Allyn & Fortuna LLPBy: Megan J. Muoio, March 6, 2017 The Supreme Court announced last week that it will hear the matter of Hamer v. Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago during its October 2017 session. The case comes to the Supreme Court on appeal from the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals which, plaintiff has argued, issued a decision contrary to the Supreme Court’s precedents when it dismissed her appeal despite an extension of time granted by U.S. District Court Judge Ruben Castillo. Plaintiff Charmaine Hamer was formerly an intake specialist for Neighborhood…
Paula Lopez, February 10, 2017. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) protects employees, age 40 and older, against age discrimination. The Third Circuit, in Karlo v. Pittsburgh Glass Works, 129 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas (BNA) 1461, split from the Second, Sixth and Eight Circuits by holding that employees over the age of 40 can make out a disparate impact claim under the ADEA by showing that an employer’s actions disproportionately impacted a subgroup of employees over 40, within a larger group of employees over 40 years of age, but younger…
Paula Lopez, June 3, 2016. On May 23, 2016, the Supreme Court decided Green v. Brennan, resolving a circuit court split on when the statute of limitations begins to run on an employee’s constructive discharge claim under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The Court, in a 7-1 vote, ruled that the statute of limitations begins to run on the date the employee gives the employer notice of his or her resignation, not on the date of the employer’s alleged last discriminatory act that drove the…
By: Megan J. Muoio, March 7, 2016 Currently pending before the Supreme Court is Green v. Brennan, a case from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit that involves the question of when 45-day period to file a claim of constructive discharge as a result of racial discrimination begins to run. The case was argued before the Supreme Court on November 30, 2016. A decision is expected sometime this spring. The appellant Marvin Green was employed by the United States Postal Service as the postmaster…
By: Megan J. Muoio, October 19, 2015 On September 19, 2015, three trade groups representing the home care industry filed an emergency application with the Supreme Court, seeking a stay of rules implemented by the Department of Labor (DOL). Those rules require home care workers who are employees of a business or outside provider to be paid minimum wages and overtime pay. Those employees, as well as home care providers hired directly by the person being served or someone on their behalf, had long been exempt from minimum…
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…
Paula Lopez, July 6, 2015. On Friday, June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision written by Justice Anthony Kennedy (and joined by Justices Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Kagan and Breyer) that the right to marry is a fundamental right protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell et al. v. Hodges, et al. means that all states are required to license a marriage between couples of the same sex and to recognize out of state same-sex marriages. The Supreme Court’s decision reversed…
Nicholas Fortuna, June 17, 2015. The Supreme Court will take another stab at defining the limits of class actions in the employment setting. On June 8, 2015 the Court granted review certification of a class of more than 3000 Iowa meat-processing employees on their wage and hour claims that resulted in a jury award of nearly $5.8 million in Tyson Foods, Inc. v. Bouaphakeo. The justices will consider the Eighth Circuit’s 2-1 decision that the district court did not abuse its discretion by certifying the workers’ collective and…
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”…
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…