EEOC on pregnancy-related limitations and restrictions at work

It’s been nearly a year since the EEOC updated its administrative guidance on pregnancy discrimination to account for the Supreme Court’s holding in Young v. UPS regarding an employer’s obligations to accommodate its pregnant workers.

In case the EEOC’s guidance is too dense for you to digest, the agency has chosen to commemorate its participation in the White House United State of Women Summit with the publication of two new pregnancy-related resources.

12 mistakes employers make in paying non-exempt workers

Given that on December 1, 4.2 million exempt workers will transition to non-exempt status, it is timely that the Richmond Times-Dispatch though to share 9 mistakes employers make in paying hourly/non-exempt workers. I’ve added numbers 10, 11, and 12.

Philip Miscimarra is mad as hell, and you should be too!

NLRB Member Philip Miscimarra is mad as hell about the Board’s current position on employee-handbook policies and protected concerted activity, and he’s not gonna to take this anymore.

6th Circuit says illegal retaliation doesn’t meet threshold for constructive discharge. Wait, what?!

Henry v. Abbott Laboratories (6/10/16) [pdf] is what I would call a curious case, and one that I plan to liberally use any time I’m defending a case in which claims both of discrimination/retaliation and constructive discharge are asserted.

WIRTW #416 (the “420”) edition

Earlier this week, Governor Kasich legalized medical marijuana in Ohio. The law takes effect in early September. Ohio becomes the 25th state to enact a comprehensive legal medical marijuana program.

The law will allow people with the following medical conditions to use marijuana: HIV/AIDS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), Crohn’s disease, epilepsy or another seizure disorder, fibromyalgia, glaucoma, hepatitis C, inflammatory bowel disease, multiple sclerosis, pain that is either chronic and severe or intractable, Parkinson’s disease, post-traumatic stress disorder, sickle cell anemia, spinal cord disease or injury, Tourette’s syndrome, traumatic brain injury, and ulcerative colitis.

Importantly, employers retain the right to fire medical marijuana users if the use violates a drug-free workplace or zero tolerance policy.

For more on what this means for Ohio employers, click here.

Here’s the rest of what I read this week:

D.C. Office of Human Rights publishes best practices guide for employers on transgender rights

The District of Columbia Office of Human Rights, in connection with the National LGBTQ Task Force, recently published a 19-page best practices guide for employers on transgender issues in the workplace. The document, entitled, Valuing Transgender Applicants & Employees: A Best Practices Guide for Employers [pdf], when taken together with earlier guidance from the EEOC on transgender bathroom access and broader guidance from the EEOC on LGBT discrimination continues to signal that issue is one that you can no longer ignore.

Are ban-the-box laws actually causing more racial discrimination?

I read with great interest an article on vox.com, entitled, “Ban the box” might just replace one kind of discrimination with another. The article discusses two recent studies, one by The Brookings Institution and the other by the University of Chicago, both of which concluded that ban-the-box laws have the unintended consequence of causing more discrimination against minorities, not less: