Category Archives: discrimination

Will the Supreme Court weaken an important civil rights law?

Posted on November 14, 2019 by Jon Rehm

Overshadowed by the presidential impeachment hearings that started on Wednesday, the United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case could weaken an important civil rights and employment law.

Comcast v. National Association of African American-Owned Media and Entertainment Studios and Networks involves a case where Byron Allen alleges Comcast refused to carry channels produced by his company due in part to his status as an African-American. He alleges Comcast ran lesser-known channels from white-owned companies.

Allen brought his case under 42 USC 1981, a law passed after the Civil War during the Reconstruction Era, that prohibits racial discrimination in contracting. This law applies to employment discrimination. Comcast is arguing that the Allen must show race was a “but for” factor in their decision not to run his channels.

But for causation is considered a harder standard than either motivating factor or contributing factor causation. Requiring but for causation in 1981 cases would weaken the effect of the law and make it easier for employers to discriminate against African-Americans.

African-Americans are still covered under Title VII which only requires proving race is a motivating factor for employment discrimination. But Section 1981 has some important advantages over Title VII.

First of all Section 1981 does not require that employees file a charge of discrimination with a civil rights agency or exhaust administrative remedies. I believe this requirement amounts to private sovereign immunity for employers. As a practical matter, exhaustion of remedies requirement can serve to delay the resolution of cases and make it harder for individuals to pursue justice.

Secondly Section 1981 has a four year statute of limitations. Statute of limitations are much shorter and unclear under Title VII and state civil rights laws. Claimants also have 90 days to file a lawsuit after being issued a right to sue letter. Claimants are often left scrambling trying to find lawyers to file a timely complaint. When you have a clear four year statute of limitations it’s easier to bring a claim.

But if Section 1981 is weakened by the Supreme Court, the procedural advantages of bringing such a claim will be cancelled out by the weaker substantive law.

Comcast is the second major employment law case argued this term. In October there was some indication that the court may expand Title VII to at least cover sexual orientation. I had a more pessimistic prediction before oral argument. My feeling is that the court seems inclined to expand the scope of civil rights protections while at the same time weakening the protections in those laws.

Will the employment at-will doctrine sink LGBTQ rights under Title VII?

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Jon Rehm

The Supreme Court will hear arguments Tueday about whether Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 expressly prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. What you probably won’t hear about is the importance of the employment at-will doctrine in how the case is decided

The case for including sexual orientation within Title VII is based on the“sex plus” theory of discrimination which prohibits gender stereotyping. More broadly the equal protection arguments underlying the 2015 decision legalizing same-sex marriage would also support the inclusion of sexual orientation and gender identity within federal civil rights law.

In a brief the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) argued against expanding TItle VII protections to sexual orientation and gender identity based on a narrow reading of Title VII. Though the DOJ brief doesn’t mention the concept or doctrine of employment at-will expressly, its influence is felt strongly.

Employment at-will is judge-created or, according to an authoritative essay written by attorney Ronald B. Standler, a law professor-created doctrine created in the late 19^th century. Employment at-will is a doctrine that holds an employer is free to fire an employee without cause at any time, for any reason without notice. On the flip side an employee is free to quit at any time. (Of course, employment at-will doesn’t stop employers from whining about employee ghosting. Employers also seek to enforce non-compete agreements against employees who quit)

One consequence of employment at-will, as pointed out on this blog, is that courts will narrowly interpret any exceptions to employment at-will doctrine.

Civil rights laws are exceptions to employment at-will. But opponents of expanding Title VII expressly to sexual orientation and gender identity are arguing to narrowly construe Title VII. The employment defense bar makes these types of arguments, often successfully, on a routine basis.

In a way the argument over whether to include sexual orientation and gender identity within Title VII is both groundbreaking and routine. I scratch my head when strong advocates of employment at-will get apoplectic about the DOJ’s brief narrowly interpreting Title VII. All the DOJ is doing is narrowly interpreting an exception to employment at-will doctrine.

