The Spring 2016 edition features (in order of appearance) Naveen Kabir on the Supreme Court's Tyson Foods decision, Anna Rothschild on the Supreme Court after Justice Scalia and Merrick Garland's record on labor and employment cases, Mallory Schneider Ricci on the Supreme Court's CRST Van Expedited v. EEOC decision (if you haven't already, please check out Marcia McShane's very ...

These will be really quick takes, since there are so many of them, on the proposed Enforcement Guidance on National Origin Discrimination issued this week by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (The actual document is 57 pages long, not counting the table of contents.)

I'll try to focus on the less obvious/more interesting points.

Take No. 1: "National ...

Bill McMahon, my law partner and next-door neighbor, has a good analysis of the Supreme Court's recent decision in Green v. Brennan, in which the Court found that the time for filing a constructive discharge claim under Title VII starts to run from the date that the employee tenders his resignation, not the date of the last discriminatory act by the employer.

It's not that bad for ...

In Flanders Fields

By John McCrae (1915)

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing ...

In honor of Memorial Day weekend, here's a summary of the rights of employees who take leaves of absence to serve our country, and their family members.

USERRA

The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act of 1994 protects employees who leave their jobs to serve in various military capacities.

Five year (or more) rule. An employee's right of reemployment is good for at ...

Administrative partner Teresa Ryder Bult has a guest post this week: "Inverting Views on Networking: How Can You Influence Someone's Life Today?"

Hint: Don't make it all about you.

(Teresa is the original founding chair of Constangy's Women's Network.)

One more thing: The FOCUS blog was having technical difficulties with email notifications to subscribers. The problem ...

Do you know the difference between an idle threat and a serious one?

Your kid plays a joke on you, and you respond, "I'm gonna kill you" while laughing at the joke. Idle threat, or serious?

A co-worker tells you she will slash your tires if you vote against the union. Idle threat, or serious?

A co-worker tells you that she heard from another co-worker that yet another co-worker said she would ...

I admit it.  I have a crush on Justice Thomas.  Today’s unanimous Supreme Court opinion in CRST Van Expedited, Inc. v. EEOC – holding that a merit-based dismissal is not necessary for a defendant to qualify as the “prevailing party” in a Title VII case – would make any employment defense lawyer’s heart skip a beat.

But the majority opinion is not what caused me to swoon. Justice ...

A semi-recent article in the New York Post -- "The Corporate 'Cure' for Sexual Harassment Only Feeds the Disease" -- cited a couple of studies that allegedly proved that sexual harassment training is worse than doing nothing because it makes men resentful and more likely to tolerate harassment.

Wow. That's terrible!

Except that it's not precisely true. What these studies ...

"Do this, don't do that, can't you read the rules . . ."*

Of course, the mega-topic this week was the U.S. Department of Labor's Final Rule on white-collar exemptions to the overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Ellen Kearns, co-chair of our Wage and Hour Practice Group, wrote a great Client Bulletin on the Rule, taking a complex subject and explaining it in a pithy and ...