I am off to confer, converse, and otherwise hob-nob with my brother attorneys at our firm retreat this weekend. I'll be back next Friday (May 11) -- I hope to see you then!

Dear Jackie,

How ya doin'? I'm not too bad . . . just keepin' my nose to the grindstone at work and enjoyin' the spring weather, and not a whole lot else . . . same old, same old.

Listen, hon. I know it's been a while since we've been in touch, but when I saw your new "Enforcement Guidance on the Consideration of Arrest and Conviction Records in Employment Decisions Under Title VII of the Civil ...

"Ai, ai . . . ai, ai . . . have you ever danced in the tropics,

In that lazy, hazy, like

Kind of crazy, like

South American way?

"Ai, ai . . . ai, ai . . . have you ever kissed in the moonlight,

in the grand and glorious,

gay notorious*

South American way?"

*Those really are the words to the song.

Down South America Way, © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc., EMI Music Publishing.

Oh, those wild and crazy ...

Woody Allen once said, "80 percent of success is showing up." So true, so true!

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit* came out recently with a great decision on when "showing up" -- also known as "attendance" -- is an essential function of the job, and when an employer can terminate an employee for poor attendance even if the absences are caused by a "disability" within the ...

With Easter and Passover almost upon us, what better topic than a new case on the ministerial exception to Title VII?

A federal judge in Ohio has recently refused to dismiss* a lawsuit brought by a former teacher at a Catholic school who alleged that she was let go because of her pregnancy. (The teacher was not married, and she alleged that she became pregnant through artificial ...

Dear Readers:

We know how much you look forward to your Friday morning posting here. (Yeah, right!)

Unfortunately, our blog platform had a serious server issue this week that did not get resolved until a little while ago.

So our "Friday" blog post may not be up until Monday. We apologize, and we hope you'll check back with us then.

Thank you, and have a happy April Fool's Day and a great ...

Here's a strange little case for ya . . .

A loss prevention manager for a major retail store chain -- we'll call her "Loretta" -- had some performance issues in the past but was only five days away from the satisfactory completion of a performance improvement plan. She and a male loss prevention partner were called to investigate a sexual harassment complaint. During the investigation ...

If your job makes you want to kill yourself, are you a "direct threat" to your own safety?

In what has to be one of the weirdest ADA cases I've seen, a woman (let's call her "Gladys") was hired as a temp for a tech company in Seattle (let's call it "Initech"). A month later, Initech brought Gladys on as a regular employee. A month after that, Gladys told Initech that she suffered from chronic pain ...

When it comes to the pay gap between men and women, I am a skeptic.

Well, wait a minute. Let me try that again. I'm not skeptical about the existence of the pay gap. I'd be a fool to deny all that cold, hard reality. I just don't think it's usually a result of sex discrimination. Nearly all of the pay gap can be explained by the lifestyle choices that women are more likely to make. Such as the ...

The Wall Steet Journal has a feature on "Five of the Costliest Tweets Ever." (Subscription required, but I'll tell you all you need to know below.) This morning, Jon Hyman of Ohio Employer's Law Blog tweeted a link to a great flow chart from HR Bartender entitled "Should I Send This Email." Both are worth reading.

Number 1 of the "Five Costliest Tweets" was, of course, our old friend, former ...