I also don’t understand the argument that laws prohibiting LGBTQ discrimination are economic development tools. I read an interesting article that could explain this idea. The article was a critical exploration of the philosophy of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Thomas, the second African-American Supreme Court justice has been critical of policies such as affirmative action. The article pointed out, somewhat sympathetically, that Thomas sees affirmative action as a matter of aesthetics among elites. In other words, the elite gets to chose what the elite looks like without having their power challenged. Inclusion is a form of marketing.

I think the idea of elite aesthetics explains how the professional-managerial class and their defenders can support LGBT rights in the workplace and employment at-will. Even if sexual orientation and gender identity are included within Title VII, those cases will still be difficult to win. Employers will still have what amounts to private sovereign immunity through exhaustion of remedies requirements. The National Labor Relations Board will still be making it harder for employees to form unions and not be subject to employment at-will.

But not all management-types are so willing to let their socially liberal instincts override their support of employer power in the workplace to create more exceptions to employment at-will. There are also many in the business community who don’t share socially liberal sentiments. I suspect this side may prevail in the argument over whether sexual orientation and gender identity are covered by Title VII.

Would it be logically inconsistent to allow same sex marriage but allow discrimination based on sexual orientation? Yes, but the importance of the employment at-will doctrine would at-least give that seeming inconsistency some logical explanation.

Blockchain: Another tool for management to use against workers?

Posted on July 1, 2019 by Jon Rehm

Just like staying at a Holiday Inn Express made you smarter in the mid-to-late 2000s, writing a post about “blockchain” will make any blogger sound smarter in the late 2010s.

The latest entry in the blockchain derby, was “Is blockchain the next frontier in preventing sexual harassment?” by Jon Hyman. The post does a good job of explaining blockchain as a technology that creates secure, verified and unchangeable records. Hyman also writes how blockchain could be used for reporting of sexual harassment – and presumably other forms of unlawful discrimination. (The clear explanation of blockchain makes the post worth reading.)

The innovation or “disruption” described by Hyman is that there is an blockchain program that allows employees to bundle reports of harassment made against the same harasser.

So some Silicon Valley genius, or poorly paid coder, developed a program that mimics protected concerted activity. There might be an intellectual property issue here as this concept was actually invented in the 19^th century – it’s called a labor union.

Meanwhile outside of the gilded and dreamy world of HR Tech, the rights of employees to from unions and engage in protected concerted activity are being curtailed.

My problem with the use of blockchain software run by a third-party on behalf of management are numerous. First it would impose hurdles in the discovery process. If similar complaints of harassment or discrimination are stored by a third-party, HR may not know to disclose them in discovery. I suspect this may not be entirely accidental. Harassment and discrimination claims usually require an employer have knowledge of the discrimination and the opportunity to take remedial action. Outsourcing reporting and creating an extra step in reporting discrimination gives employers additional legal protections.

Also, if similar complaints about harassment or discrimination were stored on a blockchain run by a third-party vendor, it might require subpoenaing those records. Besides potential jurisdictional issues over subpoenas, tech companies are famously unwilling to cooperate with legal investigations. Apple refused the request of the FBI to unlock the I-phone of a mass shooter in San Bernadino, California. If tech companies will stonewall the FBI, I am sure they would stonewall a plaintiff’s lawyer in a civil case.

In contrast, a call to a union business agent or Local leader will often yield information about comparators and company practices in a discrimination case. Unions aren’t perfect, but neither is HR or the latest technology. Innovations in information technology can empower employees. One example is an app created by the United States Department of Labor designed to combat wage theft. But blockchain technology controlled by management is just another tool in maintaining the dominance of capital over labor in the workplace.

Gorsuch, Chevron and Workplace Law

Posted on February 9, 2017 by Jon Rehm

Judge Gorsuch

Employers and their attorneys are widely hailing President Trump’s nomination of 10^th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court. Part of the reason that management-side lawyers are praising Gorsuch is his position on Chevron deference. Gorsuch’s views on Chevron could affect how workplace laws are interpreted and how they apply to workers.

