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 ...

Not every obnoxious workplace behavior is unlawful harassment. To violate federal law, the harassment has to be unwelcome, based on a "protected category" (for example, sex or race), and "severe or pervasive."

But most employers aren't satisfied with banning only "illegal" behavior, and rightfully not. The law does a fairly good job of keeping us from each other's ...

The February edition of ConstangyTV's Close-Up on Workplace Law is now available.

Host Leigh Tyson interviews Susan Bassford Wilson, co-chair of our e-Law Practice Groups about the risks associated with "Bring Your Own Device" policies and what employers can do to minimize those risks.

You can watch it on our YouTube channel. Silly me - what was I thinking? It's right here, too ...

What a week for aging. According to one study, people age 65 and older will outnumber people age 15 and younger worldwide by the year 2030. This is referred to as a "population plague."

In more bad news for younger older people, Lydia DePillis, writing for The Washington Post, had an article titled "Baby boomers are taking on ageism -- and losing." From what I could tell, her ...

How many stars would you give Yelp as an employer? Read on!

I'm sure you've all heard by now about Talia Ben-Ora, the Yelp employee who was trying to live in the San Francisco area working as a minimum-wage customer support employee. She wrote an open letter to the CEO about how her pay did not cover her living expenses - and then she got fired.

Yelp denies that she was fired because of her ...

Oh, for cryin' out loud.

Last week, a high school principal in Bangor, Maine, banned a math teacher from having a little pink Christmas holiday Hello Kitty tree in her classroom for the holidays. She says she was told it was too "religious," although I'm still trying to figure out what religion Hello Kitty is associated with.

The teacher was irritated, rightfully so, and went on Facebook ...

I've been vacationing by the shores of Gitche-Gumee this week, so I'm trying to give myself a little blog-cation as well. Here are some entertaining and controversial legal or employment-related developments from the news before I left. With apologies to John Oliver, let's just call it "Last Week Today." (Hey! I'm on vacation!)

Feel free to debate and discuss in the comment ...

Four quick thoughts on the Ashley Madison hack:

1. Should you post anything on the internet that you wouldn't want to see on the front page of the New York Times? "No" used to be standard advice, but that isn't practical any more. I do online banking, but that doesn't mean I want my financial information all over the internet. Nor my credit card information, which is stored with ...

For a guy who doesn't tweet, Jim Coleman - head of Constangy's Metro Washington D.C. Office and co-chair of our Wage and Hour Practice Group - has suddenly become an awfully big Twitter celeb.

(Or anyway, as big a Twitter celeb as employment lawyers ever become.)

It all started last weekend, when I got a tweet from Suzanne Lucas, the Evil HR Lady:

As I told Suzanne, I really wasn't sure, so ...

Should an employer post high-level vacancies? Do Twitter birds fly?

Shortly before Ellen Pao lost started a "conversation" about sex discrimination in the tech industry, yet another lawsuit was filed alleging sex discrimination in the tech industry. In the latest one, software engineer Tina Huang has sued Twitter in California on behalf of herself and other female employees.

I ...