim of quid pro quo sexual harassment by a supervisor. The threat of discipline or termination unless a subordinate agrees to have sex with the boss is usually a slam-dunk win for an employee who sues.

EEOC amending lawsuits to add LGBT bias

09/10/2020

Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Bostock v. Clayton County ruling, employers are discovering that pending EEOC lawsuits involving lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees have suddenly been expanded. Here’s how that played out for one employer that ultimately decided to settle.

Religion must be accommodated, not trivialized

07/28/2020

Remind all supervisors that unless a religious need unduly burdens business operations, they must accommodate employee beliefs.

Beware suits from staff who know your shortcomings

06/25/2020

Widespread protests calling for an end to systemic racism have caught the attention of corporate America.