Chevron deference is a legal rule that a court will give the benefit of the doubt about the interpretation of the law to how the executive agency charged with enforcing that law understands the law. Gorsuch has criticized Chevron on separation of powers basis, stating that Chevron deference gives too much power to the executive branch at the expense of the legislative and judiciary branches. Recently, government agencies have been interpreting employment laws in a way that is more favorable toward employees. Recent rules issued by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regarding the Americans with Disabilities Act are a prime example.

Many workers who get hurt on the job are told that they must come back to work with no restrictions. Chevron deference could be a powerful legal tool for workers faced with such policies. The new EEOC regulations on the ADA outlaw 100-percent-healed policies or policies that require plaintiffs to return to work without restrictions. In the EEOC guidance on the issue, the EEOC cites Kaufman v. Peterson Health Care VII, LLC 769 F. 3d 958 (7^th Cir. 2014) as an example of policies that they believe to be unlawful under ADAAA. This case represents a subtle but real shift from current 8^th Circuit law as stated in Fjellestad v. Pizza Hut of America, 188 F. 3d 949, 951-952 (8^th Cir. 1999) where the 8^th Circuit joined other federal circuits that held that failure to engage in an interactive process in accommodating a disability was not per se discrimination, and that there was no duty to engage in the interactive process. The EEOC’s interpretations of the new regulations still require that a plaintiff be able to perform the essential functions of the job with or without reasonable accommodation.

But as indicated by Kaufman, courts may be less likely to dismiss cases before trial, or in legal terminology, to grant summary judgment, on the issue of whether a plaintiff could perform the essential functions of the job with or without accommodation if the defendant does not engage in an interactive process or summarily decides that an employee should not be allowed to return without restrictions.

The fact that there is a split between regional appellate courts, a so-called circuit split, over “100 percent healed” policies increases the chances that the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether 100-percent-healed policies violate the ADA. Another issue where there is a circuit split that the U.S. Supreme Court will decide is the legality of mandatory arbitration clauses in employment agreements.

Many workers unwittingly give up their rights to have employment-law disputes heard in court when they agree to mandatory arbitration clauses as a term of employment. In D.R. Horton Inc., 357 N.L.B. No 184 (2012) the National Labor Relations Board ruled that mandatory arbitration clauses prohibited Fair Labor Standards Act collective action cases because they interfered with protected concerted activity under 29 U.S.C. §157 and 29 U.S.C. § 158. In Lewis v. Epic Systems, 823 F. 3d 1147, 1154 (7^th Cir. 2016), the 7^th Circuit struck down a mandatory arbitration clause partly based on giving Chevron deference to the NLRB’s decision in D.R. Horton. The 9^th Circuit agreed with the 7^th Circuit in Morris v. Ernst and Young, LLP, No 13-16599 (Aug. 22, 2016). Unfortunately for plaintiffs, the 8^th Circuit disagreed with the D.R. Horton decision in Owen v. Bristol Care, 702 F. 3d 1050 (8^th Cir. 2013).

If confirmed, Gorsuch would be unlikely to give much weight to the opinions of the EEOC or NLRB in interpreting employment laws. Chevron deference is an unpopular concept with pro-business conservatives. Recently, the GOP-controlled House of Representatives passed legislation that, if enacted, would abolish Chevron deference.

Conversely, Chevron deference is a popular concept with progressive employee and civil-rights advocates, as it allowed the Obama administration to expand employee protections in the face of a hostile Congress. But with the advent of the Trump administration and his immigration policies, progressives have a newfound appreciation for separation of powers.

Also, employee advocates probably will not like many of the new rules and regulations issued by Trump appointees such as Labor Secretary nominee Larry Puzder. A prospective abolition of Chevron could be helpful to challenging rules made by a Trump administration. An example from the last Republican administration is instructive. In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court in Long Island Care at Home Ltd. v. Coke, 551 U.S. 158 (2007) gave Chevron deference to Bush administration rules to exclude home health aides from coverage under the FLSA. It was nine years later that the rule was overturned, giving Chevron deference to Obama administration rules regarding home health aides and the FLSA.

