DEAR READERS: Before you accuse me of legal malpractice, take a look at tomorrow's date.  

Habit 1: Discriminate, retaliate, harass -- have a ball! There's a new sheriff in town, with a more employer-friendly, compliance-assistance-oriented U.S. Department of Labor (we think) and the nullification of burdensome regulations like the gone-and-not-lamented Fair Pay and Safe ...

Walter Olson of the great Overlawyered.com sent a challenge over Twitter earlier this week:

For those of you who don't know Mr. Olson, he's a libertarian.  :-)

I have to admit, I needed time to process this! I complain about these laws all the time, but would I really want to get rid of all protections for employees who want to organize, be paid a fair wage, avoid being thrown out on the street ...

It's been a while since I've written about H.B. 2, the North Carolina "bathroom bill," and I need to get with it.

Wrongful discharge claim based on discrimination is back. As we expected, on July 18, Gov. Pat McCrory signed into law H.B. 169, which amends H.B. 2 by restoring the cause of action for wrongful discharge in violation of public policy based on the North Carolina Equal ...

I don't plan to post much more about North Carolina's HB 2 "bathroom bill" until we start getting court decisions, but this is newsworthy.

As I've previously noted, HB 2 had a provision that eliminated the cause of action for wrongful discharge in violation of public policy based on violations of the N.C. Equal Employment Practices Act, NCGS Section 143-422.2. That law says that it ...

For the background on this situation, please see my post from Friday on HB 2. I spoke for almost an hour Friday evening with reporter Greg Lacour from Charlotte Magazine, and he asked me to go through his April 4 article "The HB 2 Provision Few Are Talking About" point-by-point and tell him exactly what I thought was inaccurate. I did, and he told me he was going to publish a correction. I ...

Argh! I was hoping not to have to talk about HB 2 again (North Carolina's notorious "bathroom bill"), but there has been so much misinformation about what it did to wrongful discharge claims that I've just gotta.

UPDATE (6:20 p.m. Friday, 4/8/16): I had a good conversation this evening with Greg Lacour of Charlotte Magazine about his article. We agreed that his article did not ...

Of significance to employers, the bill, which was signed into law last Wednesday, eliminates the common-law cause of action for wrongful discharge based on "EEO" discrimination. I talked about that here.

Here is a copy of the lawsuit, filed today in federal court in Greensboro, North Carolina. The plaintiffs are three individuals (two transgender men and a lesbian), the American ...

Big news for employees and employers in North Carolina -- the General Assembly enacted a bill on Wednesday (signed by Gov. Pat McCrory (R) within hours) that was primarily intended to preempt a certain high-profile municipal "bathroom" ordinance. (More on that in a sec.) But included in the bill is a provision that eliminates the wrongful discharge/public policy cause of ...

Holy Toledo! (Or should I say, Lansing?) Here is our next celebrity employment lawsuit soap opera . . .

You may have heard about the two Tea Party legislators in Michigan who were having an affair, engaged in a bizarre cover-up that failed, had to resign/were expelled, and then lost their election bids to get their seats back. It was a big deal over the summer and into the fall of this year.

In ...

So you think you're ready to terminate an employee. Are you really?

Here are 20 questions that every employer should ask itself before going ahead with a termination. If you think I've missed anything, please feel free to add your own in the comments.

GETTING STARTED

No. 1. Is the employee covered by a collective bargaining agreement? If so, make sure that whatever you do is consistent ...