Can an outside attorney defending an employer in a lawsuit under the Fair Labor Standards Act be liable for retaliation against the plaintiff-employee based on litigation tactics? One court answered that question "yes" last week.

Are these judges crazy? You decide.

In Arias v. Raimondo, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed dismissal of ...

Janet Dhillon, general counsel and corporate secretary for Burlington Stores, Inc., has been nominated by President Trump to fill a vacant seat on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and to become its Chair. If confirmed, Ms. Dhillon will serve a five-year term that will expire July 1, 2022.

I was expecting him to nominate Victoria Lipnic, the current acting chair. Ms ...

Supreme Court agrees to review "travel ban" cases and partially stays injunctions on the ban pending a final decision. The Trump Administration won a partial victory this week when the U.S. Supreme Court decided that portions of the preliminary injunctions against the "travel ban" issued in March should be stayed. What that means is that the travel ban is now in effect for foreign ...

The U.S. Department of Labor submitted its brief today in Nevada v. U.S. Department of Labor, the case involving the challenge to the Obama Administration's overtime rule.

Some very quick background: The overtime rule, which would have more than doubled the salary threshold for administrative, executive, and some professional exemptions from the minimum wage and overtime ...

LaLonnie wrote this post with Sandra Sok, who is clerking for the summer in our Denver Office. Sandra is a rising second-year student at the University of Colorado Law School. Before starting law school, she worked as a paralegal while earning her undergraduate degree from the University of California, Irvine.

A law was born.  On June 23, 1972, President Richard Nixon ...

We officially entered the season of summer this week. What are the most common ways employers can get burned? I can think of four right off the bat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qtbhrq8JyBw

(In the 1960s, melanoma was cool.)

Sexist air conditioning. It seems like a long time since we've read anything about this employment law "issue." The idea was that office air conditioning ...

The hearing on the lawsuit filed by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs against Google concluded on Friday, May 26, in San Francisco. As I’ve reported here, here, and here, the OFCCP is seeking historical pay data as well as names and contact information of approximately 21,000 employees.

The OFCCP believes that Google has “systemic compensation disparities ...

Happy Father's Day to all of our readers who are dads, who have dads, or who love one or more dads.

As most of our readers know, there has been a movement -- for which most of the credit goes to Ivanka Trump -- to get some type of paid leave for new parents. The original proposal advanced by President Trump when he was a candidate was for six weeks of paid maternity

And may it die quickly. The U.S. Department of Labor has taken formal regulatory action to rescind the Obama Administration's "Persuader Rule." The DOL has been enjoined from enforcing the rule since November 2016, but the latest action will presumably end it for good. Let's hope. David Phippen of our Washington DC Metro Office has the details in this Client Bulletin.

Mayor de Blasio ...

Just one calorie - not evil enough.

Satanic heavy-metal band Ghost is at risk of having its "evil mystique" ruined by some mundane employment-related disputes with former members of the band, according to an article in The Wall Street Journal. Since WSJ articles are behind a paywall, here is an excerpt:

Ghost, a Swedish heavy-metal band, built a cult following over a decade using demonic ...

Can a year-old rumor be enough to bring the OFCCP running? One administrative law judge says it can. Judge Lystra Harris recently ruled that, because of an oral complaint of discrimination, Mega Construction Project subcontractor Baker DC, LLC, must allow an early on-site by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs.

To understand the problematic nature of the ruling ...

Every now and then, I am told that it's unfair for employers to take action against employees who misbehave off duty.

"No it isn't," I reply.

Although I wouldn't recommend firing everybody who gets in trouble away from work and outside work hours, sometimes the behavior is so awful that you just have to.

Exhibit A: Colleen Campbell, former news production employee and occasional ...

On November 23, 2016, we issued a Client Bulletin titled “Employers Can Breathe A Sigh of Relief Come December 1: Court strikes down overtime rule.”  But a new lawsuit in federal court in New Jersey puts a gulp in that sigh of relief.

Background

As previously reported, regulations that would have more than doubled the salary threshold for Administrative, Executive and ...

Trump DOL removes Obama DOL guidance on independent contractors, joint employment. On Wednesday, Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta removed two Administrator's Interpretations on independent contractors and joint employment issued during the Obama Administration. Here is our Client Bulletin, which I wrote with Jim Coleman, co-chair of our Wage and Hour Practice Group. The ...

President Donald Trump has proposed to merge two of the primary government agencies focused on equal employment in the workplace – the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs.  Robin has discussed this proposed merger here, here, and here.

She's asked for input from the Affirmative Action team, so here it is.

The ...

As our readers know, discrimination against transgender individuals is often treated as sex discrimination under Title VII, as a form of unlawful "sex stereotyping."

But is it also a "disability" within the meaning of the Americans with Disabilities Act when an individual identifies with a gender other than his or her biological one?

Transgender individuals don't usually invoke the ...

I'm going to have to make this a regular series.

A few weeks ago, I posted about an "Ask Amy" column involving a bullying boss, which I thought had really poor employment law advice. (To her credit, Amy posted not one, but two, corrections not long afterward.)

Last week, Karla Miller of the "Work Advice" column in The Washington Post -- who is a bona fide "HR advice" columnist, and a very ...

You want my salary history? That's sex discrimination! Well, actually, it's a little more complicated. Kacy Coble of our Memphis Office has a great post over at FOCUS, our women's leadership blog, about the perfectly legitimate, non-discriminatory reasons why employers sometimes use salary history in setting pay -- and how alternatives may be even more unfair. As state and ...