Title VII requires harm; not just hate

This week, America First Legal, a right-wing conservative organization founded by Stephen Miller, fired off a letter to the EEOC accusing the Los Angeles Dodgers and Guggenheim Partners of violating Title VII because of their publicly commitment to workplace diversity, equity, and inclusion.

But there's the legal twist: AFL didn't name a single person who was denied a job, demoted, fired, or otherwise harmed. Nor did it claim any injury to itself. 

The "Restoring Biological Truth to the Workplace Act" isn't about truth, it's about protecting bigotry

It's called the Restoring Biological Truth to the Workplace Act.

But let's be honest: it's just a license to discriminate.

Senator Jim Banks' recently introduced bill isn't about truth. It's about control. And cruelty. It would allow employees to misgender their transgender colleagues with impunity and prohibit employers from enforcing any workplace policies that require respect for a person's gender identity.

You want to avoid a labor union in your business? Then don't do this.

Two pediatricians at Cleveland's University Hospitals used an internal physician directory to contact colleagues about forming a union. In response, they say that UH disciplined them for trying to unionize. They've filed unfair labor practice charges with the NLRB.

Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act protects employees' rights to engage in concerted activity—including organizing a union and discussing it with co-workers. That protection applies whether you're a warehouse worker or a pediatric subspecialist.

WIRTW #764: the 'substack' edition

Introducing Authoritarian Alarm: 

A New Home for a Critical Conversation

For the past 18+ years, I've written about the intersection of law, policy, and the American workplace. But more and more, the news I feel compelled to cover—and the commentary I'm driven to write—has expanded far beyond employment law and HR drama.

Because the truth is, something much bigger is happening in this country.

America today barely resembles the nation it claims to be. In our institutions, our politics, and even our public discourse, we're beginning to mirror the authoritarianism we've spent the last 249 years claiming to oppose. We're becoming what the Founding Fathers created this country to resist.

So I've launched something new: Authoritarian Alarm—a Substack newsletter dedicated to tracking America’s quickening slide into authoritarianism. My first post is now available: We've become everything we've fought against for 249 years.

If you've valued my perspective on these issues before, I hope you'll join me there. Subscribe, share, and help me sound the alarm.

Because silence is complicity.
And democracy doesn't defend itself.

—

👉 Subscribe now for free to Authoritarian Alarm: https://jonhyman.substack.com

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Here's what I read this week that you should read, too.

Without HR, you're not running a business. You're running a liability factory.

"I want to be the first company without HR."

That's the viral line from Jennifer Sey, who founded XX-XY Athletics in March 2024. She thinks Human Resources is just the "social-justice police." According to her, they are nothing more than a department of hall monitors: "They produce nothing. They monitor our words. They tell us what we can and cannot say. They inhibit creativity. It's bad for business."

Let's clear this up:
HR is not the problem.
HR is not your censor.
HR is not some DEI-driven thought police force trying to ruin your fun.

PIPs are performance improvement plans, not employee termination plans

The point of a performance improvement plan isn't to fire someone, it's to help them improve. It's right there is the name. But too often, PIPs aren't about performance or improvement.

For example, in Murphy v. Caterpillar Inc., the 7th Circuit just reversed summary judgment on the employee's age discrimination claim, and the court's reasoning serves as a stern warning to any employer using PIPs as a shortcut to termination.

Here's what Caterpillar got wrong about the PIP it delivered to Brian Murphy, a 58-year-old engineer:

I want my records back, records back, records back

When you destroy the evidence that could justify a termination, don’t be surprised when a court refuses to take your side. That's the message from the 6th Circuit's recent decision in Kean v. Brinker International, Inc., where a 59-year-old general manager of a Chili's, owned and operated by Brinker International, was fired despite running one of the most successful stores in his market.

Brinker claimed he was let go for not "living the Chili's way"—an amorphous explanation about bad "culture." Instead, Kean claimed age discrimination, supported by his stellar performance records and his post-firing replacement by someone 26 years his junior.

Brinker, however, could not support any its reasons for Kean's termination because it had destroyed all of the documents related to the termination.