An employee’s attempt to end fifty years of discrimination-law precedent went nowhere on appeal. But, two of the three judges who rejected it wrote separately to say they’d take another case just to do it. TL;DR: A federal appeals court affirmed summary judgment for the employer on race discrimination, retaliation,
A supervisor swore in an affidavit that he had no idea an employee was disabled. His own meeting notes said otherwise, and that contradiction just cost a Texas community college its win. TL;DR: A federal appeals court revived a former college employee’s disability discrimination, disability retaliation, and FMLA retaliation claims
One racial slur wasn’t enough to put a company on notice. A federal appeals court explained why and upheld the jury’s verdict for the employer. TL;DR: A federal appeals court affirmed a jury verdict for an employer in a race-based hostile work environment case, holding that one earlier incident involving
An employer told the EEOC one story to get a discrimination charge dismissed as too late. It told the court a different story to win summary judgment. The judge noticed. TL;DR: A magistrate judge recommended denying summary judgment on the EEOC’s age discrimination claim against a meat processing company, finding
Roughly one in ten of a railroad’s train and engine employees marked off using FMLA leave on Christmas Day. The railroad ran that spike through an algorithm, then a hearing, then a dishonesty finding, and a federal court just said a jury needs to check that whole chain. TL;DR: A
She reported the harassment and lost her job. Her supervisor testified that the man she reported wasn’t disciplined; he got training instead. TL;DR: The Seventh Circuit revived an HR manager’s sex discrimination and retaliation claims after she was fired following months of reporting sexist conduct by other managers, holding a
Last year, a jury hit the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the professional association many HR practitioners look to for certifications and guidance, with a $10 million punitive damages verdict. Now its own insurance company says that’s SHRM’s bill to pay, not theirs. TL;DR: SHRM’s employment practices insurer has
Let’s be honest: nobody dreams of ending up on the wrong end of an employment lawsuit. And yet, every year, well-meaning HR teams and in-house counsel find themselves scrambling to answer the question, “Wait, how did this become a case?” Enter Andrew Lacy, Jr. — a man who spent years
A coworker allegedly groped her and threatened her on shift. Years later, she got fired not for reporting it, but for how she finally hit back. TL;DR: An EMT alleged a coworker had harassed and groped her for years but never filed a claim over it. Years later, she retaliated
A hospital tech got caught sleeping on the overnight shift. Blaming a diabetes medication for it, only after getting caught, didn’t turn her firing into disability discrimination. TL;DR: An imaging technologist was fired for sleeping during her overnight shift and sued for disability discrimination and interference with medical leave. She
Answering a page takes fifteen seconds. Making the follow-up call can quietly turn your commute into paid time. TL;DR: A companion DOL opinion letter addresses a field service engineer’s pre-shift routine: receiving pages, calling clients to schedule appointments, and driving to the first job site. WHD concluded that receiving pages
Your office staff want to skip rush hour by working part of the day from home. The DOL just told you exactly how to let them do it without creating a wage and hour problem. TL;DR: A new DOL opinion letter addresses whether letting non-exempt office employees split their workday
President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) on July 26, 1990, thirty-six years ago yesterday. Here’s the timeline that brought us from that signing to the law you manage today, and where the real risk lives now. TL;DR: The ADA just turned 36, but the law
Menopause is about to get its own line in the U.S. Code, if two House members get their way. Water bottles, bathroom breaks, and sit-or-stand accommodations would become presumptively reasonable under a brand-new federal standard. TL;DR: U.S. Reps. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) and Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) introduced the Menopausal Workers’ Fairness
A jury handed down two verdicts in the same ADA case that couldn’t both be true. The trial judge tossed one out, and a federal appeals court just said she was right to. TL;DR: A deaf job applicant sued a medical transport company that declined to hire him as a
On July 21, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission voted, publicly, to kill sixty years of federal race, sex, and national origin reporting. Cue the sad violins. This is happening. TL;DR: On July 21, 2026, the EEOC voted to issue a formal Notice of Proposed Rulemaking rescinding the EEO-1 through