1 racial slur + 2 disciplinary actions = 0 Title-VII liability.

The EEOC swung for the fences in a hostile work environment case against Sun Chemical Corp. 

It argued that the company should be liable not because it failed to respond after an employee repeatedly called a Black coworker the N-word, but because it failed to prevent the harassment from happening in the first place.

This week, the 8th Circuit wasn't buying it.

Hidden cameras, horrific conduct, and a critical Legal Distinction: Employers aren't automatically liable for every workplace bad act

The allegations against a former engineering executive at The Pokémon Company International are horrifying.

According to a newly filed class-action lawsuit, the executive allegedly hid cameras in employee restrooms at the company's Bellevue headquarters for years, secretly recording women, children, and others using the facilities. Criminal charges already pending against him allege an even broader pattern of voyeurism, including recordings made at a Starbucks, a Safeway, and his own home, along with charges involving child sexual abuse material.

If the allegations are true, the conduct is monstrous.

But here's the legal point that's easy to miss amid the outrage: an employer is not automatically responsible simply because something terrible happens at work. That's not how negligence works.

Temporary accommodations don't rewrite the job description

One of the more persistent myths in ADA litigation that if an employer temporarily accommodates an employee in a certain way, it has forever admitted that the accommodation is reasonable.

The 8th Circuit just reminded everyone that's not how the ADA works.

In Kendall v. Zoltek Corp., an employee at a carbon-fiber manufacturing facility injured her back and developed sciatica. Initially, her doctor cleared her to return to work without restrictions. Later, however, she requested an accommodation allowing her to sit periodically during her shifts. The company granted that request for several months while it evaluated her condition.

Eventually, though, the medical restrictions became permanent—and much more limiting. By the time her employment ended, she couldn't stand for more than 20 to 30 minutes, couldn't bend, stoop, kneel, crawl under machinery, or lift more than 10 pounds. Her employer's production operator position required employees to stand throughout 12-hour shifts while performing physically demanding work. After she exhausted her leave, the company terminated her employment.

Can you fire an employee for criticizing your DEI program on LinkedIn?

"The company has allowed outright hate to proliferate."

That's one of the statements that got John Richardson fired.

Richardson, a data engineer at Apex Fintech Solutions, published a series of LinkedIn articles criticizing what he viewed as the company's DEI culture. He accused Apex of tolerating anti-male discrimination, fostering a hostile work environment, and allowing managers to engage in discriminatory conduct without consequence.

Apex demanded he remove what it called "false, derogatory, disparaging, and/or defamatory" statements. When Richardson asked the company to identify what, specifically, was false, it didn't. Instead, it fired him—and then sued him for defamation.

Last week, an NLRB administrative law judge concluded Apex violated the National Labor Relations Act.

WIRTW #805 (the 'travel' edition)

"You and mom need to take a trip."

That's what our kids told us in mid-June. Our son was headed to London for a three-week summer program. Our daughter was off to New York City to get her visa for an upcoming semester abroad in France. And my wife and I realized that we hadn't taken a just-the-two-of-us vacation in eight years.

So, we fixed that.

Within 48 hours, I'd booked flights, Airbnbs, ferries between our three stops, winery tours, restaurant reservations, and just enough activities to keep us busy without feeling overplanned. Two weeks later, we were on a plane to Croatia.

If you've never been, go.

Seriously. Ten out of ten. Five stars. No notes.

We loved Croatia so much that we're already planning to go back next summer—this time with the kids.

And as for the "no notes" part? I actually have plenty. If you're planning a trip, I'm more than happy to share them.

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

The 7th nominee for the Worst Employer of 2026 is … The Fatal Failure

Some stories don't need a legal analysis. They need an indictment of management.

This indictment places the City of Las Vegas as a nominee on my list of the Worst Employers of 2026.

Not because a workplace homicide occurred. Employers can't stop every act of violence.

But because, according to public records obtained by FOX5, maintenance worker Joey McLean repeatedly begged management for help, warned that he feared for his life, and was allegedly murdered by the very co-worker he warned about.

