Allyn & Fortuna LLPPaula Lopez, September 18, 2014. New Jersey has become the sixth state to enact “ban the box” legislation, restricting private employers within its state from inquiring into an applicant’s criminal record during the initial application process. It is called the “Opportunity to Compete Act” and was signed into law by Governor Christie on August 11, 2014, but does not go into effect until March 1, 2015. The version of the law that was passed is a compromise between the employers’ interests in making fully-informed hiring decisions and the…
Nicholas Fortuna, July 25, 2014. The Supreme Court will determine next term if pregnant employees are entitled to work accommodations due to their pregnancy under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) of 1978. The case, Young v. United Parcel Service (UPS), was granted a Writ of Certiorari after the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that United Parcel Service was not obligated to provide any accommodations to Ms. Young due to her pregnancy. Ms. Young claims that UPS violated the PDA because it refused to temporarily modify her work…
Megan J. Muoio, July 10, 2014 The Supreme Court has already begun to line up cases for its term that will begin in October 2014. One of the petitions for certiorari (the formal request for Supreme Court appellate review) that the Court has approved recently is Mach Mining, LLC v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The Court’s review will focus on the law regarding the steps the EEOC must take before filing a lawsuit in federal court against an employer. The case, which comes to the Supreme Court on…
Employers Should Exercise Caution in Light of the EEOC’s Recent Action Against Separation Agreements
Megan J. Muoio, June 19, 2014 The Equal Opportunity Employment Commission has recently filed multiple claims challenging employers’ standard separation agreements. On February 14, 2014, the EEOC filed suit against CVS Pharmacy in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. The EEOC alleged that CVS’s standard separation agreement deters employees from exercising their rights to file discrimination charges and participate in EEOC investigations. The separation agreement in question contained standard, boilerplate language common to separation agreements and provisions that are commonly used by employers…
Paula Lopez, May 28, 2014. On April 22, 2014, the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in EEOC v. Ford Motor Co., rejected Ford’s position that its employee’s presence at the workplace is necessary to perform her essential job functions and found that Ford failed to establish that telecommuting, in this instance, would impose an undue hardship on an employer obligated to provide a reasonable accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). In doing so, the Sixth Circuit upended the typical deference given to an employer’s…