7 things employers must know about the I-9 Form

Photo by Nitish Meena on Unsplash

Earlier this week, the Trump administration announced that it has doubled the number of worksite investigations and audits conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Its express goal is to make sure businesses are not employing people who are in the U.S. illegally.

What is such an audit? Simply, it’s a review of business records, specifically I-9s.

In light of this news, over the next two days I’ll be taking a deeper look at employers’ obligations to comply with immigration laws. Today, we’ll examine the I-9 itself, and tomorrow we’ll discuss what to do (and, maybe more importantly, what not do) if ICE or another agency shows up at your door asking about I-9s.

The easiest way to lose an employment lawsuit

Photo by Devin Avery on Unsplash

Yeterday, I was tagged with the following question on LinkedIn:

Interested in your opinion on this.

The “this” in question was an $7.97 million verdict a jury in Fresno, California, entered in favor of a Chipotle manager fired for allegedly stealing $626 in cash from the restaurant’s safe.

The ADA’s interactive process is always a two-way street

Photo by MelanieSchwolert via Pixabay

Who has the burden of proof in an ADA reasonable accommodation case? The employee, to prove a lack of an accommodation, or the employer, to prove the unavailability of an accommodation? 

In Snapp v. BNSF Railway, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals re-affirmed that the burden squarely rests on the shoulders of the employee.

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.