At a client seminar that my office presented during the very contentious 2016 campaign season, my law partner John Doyle delivered an introductory disclaimer. Although I may not have his words verbatim, I will never forget the message, which was as follows:

The only thing we’re partisan about is employers. That’s it.

It was a great way to dispel the perception that we were being politically partisan while we had to discuss the positive and negative impacts of the candidates’ proposals on employment law issues.

This morning, I got a comment from the plaintiff in an age discrimination lawsuit that I referenced last year, based on an article that had appeared in The Washington Post. Here’s what the plaintiff, Dale Kleber, said to me:

Well, Robin, I was surprised that although you have formal legal training, the article you wrote contains so many factual assumptions that simply are false. I suspect that your firm primarily represents defendant employers and your “analysis” is tainted with the bias of economic self-interest. In the near future, I expect to obtain an objective review of my case from the the Seventh Circuit. Your article, devoid as it is of even the most basic factual or legal analysis is simply an editorial masquerading as a legal newsletter. But perhaps that is what your clients want to hear.

I admit I did not think Mr. Kleber was a victim of age discrimination based on the information in the WaPo article, and I admit that I said so. Reading between the lines on his comment, it appeared to me that he had lost his case (since he was hoping to be vindicated on appeal), but I read the court filings today and it’s more complicated than that. (I’ll have a separate blog post about the merits of Mr. Kleber’s lawsuit, which I think is pretty interesting.)

As far as writing “editorials” on this blog, I plead guilty. This ain’t, after all, The New York Times.

I also admit that I and my firm represent employers, and that we are always on the employers’ side.

But what I’d really like to talk about is what it means to be “on the employers’ side,” or, as John says, “partisan” on behalf of employers.

Happy Labor Day Weekend, y’all!

The month of August was not kind to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The EEOC’s wellness regulations were shot down by a federal court in the District of Columbia, and earlier this week the agency was told that it could not require employers to report compensation data on the new EEO-1 Reports.

But the EEOC also scored a big ...

If you're a private sector employer, you can generally fire an at-will employee for his or her political beliefs or expression. The First Amendment, as we discussed last week, does not limit you. Depending on where you are, there may be state or local laws protecting employees from discrimination based on their political beliefs or activities, but those jurisdictions are the ...

The state of Oregon is the first in the Union to have a statewide "scheduling law." The new law will take effect (for the most part) on July 1, 2018, and will apply to retail, hospitality, and food services employers with operations in Oregon, as long as they have at least 500 employees worldwide. Bob Ortbals, who has been following and covering municipal scheduling laws, has an ...

On the recent uproar involving a major, major employer and its recently-terminated employee:

No. 1. Is it a good idea to provide an "open forum" to employees if there are certain topics that are off limits? No. If you want to provide a forum for employees to speak up, but only "within reason," then it's a good idea to establish and communicate your limits in advance. That way, if ...

Hot diggity! The summer 2017 edition of Retailer is out! Allison Wallrapp of our Tampa Office has a fascinating feature article about the use of robots in the retail industry and how it may not be such a bad thing for human employees. In addition, we have a graphic showing the jurisdictions that currently ban private sector employers from asking for salary history, and a handy recap ...

The beginning of July conjures many images for Americans – barbecues, picnics, fireworks.  But for many employers, July also triggered preparation for the annual EEO-1 Report filing.  Until this year, covered employers were required to file their reports no later than September 30, and the data submitted had to be from any pay period in July, August, or September.

But in 2016, the Equal ...

We officially entered the season of summer this week. What are the most common ways employers can get burned? I can think of four right off the bat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qtbhrq8JyBw

(In the 1960s, melanoma was cool.)

Sexist air conditioning. It seems like a long time since we've read anything about this employment law "issue." The idea was that office air conditioning ...

I'm going to have to make this a regular series.

A few weeks ago, I posted about an "Ask Amy" column involving a bullying boss, which I thought had really poor employment law advice. (To her credit, Amy posted not one, but two, corrections not long afterward.)

Last week, Karla Miller of the "Work Advice" column in The Washington Post -- who is a bona fide "HR advice" columnist, and a very ...

Last week, we talked about employment investigations. This week, I'd like to talk about what employers do with the information they gathered during the investigation. There are two main tasks:

No. 1: Figure out what probably happened.

No. 2: Decide what action to take based on No. 1.

It's almost impossible to generalize about No. 1 because the results will vary ...