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 ...

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 ...

Pretty obvious, but a decision issued this week serves as a good reminder to employers that all race discrimination is illegal, whether it's against members of minority groups or whether it's against Caucasians.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reversed summary judgment for a company that allegedly told a white worker that he was being ...

Last week I heard David Lopez, General Counsel of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, speak about EEOC litigation developments at the annual North Carolina/South Carolina Labor and Employment Law conference.

The EEOC has been litigating like a house afire, so I knew you would want to hear what he had to say. Mr. Lopez - who reads this blog and likes it! - gave me permission to ...

You may recall that in early October the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review decisions from U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Fourth, Seventh, and Tenth circuits* that struck down same-sex marriage bans.

At that time, every federal appellate court facing the issue -- in addition to these three, the Ninth Circuit -- had found that same-sex marriage bans were unconstitutional.

Until ...

Chai Feldblum, a Commissioner of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, recently presented an update on the EEOC's handling of charges alleging sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination.

At the meeting, reported this week in Bloomberg BNA, Commissioner Feldblum said that the EEOC is now tracking the intake and resolution of these charges, which I'll refer ...

Who should get harassment training, and why?

Executive Team? Of course. These are the leaders. If they don't set an example, then the company is in trouble. And it's hard for them to set an example if they don't know a little bit about workplace harassment and their responsibilities.

Managers? Of course.

HR? What, are you kidding?

Front line supervisors? Absolutely. These folks are the

Remember that Supreme Court decision involving alleged retaliation based on an oral complaint of violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act? The plaintiff in the case is now going to get a jury trial.

In its 2011 decision in Kasten v. Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics Corp., the Supreme Court found that an informal, oral complaint could be "protected activity" under the FLSA and ...