When I do harassment training, I ask my audiences whether they think employers should ban the "N" word even when it's used by African-Americans among themselves. In my experience, the African-Americans in the audience have been the most vocal advocates for treating everyone equally in this regard. In other words, they argue, the word should be banned for everybody -- not banned for some ...

You be the judge of these real-life employment disputes! (I've changed the names to make it harder for you to Google the answers right away, but the answers with links are at the end of the post.)

1. Susan and her husband, who are white, are cleaning out their attic one weekend. They come across some quaint old clothes and sepia-tinted pictures, and among the treasures Susan finds an old ...

You can't fix stupid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CosD7h2703o

Homo sapiens is fired for teaching about homophones (and his sister is a known thespian rumored to have dramaturgical aspirations). A teacher at a private language school in Utah says that he was fired by the director for posting about homophones on an educational blog, which the director allegedly believed was ...

It was a dark and stormy night.

Creeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaak . . .

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaughhhhhhhhhh . . .

In honor of Halloween, here are nine things employers say that strike terror in the hearts of their lawyers. CAUTION: Pregnant women, anyone with a heart condition or seizure disorder, and anyone who is easily upset should stop reading NOW!!!!

No one will be seated after the ...

How many readers knew it was illegal to discriminate against white people . . . or guys?

The reason I ask is that we had a decision this week from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, which hears appeals from federal courts in the states of Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, and the Dakotas. A majority-African-American school board was found by a jury to have ...

John Gallagher, a plaintiffs' lawyer, had a good posting last week on TLNT entitled "Can an Employee Be Terminated for Simply Surfing the Internet?"

The point of the article was that, although this seems to be a legitimate ground for termination on its face, it really isn't because everybody surfs the internet at work. Therefore, terminations for this reason make John very happy ...

I am disappointed that the NLRB "Facebook Firing" case settled, even though I certainly understand why both sides wanted to end it.

In November, the National Labor Relations Board issued a complaint against American Medical Response of Connecticut, alleging that the company committed an unfair labor practice by firing an emergency medical technician who had posted some ...

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 ...