Workplace Safety and the Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Posted on January 12, 2017 by Jon Rehm

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speaking. (Photo by Julian Wasser//Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)

“It was horrible,” said the woman.

One minute she could see a sanitation worker struggling to climb out of the refuse barrel of a city garbage truck. The next minute mechanical forces pulled him back into the cavernous opening. It looked to her as though the man’s raincoat had snagged on the vehicle, foiling his escape attempt. “His body went in first and his legs were hanging out,” said the eyewitness, who had been sitting at her kitchen table in Memphis, Tennessee, when the truck paused in front of her home. Next, she watched the man’s legs vanish as the motion of the truck’s compacting unit swept the worker toward his death. “The big thing just swallowed him,” she reported.

Unbeknownst to Mrs. C. E. Hinson, another man was already trapped inside the vibrating truck body. Before vehicle driver Willie Crain could react, Echol Cole, age 36, and Robert Walker, age 30, would be crushed to death. Nobody ever identified which one came close to escaping.

The horrific deaths of Cole and Walker on Feb. 1, 1968, set off the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike, where 1,300 mostly African-American public employees struck to protest poor working conditions, including the defective garbage truck that crushed Cole and Walker. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech in support of the striking sanitation workers in Memphis the night before he was assassinated.

On Monday, Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday is celebrated as a holiday. But the rightful veneration of Dr. King should not, for the lack of better terms, wrongfully sanitize or whitewash the fact that what he fought for would be opposed by many who invoke his legacy today. The Memphis sanitation strikers are asking for the same thing that striking fast food and service workers are asking for in the Fight for 15 campaign. Most establishment types and so-called moderates in Memphis refused to support the striking sanitation workers. Today’s so-called moderates argue that paying employees a living wage is too radical and counterproductive. History has a way of repeating itself.

Nearly 50 years later, I still represent sanitation workers who are injured from defective equipment. However, bloody crush injuries like the ones that killed Cole and Walker are much less common. Part of the reason for the increase in workplace safety over the last 50 years was the passing of the Occupational Safety and Health Act. Dr. King was willing to risk bodily harm and ultimately ended up being killed supporting workers who were protesting unsafe work conditions. The passage of OSHA is a small but important and overlooked part of Dr. King’s legacy. History is repeating itself again as the business establishment applauds the expected rollback of OSHA enforcement under expected future Labor Secretary Andy Puzder.

Dr. King also deserves credit for his role in passing laws like Title VII that prohibited discrimination against African-Americans, which has allowed an increasing number of African-Americans to join the professional class and otherwise realize their potential as human beings. Dr. King’s legacy can also be seen in the expansion of rights for disabled Americans, and the fact that gays and lesbians are able to get married, and the real possibility that Title VII may end discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

But by some economic measures, African-Americans are worse off now than they were 40 years ago. This fact can likely be attributed to overall increases in economic inequality over the last 40 years. The U.S. Department of Labor pointed out in a recent study that the gutting of state workers’ compensation laws has exacerbated inequality. Lawyers, legislators, academics and pundits have gradually forgotten about the risks faced by workers like Echol Cole and Robert Walker and how civil rights leaders including Martin Luther King Jr. saw the fight for workplace safety as a matter of basic human dignity and integral to the fight for civil rights.

The offices of Rehm, Bennett & Moore and Trucker Lawyers will be closed in observance of the holiday on Monday. We will re-open at 8:30 a.m. Central Time on Tuesday, Jan. 17. We encourage readers to think about Martin Luther King Jr. on the federal holiday and every day and continue to be both motivated and challenged by his words and works.

Disability Rights Take Center Stage at Democratic Convention

Posted on July 28, 2016 by Jon Rehm

Former Sen.Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, called for the elimination of the subminimum wage for certain disabled workers Tuesday afternoon at the Democratic National Convention. Harkin’s remarks followed two speeches about coping with disabilities on Monday night by disability advocate Anastasia Somoza and recording artist Demi Lovato as Democrats chose to highlight the 26^th anniversary of the Americans with Disability Act.

