If you fire an employee for an indefensible reason, chances are you will get a charge or a lawsuit out of it, even if the indefensible reason was legal. That's HR/Legal 101. (In other words, don't believe that "employment at will" propaganda.)

If you realize your reason wasn't too good and therefore "improve" it a little after the fact, that just makes things worse. If you "improve" it ...

Are you in retail, fashion, or marketing, and getting ready to reject a job candidate because he or she doesn't have the "look" you want?

You might want to look before you leap. Or before you have to go to trial in front of a California jury against the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The apparel chain Abercrombie & Fitch is learning that the hard way.

Abercrombie was sued a while ago ...

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 ...

Well! OK!

It's been an interesting week, hasn't it? Congratulations to President Obama on winning a second term. My Election 2012 coverage would not be complete without some labor and employment prognostications for Obama Administration II.*

*Please do not read these again in 2016 to see how accurate I was. I don't want to be known as the Dick Morris of employment law bloggers.

In August, I posted about a court decision under the Americans with Disabilities Act involving a county social services employee who had an alleged sensitivity to Bath and Body Works's Japanese Cherry Blossom scent. I noted that the court decision, which allowed the case to go forward, was based only on the allegations in the plaintiff's lawsuit and the initial response of the county ...

All right, kiddies. My posts over the last few weeks have been juicy and entertaining. (Or as juicy and entertaining as employment law can get.) But summer is over, and it's time to buckle down.

"I h8 school!"

The Supreme Court of the United States (aka "SCOTUS") began its new term this past Monday, and it will be reviewing at least four employment cases, as well as two non-employment cases ...

Many thanks to Nathan Johnson for submitting this guest post!

Here is a brief breakdown of this week's 5-4 Supreme Court decision in Christopher v. SmithKline Beecham Corp., which held that pharmaceutical reps are subject to the "outside sales" exemption to the overtime requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act. The Court split along the expected lines: Justice Samuel Alito wrote ...

I was off enjoying the Florida sunshine last weekend while learning the latest techniques in pettifoggery and obfuscation (kidding!), but I hope I'll be making up for it today with a good case answering the musical question: "What does an employer do when it finds out that its employee on 'medical leave' is actually doing stuff?" You know, like working another job, or hanging out at the gun ...

A couple of interesting gems I got this week from other people (thanks, you guys!):

Pro hac vice statements defeat summary judgment! A federal judge in North Carolina denied summary judgment to a law firm who was sued by an associate for wrongful discharge based on race. Although the law firm's evidence showed that the associate was a poor performer, the judge found that statements made ...

The Chinese New Year is almost upon us. In honor of the Year of the Dragon, and in fond farewell to bilingual Jon Huntsman, who announced that he was withdrawing from the presidential race (hmm . . . speaking Mandarin in a Republican debate? . . . not sure that's a choice I'd have made), we have enough employment and HR blog posts to get you through the entire new year's season without repeating ...