It has been a long time since we talked about the Family and Medical Leave Act, but a couple of interesting and noteworthy decisions came out this week from Way Out West.

Our first case, from a federal district court in Oregon, answered the following question:

Can an employer require a doctor's note every time an employee takes intermittent FMLA leave?

YES

NO

C'mon! Even if he's an abuser?

Under ordinary circumstances, we advise employees who are victims of harassment or bullying to let the bully know that the behavior is not welcome. Then, if the behavior continues, the victim should take it up the chain of command, or directly to Human Resources.

This is fine for those employees who are strong and confident enough to believe that they can do it. But some are not. Maybe ...

February is Black History Month, and in honor of this special time, our Employment Law Blog Carnival will feature some of the many, many great African-American musical artists.

We'll start by going back to the turn of the last century, with Scott Joplin, the King of Ragtime. While a child in Texarkana, young Joplin taught himself to play the piano in a white-owned home where his mother ...

The National Labor Relations Board has taken the position that many garden-variety employment policies violate the law. These rulings place employers in a “Catch 22”—if employers rescind the policies, they could have trouble defending themselves in unemployment cases, wrongful termination lawsuits, or before government agencies like the Equal Employment Opportunity ...

As most of you have heard, the Congressional Budget Office reported this week on the effects of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka "ACA," aka "Obamacare") on employment.

The media messed up in its first accounts of the CBO report, saying that the Affordable Care Act would result in a loss of more than 2 million jobs. The clear implication, if not direct statement, was that ...

As our firm's Marketing Department likes to say, "Think before you tweet." A staffer at MSNBC was fired yesterday because of a tweet that started a political firestorm.

The story involves Cheerios, biracial families, the Republican National Committee and MSNBC. (Sounds like the start of a joke . . .)

Last May, there was a really cute Cheerios commercial involving a biracial family.

(I ...