The ADA isn’t normally a hot topic of discussion during political campaigns, but that law, state disability discrimination laws and other related laws will surely be affected by the fall’s federal and state elections. The presidential race will garner the most media attention. The presidential race is important because agencies like the U.S. Department of Labor and commissions like the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission will affect how the ADA is interpreted and enforced. Federal judicial appointments also impact how the ADA and parallel state laws are interpreted.

But disability discrimination laws are also affected by congressional and state races. Here are at four points to keep in mind when thinking about disability discrimination laws during this campaign season:

1. Disability rights have traditionally been a bipartisan issue. Both the Americans with Disabilities Act and the ADA Amendments Act of 2008 were passed by a Democratic Congress and signed by Republican presidents. A reader could assume that because of toxic partisanship that little progress will be made on disability rights, but that you could also infer that disability rights are so important that they could transcend partisanship even in a toxic political environment. This more optimistic view is bolstered by a study done by the Census Bureau, showing one in five Americans has a disability, so there is strong potential support for laws that help that the disabled.

2. Disability discrimination laws are a budget issue. In his speech, Sen. Harkin pointed out that 70 percent of disabled Americans are not working.Part of the reason that Republicans support disability anti-discrimination laws is that they help people maintain employment. Furthermore, the public accommodation sections of the ADA allow for disabled people to access employment through accessing transportation. The expansion of the Social Security Disability Insurance program has been a controversial issue. This increase in SSDI applications has partially been driven by the decline of workers’ compensation protections (see below). However, the purpose of the ADA was undercut in the 1990s and 2000s by the federal judiciary, which necessitated the ADAAA of 2008. It would be reasonable to assume that this misinterpretation of the ADA also helped drive the increase of SSDI applications.

3. Disability discrimination laws impact workers’ compensation laws. The Labor Department has indicated that 80 percent of the costs of work injuries are born either by government programs, private insurance or by taxpayers. In part, this is the result of a bipartisan and sustained attack on workers’ compensation laws in many state legislatures. One benefit that is routinely stripped or attacked is vocational rehabilitation, which allows workers to be retrained if they are unable to do their jobs.

In many workers’ compensation cases, a worker’s injury will give protections to that person under the ADA. This often means state workers’ compensation courts can decide questions of whether an employer could accommodate an injury and/or what duty the employer would have to reassign or retrain an injured worker who would be covered under the ADA. Recently, the 7^th Circuit Court of Appeals held that employers have an affirmative duty to reassign disabled workers. It’s still an open question whether that law would obligate an employer to reassign an injured employee under a vocational rehabilitation program. But seeing that the ADA and workers’ compensation statutes have the same general beneficial purpose of allowing disabled people to maintain employment, such case law could be persuasive.

4. The ADA may affect state disability discrimination laws. States have their own laws prohibiting disability discrimination. States like Nebraska have laws that are more expansive than the ADA when it comes to pregnancy, but provide fewer protections to disabled workers in general. In Marshall v. Eyecare Specialties, the Nebraska Supreme Court held that since Nebraska did not amend its disability discrimination statute like the ADA was amended in 2008, that Nebraska courts should be applying pre-2008 decisions interpreting the ADA to Nebraska’s anti-discrimination laws. State courts generally look to how federal courts interpret discrimination laws when they interpret state fair-employment laws, so federal elections can affect how state laws are interpreted. But state legislatures can enact laws that offer more protections than federal laws. This is the case when it comes to extending fair employment protections to the LGBT community and is increasingly true as more states are starting to view pregnancy like a disability that needs to be accommodated.

Discrimination: Municipal Human-Rights Commissions Another Option for Charges

Posted on June 5, 2014 by Jon Rehm

When a prospective client calls in with a potential employment discrimination question, one of the questions I always ask is, “What city or town do you work in?” The reason I ask this question is because many larger cities in the states where we practice, such as Omaha, Lincoln and Des Moines, have separate municipal fair-employment acts that cover more employees than are covered under state or federal law.

