How much can you do - and not do - about your employees' personal appearance and grooming? Take this quiz and find out! As usual, I'll have the answers at the end, so if you get one wrong, no one but you will know.

QUESTION 1: If I operate in a jurisdiction that doesn't have a law against appearance discrimination, I can make any rules about appearance and grooming that I want. 

TRUE

FALSE

QUESTION 2: My employees are required by OSHA to wear masks on the job. The masks are no good unless there is a proper seal around the employee's mouth and nose. Since facial hair prevents a good seal from forming, we have a no-beard policy. I have one employee who is Sikh and wears a beard for religious reasons. What should I do?

A. Let him keep his beard and pray that the mask will work without the proper seal.

B. Tell him he has to shave the beard off or lose his job.

C. Meet with him and explain that the mask is required by OSHA and the safety rationale for the rule. Talk with him about reasonable accommodations, which might include use of a different type of mask that works with a beard, or transfer to another position that doesn't require use of a mask. After you've talked and perhaps consulted with vendors or safety experts, make a determination of what to do that won't violate the law or endanger his safety while accommodating his beliefs as much as you can.

The holiday season is almost upon us, and with it comes one of the largest “gifts” the U.S. Department of Labor has ever provided – the new Final Rule on overtime exemptions, which will, in all likelihood, take effect as scheduled on December 1. Unfortunately for employers, this gift is heavily weighted in favor of expanding overtime eligibility for employees, and it does so by ...

Last week, two lawsuits were filed in federal court in Texas seeking to block the Final Rule on white-collar exemptions to the overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which was issued in May. Meanwhile, legislation that would delay the effective date of the rule until June 2017 just passed the U.S. House of Representatives, and there is other legislation pending in ...

Thanks to Law360 for alerting us to this!

Straight from the courthouse to you -- I haven't even read this yet, but here is a copy of the lawsuit, which was filed today in federal court in the Eastern District of Texas.

UPDATE (4:41 p.m. EDT): Here's another one, filed in the same court - this one is some trade groups and a slew of Chambers of Commerce in Texas!

  ...

UPDATE (10/17/16): As expected, the EEOC has appealed the District Court's decision described below to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

Last week, I reported that summary judgment was granted against the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in its transgender discrimination lawsuit against R.G. and G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, linked to the decision (but here it is ...

Employers, when was the last time you had a real makeover? Let's do one now!

The new white-collar exemptions under the Fair Labor Standards Act will go into effect December 1, but it's a good idea for employers to prepare now because there are a lot of changes that will have to be made, communicated, and taught to employees before then.

The salary threshold for most white-collar ...

Our friends at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have issued a Fact Sheet for young workers on religious discrimination in the workplace, which brought me back to the EEOC's older Q&A and Best Practices on religious discrimination, harassment, and accommodation.

The EEOC's guidance is solid, reasonable, and consistent with most (if not all) of the court decisions that I'm ...

No more pencils, no more books, no more teacher's dirty looks . . . except for one little quiz on employment law issues that come up during the summer.

My first job out of college was as a non-exempt clerical, and I wasn't a very "good fit." The work aside, I chafed at the rigid rules about start times-stop times-breaks-lunch hours-quitting times. If there was some work that I wanted to finish up and it was "lunch time," I couldn't take the extra 15 minutes needed to get it done. I had to stop right then and there, and go to lunch, or at least ...

"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 ...