By: Megan J. Muoio, April 3, 2017 On March 27, 2017, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decided the case of Christiansen v. Omnicom Group, Inc., an appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. The Second Circuit reinstated the plaintiff’s claim for gender stereotyping under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but declined to overturn earlier precedent about sexual orientation discrimination under Title VII. A strong concurrence by two…

Share

Diana Uhimov, March 16, 2017 The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) recently issued proposed guidance on workplace harassment. The EEOC is a federal agency charged with enforcing laws that protect individuals from harassment based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, age, or genetic information. The Proposed Enforcement Guidance on Unlawful Harassment clarifies the legal standards that apply to harassment claims under federal employment discrimination laws.  In its press release accompanying the issuance of the proposed guidance, the EEOC stated that the new direction is essential because of…

Share

Date: June 22, 2016, Megan J. Muoio In June 2016, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) released the report of its Select Task Force on the Study of Harassment in the Workplace. It has been 30 years since the Supreme Court held in Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson that harassment is a form of workplace discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Workplace harassment takes many forms, such as harassment on the basis of sex (which includes sexual orientation, gender identity, and pregnancy),…

Share

Diana Uhimov, September 10, 2015 On Wednesday, September 9, 2015 the Second Circuit reinstated a sex discrimination case brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against Sterling Jewelers Inc. under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  The suit, initiated in 2008, arose from charges from women who worked for Sterling in nine different states.  The women accused Sterling, the largest fine-jewelry company in the U.S., of paying retail saleswomen less than their male counterparts and failing to give promotions to women for which they were qualified.  Sterling argued in…

Share

  By: Megan J. Muoio, July 24, 2015 On July 16, 2015, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued a decision affirming that it considers sexual orientation to be covered by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964’s prohibitions against discrimination on the basis of sex. The decision, which was made 3-2 in an appeal brought by an employee of the Federal Aviation Administration who claimed that he was denied a promotion because he was gay, sets up a conflict between the EEOC and certain…

Share

Paula Lopez, June 5, 2015. On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in the case EEOC v. Abercrombie & Fitch Stores,  Inc., reversing the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeal’s decision holding that Abercrombie could not be held liable on a religious discrimination claim for failure to accommodate.  In an 8-1 decision reversing a decision of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, the U.S. Supreme Court made it clear that Title VII requires employers to make efforts to accommodate an applicant or employee’s “religious observance and practice”…

Share

By: Megan J. Muoio, May 4, 2015 On Wednesday, April 29, 2015, the Supreme Court issued a decision in Mach Mining LLC v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which was argued before the Court in January 2015. The unanimous decision, written by Justice Kagan, was a win for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in its efforts to bring litigation after engaging in conciliation with employers and permitted federal courts a narrow review of the conciliation process. A woman filed a charge of discrimination in violation of Title VII…

Share

By: Megan J. Muoio, April 7 2015 On March 25, 2015, the Supreme Court handed down a decision in Young v. United Parcel Service, Inc., a case challenging the interpretation and applicability of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) and that has drawn national attention. Young was a part-time driver for UPS, which requires that its drivers lift up to 70 pounds. After Young became pregnant, her doctor advised her not to lift more than 20 pounds. UPS told Young that she could not work under a lifting restriction. However,…

Share

By Diana Uhimov, March 18, 2015. The U.S. Supreme Court recently heard argument in EEOC v. Abercrombie & Fitch Stores. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission brought suit against Abercrombie over its refusal to hire a Muslim teen, Samantha Elauf. Although she scored highly in her interview for a sales associate position with the retailer, she was not hired because she wore a black hijab—a Muslim headscarf she has worn since the age of 13. When the interviewer consulted with a manager about the headscarf, she gave Elauf a low score in…

Share

By: Megan J. Muoio, October 8, 2014 The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) continued its recent aggressive advocacy on behalf of employees by filing suit against two employers, claiming that the employers terminated employees because they were transgender. The suits are the first lawsuits ever filed by the EEOC alleging sex discrimination against transgender individuals under Title VII of the Civil Rights Action of 1964. These lawsuits comport with the EEOC’s Strategic Enforcement Plan for 2012, which expressly seeks to expand lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender coverage under…

Share