A jury socked it to a Wisconsin employer last year in a Family and Medical Leave Act case, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit recently affirmed.

Well, I take that back. The Seventh Circuit didn't affirm completely -- no, it ordered the trial court to give the plaintiff more in attorneys' fees than she had already won.

Check it out:

Tracy Wink was a clerical employee for ...

A federal judge in the District of Columbia has denied the AARP's request for a preliminary injunction against the wellness rules issued by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission last May. As a result, the EEOC rules -- which establish when participation in an employer-sponsored wellness program is "voluntary" within the meaning of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the ...

This has been a weird year for me. (And, no, I'm not even thinking about the election!) But I have much to be thankful for, and I hope you do, too.

BREAKING THING TO BE THANKFUL FOR: Yesterday evening, the U.S. Department of Labor's new rule governing white-collar exemptions under the Fair Labor Standards Act was struck down by a federal judge in Texas. I'll have more on the decision ...

Feeling whipsawed?

Last summer, I reported on the Hively v. Ivy Tech decision, in which a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled that discrimination based on sexual orientation is not "sex discrimination" or unlawful sex stereotyping that violates Title VII. That decision has since been vacated, and the case will be heard again on November 30 by ...

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is only the latest in a string of federal agencies who've been sued recently in an effort to stop their regulations from taking effect.

We have the two lawsuits against the U.S. Department of Labor challenging the overtime rule that is scheduled to take effect on December 1 (argument in those cases will be heard November 16), the lawsuit that ...

The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has vacated Hively v. Ivy Tech Community College, which found that Title VII did not protect against sexual orientation discrimination. I wrote about the decision, issued by a three-judge panel of the Seventh Circuit, in August. The court will rehear the case with all of the judges participating.

Here is a copy of the order.

Ms ...

UPDATE (10/14/16): The Hively decision discussed below was issued by a three-judge panel of the Seventh Circuit. This week, the full Seventh Circuit set aside the decision and agreed to rehear the case with all of the judges participating. Here is a copy of the order. 

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit decided last week in Hively v. Ivy Tech Community College that sexual ...

"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 ...

If your employee isn't a professional driver but spends a lot of time on the road, how "essential" a job function is driving for ADA purposes? Is driving "essential" at all?

In what I consider to be a very significant result under the Americans with Disabilities Act, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit recently ruled that driving might not be an ADA ...

This is the final installment of my analysis of the EEOC's recently issued proposed Enforcement Guidance on Retaliation and Related Issues. Here are Part One ("You gotta be protected!") and Part Two ("Was your employment action 'adverse'?").

For an employee to have a valid retaliation claim, it's not enough that she engaged in legally protected activity or that the employer took ...