The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission recently held a meeting with "a battery of experts" on disparate treatment in hiring. According to the EEOC, hiring discrimination continues to run rampant.

Time for a grain of salt here: According to the EEOC's press release, most of the experts were from the EEOC, or were individuals who had been denied jobs and claimed they were ...

In my opinion, the Supreme Court's decision issued Monday in Wal-Mart v. Dukes is fantastic for employers. Not all class action litigation is a racket, but much of it is, and plaintiffs' lawyers have been known to use the threat of financial devastation resulting from nationwide class suits to pressure employers into paying large settlements.

(No, really? You don't say!)

The Supreme ...

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit (Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wyoming) recently affirmed the dismissal of a race discrimination lawsuit against a union whose hiring hall refused to refer the plaintiff for laborer positions. Essentially, the Court said that the union was justified because the plaintiff had three no-rehire letters in his file from ...

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission held a public hearing this week on leave of absence as a reasonable accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

This is a smokin' hot subject, particularly in light of the ADA Amendments Act and its regulations, which expand the ADA's coverage to a dramatically larger population, the "new," more activist EEOC under Chair ...

Between "Weinergate," the indictment of John Edwards, and the relatively old news about Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Arnold Schwarzenegger, it is obvious that issues related to sexual misconduct, including sexual harassment, are not going away. How can you, as an employer, know when a sexual harassment case is a "dog"? Here are five signs that you might want to answer "yes, please, and ...

Happy Memorial Day weekend, everybody! Top stories this week:

When are employers liable for the bad behavior of their customers? The sexual assault charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former head of the International Monetary Fund, who allegedly attacked an African-immigrant maid in his hotel room in New York City, have spurred some interesting discussion about female ...

My internet friend and worthy adversary Donna Ballman, an employment lawyer who represents plaintiffs, had a good and sad post this week on AOL this week entitled "Nine Signs of Age Discrimination." The comments were especially depressing, from a number of people who said that they'd experienced age discrimination either in losing their jobs, or in their attempts to find jobs.

I've ...

A few weeks ago, I posted my thoughts about how the expanded definition of "disability" under the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act will affect administration of the Family and Medical Leave Act. I promised to follow up with a post about the impact of the ADAAA on the Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act "unless more pressing news intervene[d]."

As expected ...

Here are some "bad news" items from the employment law world:

Evil, money-grubbling lawyers (is that redundant?) who rip off their clients. Forbes has a disheartening article on "nine ways lawyers inflate their bills." Some of the alleged practices are astounding to even me, a lawyer: charging clients for use of conference rooms when the clients are meeting with the lawyers  ...

Plaintiff's lawyer Donna Ballman and The Evil HR Lady have had good posts recently on common employee misconceptions about employment law, including the "right" to see what is in one's personnel file and the "right" to take a break.*

*Depending on where the employee lives, he may have these rights, but in many states he does not. And the federal Fair Labor Standards Act does not require ...