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 ...

http://polldaddy.com/poll/9273052/

The best answer is "In all likelihood." A minor tear that can be repaired may not be a disability (it depends), but a severe injury, or one that is inoperable with residual limitations, probably is.

http://polldaddy.com/poll/9273130/

The best answer, again, is "Maybe yes, and maybe no." The big point here is that you can't count on being able ...

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 ...

One of the marks of a good trial lawyer is knowing when to sit down and shut up.

Maybe these lawyers knew that, and were just desperate.

CorpCar Services of Houston (Texas) lost a racial harassment lawsuit filed by two employees based on a dancing gorilla (played by a white woman) who was hired to "entertain" at a mandatory safety meeting. The ...

Here's a lesson: Don't call your employee an "old fart," especially if you think you may need to fire him someday.

And don't call his co-workers "old farts" right before you fire the co-workers.

And don't give your "old fart," who has only a first-level warning on his record, three or four "progressive" warnings on the day ...

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has been on a tear this week, suing employers right and left, and getting some "wins" including a couple of big settlements . . .

Train-wreck boss. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas) vacated a summary judgment decision for a Tex-Mex ...

As promised on Monday, here is my magnum opus regarding the EEOC's new Enforcement Guidance on Pregnancy Discrimination and Related Issues. (Next week, I'll try to get back to spurious sexual harassment lawsuits against Yahoo executives and gift cards to employees who don't go to the bathroom during the work day . . . all that really important stuff.)

This past Monday, July 14, a divided ...

Guest post by Tommy Eden, a partner in Constangy's Opelika, Alabama, and West Point, Georgia, offices.

In all the hoopla over the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision last week, it may have been lost that the Court refused to review a circuit court decision compelling arbitration in a collective action under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

All federal courts of appeal to decide the ...

I presented a webinar this past Wednesday for the Clear Law Institute on the topic of pregnancy and lactation accommodation. As most of our readers know, many state and local governments are passing laws requiring that pregnant women be reasonably accommodated on the job rather than being forced to take medical leaves of absence until after the baby is born. And we are starting to see some ...

Employers, has this ever happened to you?

An employee in a critical-but-inflexible position -- say, a customer service representative -- asks for "intermittent" leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act. If the intermittent time off is "scheduled," it's usually not too big a problem. Most employers can manage to work around a situation if they know what to expect. They may be able to ...