Overturning a Ninth Circuit decision, a 7-2 U.S. Read more

U.S. Read more

The Supreme Court has agreed to review several significant employment cases in its October term, including one which will determine whether the anti-retaliation provision in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects a worker from being dismissed because she cooperated with her employer's internal inves Read more

Four of the seven cases involve the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, including cases to clarify whether an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission intake questionnaire and complainant’s affidavit is equivalent to filing a timely ADEA charge and whether an ADEA suit brought by a laid-off employee should allow t Read more

A $1.08 million award to an immigrant employee who was assured by management that his job would be “secure as long as he continued to perform well” and was terminated after his visa became invalid, will stand, rules the Ninth Circuit. Read more

In a 2-1 ruling, the Ninth Circuit upholds a lower court class action certification for approximately 1.5 million women who worked or had worked at Wal-Mart since 1998. Read more

A security guard company distributed an employee handbook containing work rules prohibiting employees from 1) complaining to clients, 2) solicitation and distribution of literature “at all times while on duty or in uniform,” and 3) fraternizing on or off duty with other employees. Read more

Federal labor law does not preempt union members’ state tort claims against their employer, the Ninth Circuit rules. The case involves a workers’ meeting at a Las Vegas casino that was interrupted by security guards when the participants started chanting and shouting. Read more

A jury must decide whether a supervisor’s racial insults and other behavior toward a Hispanic employee constituted a hostile work environment, the Tenth Circuit rules, remanding a lower court summary judgment decision back for trial. Read more

An employer hiring someone who lacks job qualifications cannot use the absence of those same qualifications in another applicant as a basis of rejection, the Court ruled. A female had twice applied for a locksmith position along with male applicants; none of the applicants had the requisite work experience. Read more

A General Motors customer activities manager with multiple sclerosis was forced to take disability leave after reports that he had skipped required meetings, failed to return calls to customers, had his assistant performing some of his job duties, and was seen driving too slowly on the highways.

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Hawaii’s prohibition of employment discrimination based on arrest and court record allows employers to consider convictions within the last 10 years that have a rational relationship to the duties and responsibilities of the position. Home Depot in Kahului terminated an employee when it found that he had been convicted six years prior for drug possession. Read more

The employee had declined to sign the release as part of her layoff severance package and subsequently filed discrimination charges with the EEOC. Then the company conditioned her severance benefit receipt on her withdrawal of the EEOC charges. Read more

The company had voluntarily turned over the employee’s work computer to the FBI during a child pornography investigation. The employee later claimed this violated the Fourth Amendment, and sought to suppress the evidence in his criminal prosecution that he had downloaded child pornography. Read more