If paid medical leave is good enough for Mitch McConnell, it's good enough for every American worker

Mitch McConnell has been absent from the Senate for more than six weeks following a serious fall. According to his office, he's recovering in a rehab facility, undergoing multiple physical therapy sessions each day, and isn't medically cleared to return to work.

This isn't about McConnell's health, however. It's about everyone else's.

McConnell is receiving something tens of millions of American workers don't: the ability to focus on getting well without worrying about losing his job or his paycheck. That's exactly how it should be. When you're sick or injured, your job is to recover, not to decide whether you can afford to.

The workplace is not a pulpit

When employees come to work, they should never have to wonder whether the next email from the boss will contain a work assignment or a sermon.

That's the issue at the heart of a new lawsuit against USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins.

A group of federal employees and their union have asked a federal court to block Rollins from sending agency-wide emails that preach her personal Christian beliefs to roughly 100,000 Department of Agriculture employees. The plaintiffs allege that despite already being sued over the practice, Rollins has continued using official USDA communications to quote Scripture and deliver explicitly evangelical messages—not just on Easter and Christmas, but now on Memorial Day and Independence Day as well. They are asking the court to stop the messages before the next major Christian holiday arrives.

Winning a disability discrimination claim doesn't necessarily win an ADA lawsuit

Winning a disability discrimination claim doesn't necessarily win an ADA lawsuit. The 2nd Circuit's recent decision in Cangro v. Department of Finance is a perfect example. The employer successfully defeated the employee's disability discrimination and retaliation claims—but still must defend a reasonable accommodation claim.

The employee suffered from serious respiratory conditions. After working remotely during the pandemic, he requested permission to work his required in-office days from the employer's Staten Island office instead of its Manhattan headquarters, claiming the commute and office environment aggravated his medical issues.

The employer said no.

The 2nd Circuit agreed that the employee hadn't plausibly alleged disability discrimination or retaliation. There wasn't sufficient evidence of discriminatory intent or a qualifying adverse employment action. Those claims were dismissed.

But the reasonable accommodation claim survived. 

WIRTW #804: the 'crash on the barrelhead' edition

Ryan Adams canceled his latest tour this week. His explanation? He's broke. Sick. Tired. Defeated.

Maybe all of that is true. Touring is brutal. The music business is unforgiving. And I don't take pleasure in watching someone suffer.

But I also don't have much sympathy for Ryan Adams.

For years, multiple women—including Phoebe Bridgers and Mandy Moore (his ex-wife)—have described the same basic pattern. Adams allegedly offered to mentor young female artists, pursued them romantically, and then, when those relationships soured or his advances were rejected, retaliated by undermining their careers or harassing them. Those allegations permanently altered how many view him.

What struck me wasn't just the allegations. It was how many musicians felt compelled to turn them into songs.

Phoebe Bridgers gave us "Motion Sickness".

Jason Isbell wrote "Chaos and Clothes".

Lucinda Williams unloaded with "Shadows & Doubts" and "Little Rock Star".

Old 97's? Depending on how you count, they may have written three songs inspired by Adams: "The New Kid", "Book of Poems", and "Crash on the Barrelhead".

I can't think of many musicians who've inspired an entire playlist of songs about what an awful human being they allegedly are.

That last one, "Crash on the Barrelhead", hits especially hard. Its message is unmistakable: if you keep living this way, eventually your choices catch up with you. Twenty-seven years later, these lyrics feel almost prophetic:

You're gonna crash on the barrelhead, son
You'll regret the things that you done
One of these days you're gonna rue
All the messed up things you do

The universe has a funny way of keeping score. Not always. Not quickly. But often enough.

Your reputation is the ledger.

It's one of the few things you build every single day without even realizing it. Every decision, every interaction, every kindness, every betrayal—they all become part of the story other people tell about you.

Once that story hardens, it's incredibly difficult to rewrite. Trust takes years to earn, seconds to lose, and for many people is never fully regained. Rebuilding a reputation is far harder than rebuilding a career or a tour schedule.

Eventually, enough people tell the same story about you that it stops sounding like gossip and starts sounding like your legacy.