State and federal fair-employment statutes generally need at least 15 or 20 employees for an employer to be covered by those laws. However, in Des Moines and Lincoln, an employer only needs to have four employees to be covered under those cities’ human-rights ordinances. In Omaha, an employer only needs six employees to be covered by their fair-employment ordinance.

Also, the City of Omaha explicitly covers sexual orientation under the fair-employment ordinance. Sexual-orientation discrimination is not explicitly prohibited by Nebraska or federal law. It is my belief that sexual-orientation discrimination is a form of sex discrimination that is already covered under Title VII and the Nebraska Fair Employment Practices Act. However, my opinions as to what I think the law is and what the law is are two different matters. If you are an Omaha resident who feels you were discriminated against because of your sexual orientation, you would be much more certain to have your claim of discrimination heard on the merits by pursuing a claim under the Omaha Human Rights Ordinance. While I would be willing to filing a sexual-orientation discrimination case under Nebraska law, any potential clients need to know that such a case would be a test case, and as such, this case would be under tremendous scrutiny from judges.

The drawback to filing discrimination cases under the Lincoln and Omaha municipal ordinances is that there is less opportunity for monetary award if you are successful in winning your case than you would have under state or federal law. However, some remedy for your discrimination is better than no remedy for your discrimination.

Can I Get Fired For Filing Bankruptcy?

Posted on April 21, 2014 by Jon Rehm

Low and middle income people are the last people to benefit from any economic recovery. For many economic recovery means a return to work the opportunity to put their household finances in order with steady income provided by a job. Unfortunately unpaid debts often mean that employees get garnished or even having to file bankruptcy.

Congress intended for bankruptcy to allow for people to get a fresh start so they prohibited discrimination based on bankruptcy and even let employees sue employers for such discrimination. But this law is not as strong as other laws prohibiting discrimination on factors such as race or sex for two reasons.

First of all, your status as a debtor in bankruptcy must by the sole cause of job loss. Discrimination is difficult enough to prove already under either a motivating factor or proximate cause standard, sole cause is more exacting than even the difficult proximate cause standard. If your employer has any other legitimate reason to fire you besides your bankruptcy, then a court will likely find the termination was lawful. The only way for an employee to preserve any type of discrimination case is not to give the employee a reason to terminate them because of their poor performance , attendance or poor attitude. But even good employees can get fired legitimate reasons such as restructuring and economic reasons.

Secondly most courts do not believe that bankruptcy discrimination prohibits employers from failing to hire employees based on bankruptcy.

Title VII and most state anti-discrimination laws state that a failure to hire based on certain protected categories is unlawful activity.

Finally in any discrimination claim, the employer needs to be aware of your protected status. In a bankruptcy discrimination case this means that your employer had to have known about your bankruptcy status prior to firing you. Some employees get fired because employer doesn’t want to deal with a garnishment. Most people, me included, think that such an action is wrong or unfair. But unless your employer knows that garnishment is linked to your bankruptcy status, then firing you based on that garnishment is legal — unless the garnishment is a cover or pre-text for another unlawful reason.

I would encourage anyone reading this post to contact their U.S. Senator or Congressperson and ask them to change the bankruptcy discrimination statute to mirror other federal anti-discrimination laws such as Title VII.

Workers' Compensation Watch

Published by Rehm, Bennett, Moore & Rehm

Published by:

Category Archives: discrimination

Will the Supreme Court weaken an important civil rights law?

Will the employment at-will doctrine sink LGBTQ rights under Title VII?

Blockchain: Another tool for management to use against workers?

Gorsuch, Chevron and Workplace Law

Workplace Safety and the Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Disability Rights Take Center Stage at Democratic Convention

Discrimination: Municipal Human-Rights Commissions Another Option for Charges

Can I Get Fired For Filing Bankruptcy?

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: