Earlier this summer, in writing about reference information for bad employees (I call them "the Axis of Evil"), I mentioned employment investigations, noting that this was a topic for another post. Well, today is the day. Now that the Supreme Court has officially recognized "cat's paw" liability for employers whose decisions are tainted by an individual with an unlawful motive, it ...

Odds and ends from the employment law world this week:

Facebook rant about wages didn't create retaliation claim. Molly DiBianca of the Delaware Employment Law Blog reports on a decision from a federal court in Florida saying that a Facebook rant about an employer's alleged violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act overtime provisions was not "protected activity" that would trigger ...

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 ...

Latest dispatches from the employment law front:

If you're going to be an SOB, make sure you're an SOB to everybody. A federal district court in Kentucky granted summary judgment to the employer in a sexual harassment case. The female plaintiffs alleged that a charlatan "turnaround specialist" hired by their CEO was not "motivated by sexual desire" but was simply abusive and ...

Who, if anybody, has the right to use the "N" word in the workplace? Should an employer treat African-Americans who use this language differently from non-African-Americans who do?

These are perennial questions that arise during harassment training, and there has been little guidance from the courts or the EEOC. The opinions of individual lawyers no doubt vary. My own advice has been ...

As the Thanksgiving holiday approaches, the federal Transportation Security Administration is under fire for imposing full-body scans or pat-downs on the flying public. Although the agency says that the scans/pat-downs are not intrusive and that the privacy and dignity of travelers is protected, two TSA "HR" stories make that a difficult sell.

The TSA has been embarrassed more than ...

Bruce Carton of Legal Blog Watch (via Overlawyered.com) notes the passing of Nordstrom's employee "handbook," which consisted of a single index card with the admonition to "use good judgment in all situations." Meanwhile, at Minding the Workplace and Jottings By An Employer's Lawyer, the authors note that many, if not all, of our workplace problems -- particularly ...

You kiss your mother with that mouth? Evil HR Lady has an entertaining discussion about a nasty e-mail she received from a "cusser" who didn't like the fact that she had expressed opposition to cussing at work. (Not all cussing -- just the "every other word out of your mouth" variety.) Anyway, the e-mail contained -- you guessed it -- cussing just about every other word. To provide the flavor ...

In my previous post, I noted that litigation under the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act was starting to emerge from its dormant stage and promised to provide some best practices for employers to follow.

The most important thing to remember about the ADAAA is that, for the most part, all it does is change (albeit drastically) the definition of "disability." The ADAAA does ...