WIRTW #505 (the “birthday” edition)

This week I celebrated two milestones.

On May 9, the Ohio Employers Law Blog turned 11 (and after 11 years I finally dropped the apostrophe; grammarians, debate).

The day prior, Loula, our beloved family pet, turned 6.

Six is a milestone age for a dog in my family. I’ve never had a dog live this long. Flyer, my beagle, passed away at 5 from autoimmune hemolytic anemia. Zoey, our lab (and our “let’s get a dog before we have kids” dog), also passed away at 5 (you can read my obituary for her here).

Thus, we’ve waited with nervous anticipation for Loula to reach the age of 6, which she did on May 8.

It was certainly a day to celebrate. She kicked back with a dog-friendly cupcake (complete with candle, and which, for the record, my wife said tastes awful), while we humans ate ice cream and serenaded her with “Happy Birthday.”

Here’s what I read this week:

NBC News takes the unprecedented step to release its internal Matt Lauer harassment report

Image by Max Goldberg via Wiki Commons

Yesterday morning, NBC News released the complete report into its months long investigation of Matt Lauer.

I was astounded by NBC’s transparency. It is extraordinarily rare for a private company to release an internal investigative report of one of its employees. In fact, it runs counter to conventional wisdom that harassment investigations should be kept as confidential as possible under the circumstances. Perhaps the combination of NBC’s status as a news agency and the high profile nature of the allegations spurred its decision.

Sympathetic does not always equal protected under the ADA

Photo by Pexels on Pixabay

Today’s opinion is a lesson straight out of the school of hard knocks. No matter how sympathetic the plaintiff or how harrowing his plights, the law is the law and sometimes it’s just not on his side.

When an opinion starts with this quote, you know that the plaintiff is not going to have a good day.

What happened in Sepúlveda-Vargas v. Caribbean Restaurants, LLC (1st Cir. 4/30/18) to garner this tough life lesson from the court?

Should employers still test for marijuana?

Photo by Michael Fischer from Pexels

Ohio’s medical marijuana program is set to be fully operational by September 2018. Ohio will join 28 other states, and the District of Columbia, in which doctors can legally prescribe marijuana to treat certain medical conditions.

Ohio’s medical marijuana law does not require that employers accommodate employees’ lawful use of medical marijuana. It also permits employers still to maintain drug testing policies, drug-free workplace policies, and zero-tolerance drug policies.

Yet, with the lawful use of marijuana spreading, employers are asking if it still makes sense to test for it as part of pre-employment drug screenings.

The 8th nominee for the “worst employer of 2018” is … the age discriminator

Today’s nominee for the Worst Employer of 2018 is Seasons 52, a national, Orlando-based restaurant chain.

Last week, it agreed to pay $2.85 million to settle a nationwide class age discrimination lawsuit brought by the EEOC. The lawsuit included significant direct evidence of age discrimination.

WIRTW #504 (the “once bitten, twice shy” edition)

Never in my life did I think that I’d ever attend a biker rally. Yet, three weeks from tomorrow, I’ll be in Sandusky, at Ohio Bike Week.

Why?

I’ll be watching Norah and her bandmates warming up the crowd for 80’s hair band Great White.

If you’re attending, please say hi. I’ll be the one without the motorcycle.

THIS is how you reasonably accommodate a disabled employee

Photo by David Pisnoy on Unsplash

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past 16 months discussing bad employers—those that so mishandled employees that they earned a spot on my list of America’s Worst Employers.

Today, I thought I’d take a look at the brighter side—an employer that handled a tricky employee issue correctly.