Live your life so that you're never the subject of someone else's song about what an awful person you are.

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

The ADA is a two-way street

Once an employee requests an ADA accommodation, the employer has to give them exactly what they ask for… is NOT the law. In fact, it's the opposite of the law.

The ADA requires a reasonable accommodation—not the employee's preferred accommodation. Further, the ADA is a two-way street; employees have obligations, too.

One recent decision, Belval v. Electric Boat Corp., drives those points home.

A post-mortem on personal responsibility

"Sure, I posted racist memes and comments on my public Facebook page while identifying myself as a Chicago firefighter. But firing me violated my 1st Amendment rights."

That's the essence of last week's 7th Circuit opinion in Inendino v. Nance-Holt. And while the court spent most of its time parsing constitutional doctrine, I came away thinking about something much simpler.

Whatever happened to personal responsibility?

The EEOC's Nike DEI investigation shows the difference between politics and Title VII

How employers pursue diversity, equity, and inclusion matters far more than whether they pursue it.

The EEOC's recent pursuit of Nike illustrates the point. The agency says that Nike's DEI program is illegal. That's not, however, what Title VII says.

According to a New York Times investigation, EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas has spent more than two years building a case that Nike's diversity initiatives amount to unlawful discrimination against white employees. The investigation didn't begin with an employee complaint. It began with a commissioner charge, followed by an expansive probe into Nike's hiring goals, internships, mentorship programs, leadership development, executive compensation, and layoffs.

The current administration's message is clear: DEI equals discrimination. Except that's not what Title VII says.

A disability is not a license to harass

Federal disability discrimination laws exist to ensure that people with disabilities are judged on their abilities—not their diagnoses. They require reasonable accommodations. They prohibit discrimination. They level the playing field.

What they do not do is excuse misconduct.

That's the important takeaway from Brantley v. University of Texas at Austin, a recent 5th Circuit decision that rejected a student's attempt to use the Rehabilitation Act as a shield against discipline for repeatedly harassing a professor.

The facts are difficult.

After taking one of the professor's classes, the student continued emailing him. Not once or twice. According to the court, hundreds of times.

The emails ranged from academic topics to deeply personal discussions of trauma, mental health, and self-diagnosis. The professor repeatedly tried to establish boundaries. He provided information about campus mental health resources. He asked that future communications be limited to academic matters. Eventually, he pleaded with her to stop contacting him altogether, explaining that the constant emails were causing him "a tremendous amount of distress."

She kept emailing.

The university ultimately placed her on disciplinary probation.

WIRTW #803: the 'Tubthumping' edition

🎶 I get knocked down, but I get up again… 🎶

Like just about everyone else of a certain age, I know every word to Tubthumping. It's one of those songs that still somehow finds its way into bars, sporting events, wedding receptions, and random playlists nearly 30 years later.

And because of that, I always assumed Chumbawamba was exactly what it appeared to be: a one-hit wonder with one incredibly catchy song.

I was wrong. Very wrong.

The other night, after Tubthumping came on while we were driving home from dinner, I asked Siri to play more Chumbawamba.

I was completely unprepared for what came next.

Why did no one ever tell me that Chumbawamba is actually a really good band?

I expected a few more songs that sounded like Tubthumping. Instead, I got a musical identity crisis—in the best possible way.

Punk? Yes.
Techno? Yes.
New wave? Yes.
Folk? Yes.
Choral music? Somehow… yes.

Their catalog lurches from one genre to another with complete confidence, and yet it all somehow works. It's chaotic, unpredictable, and more creative than I ever would have guessed from the band that gave us one of the biggest singalong anthems of the 1990s.

Then I did what we all do after discovering something unexpected: I went to Wikipedia.

Turns out Chumbawamba spent decades as an anarchist collective, releasing fiercely political albums long before Tubthumping accidentally made them international stars. They never really seemed interested in becoming famous, and after cashing the checks from their one massive hit, they largely went back to making exactly the music they wanted to make.

Honestly, that explains a lot. Tubthumping wasn't the beginning or the end of the story. It was just the one song that happened to break through.

Sometimes the internet gets it wrong.
Sometimes radio gets it wrong.
Sometimes we get it wrong.

Sometimes a band you dismissed as a one-hit wonder has an entire catalog that's smarter, stranger, and far more interesting than the one song everyone remembers.

I think there's a workplace lesson buried in all of this. We all have a tendency to reduce people to a single data point—the one presentation, the one mistake, the one success, the one reputation. But people are almost always more complicated than that.

The best managers stay curious long after everyone else has stopped paying attention.

So, employers, stay curious. You never know what you might discover when you look beyond the one thing everyone else remembers.

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

DEI is not a get-out-of-summary-judgment-free card — but it can become evidence of discrimination

A white man gets fired. His employer has a DEI program. Therefore, the DEI program caused his termination.

That argument has become increasingly common in employment discrimination cases. It's also usually not enough.

But Chavers v. WestRock Services shows what happens when a plaintiff brings more than complaints about corporate diversity goals.

"Boys will be boys" is not a harassment defense

The facts in Sharpe-Miller v. Walmart read less like a judicial opinion and more like an HR nightmare.

An assistant store manager allegedly told a gay employee, "Good—if homosexuals got any more rights, then we might as well legalize pedophilia and bestiality."

Coworkers regularly called him "f****ft," "butt pirate," and "Jerry the fairy." They mocked his walk, joked that he was "afraid to break a nail," made limp-wrist gestures whenever he passed, and one even called him a "pedophile."

Then someone drew a picture on the breakroom whiteboard with "F***T" scrawled across the figure's forehead.

When the employee reported it, his supervisor's response was to erase the drawing and say, "Boys will be boys."

AI Isn't the Problem. Lazy Lawyering Is.

Another day, another sanctions opinion involving a lawyer who filed AI-generated legal work product riddled with hallucinated cases.

This time, it's the 11th Circuit.

The court's opinion reads like something that should be satire but unfortunately isn't. Counsel submitted an opening brief citing at least eight nonexistent cases. After opposing counsel pointed out the problem, he tried to fix it by withdrawing the bad citations. Except the eight cases he "withdrew" weren't the same eight fake cases from his opening brief.

Worse still?

The replacement list consisted of eight more hallucinated cases.

You almost couldn't script it better.

Apple v. OpenAI offers a master class in spotting trade secret theft before it's too late

Apple's newly filed trade secret lawsuit against OpenAI contains an allegation that should make every employer's ears perk up.

According to the complaint, multiple departing Apple employees allegedly emailed Apple's confidential information to their personal email accounts on their way out the door. Apple also claims that some former employees later used Apple's confidential and trade secret information to help OpenAI develop competing hardware.

Whether Apple ultimately proves those allegations is for the courts to decide.

But the behavior it describes is one of the oldest—and most obvious—red flags in the employee-theft playbook.

When someone suddenly starts forwarding company files to Gmail the week before resigning, odds are they're not creating a personal scrapbook.

The good news is that employees who steal information often leave breadcrumbs. The key is knowing what to look for.

 

WIRTW #802: the 'it's a small world' edition

I love to travel. It's not just about the places you see or the things you do. It's also about the people you meet.

"Where are you from?" is one of the best conversation starters when you're traveling. That simple question just led to one of the most surreal experiences of my life.

My wife and I were on the ferry from Split to Korčula when a family sat down next to us, and we started chatting.

"So, where are you from?" the dad asked.

"Cleveland," my wife replied.

"But I grew up in Philly," I added.

"Philly? Me too," he said, giving me a fist bump.

"Where in Philly?"

"The Northeast."

"Same! Where did you go to high school?"

And that's when things got downright weird.

We didn't go to the same high school. As it turns out, he went to Central and I went to George Washington. But we both graduated in 1990, attended the same middle school, and discovered we have dozens of mutual friends. He even remembered my middle school homeroom number, a fact I had long forgotten.

Forty years after leaving Baldi Middle School, we finally became friends … on a ferry in Croatia. All because one of us asked a fellow traveler, "Where are you from?"

The world is a big place. Sometimes, though, it has a funny way of reminding us just how small it really is.

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