Governor Newsom recently signed into law AB 1803, which will require employers to provide anti-hate speech training.
As a reminder, California employers with 5 or more employees are already required to provide sexual harassment prevention training to employees within 6 months of hire and every 2 years.
On Monday, September 21st, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals held that a terminated in-house attorney plausibly alleged that she engaged in a protected activity when she refused to meet with her supervisor to discuss settling her pending harassment lawsuit.
In Newton v. LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton Inc., Newton filed a lawsuit in 2019 alleging that she was sexually harassed and assaulted at work. In 2022, LVMH terminated Newton’s employment, and Newton filed a federal retaliation claim, alleging two actions after July 2022 that she argued were protected activity: (i) her refusal to meet with her supervisor to discuss settlement of the 2019 lawsuit, and (ii) speaking out in a public forum and on social media to assert her right to be free from sex discrimination in the workplace.
The City of Philadelphia has amended its Fair Practices Ordinance to specifically protect employees from discrimination on the basis of menstruation, perimenopause and menopause.
This includes discrimination on the basis of reproductive health autonomy, whether based on pregnancy, childbirth and related medical conditions, or menstruation, perimenopause or menopause. The law further requires an employer to provide reasonable accommodation to an employee for needs related to menstruation, perimenopause or menopause if related symptoms substantially interfere with an employee’s ability to perform one or more job functions, absent undue hardship.
A multinational technology and consumer-services company that is one of the largest employers in the world is facing a class action lawsuit in the Southern District of New York for alleged failure to comply with the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA), a federal law.
The complaint, filed on September 8, alleges that the employer had an improper blanket policy requiring employees to submit medical documentation with all accommodation requests. However, EEOC regulations state that it is not reasonable or necessary for an employer to require supporting documentation from a pregnant employee seeking one of the following modifications due to their pregnancy:
The city just expanded its Fair Chance Ordinance. Under the new amendment, employers are now prohibited from considering out-of-state criminal convictions or arrests tied to conduct that’s lawful in California, including abortion-related healthcare, gender-affirming care, drag performances, and miscarriage-related care.
Governor Pritzker has signed the Illinois Menopause Equity and Care Act. In doing so, Illinois has followed Rhode Island and Philadelphia, in including menopause-related conditions as a protected status under the state’s anti-discrimination laws.
On July 21, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) voted to issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would rescind the requirement for most private employers with 100 or more employees to file annual reports with information about the race and sex of their employee populations. Members of the public will have 30 days
The Second Circuit (which covers New York, Connecticut and Vermont) recently revived an employee’s ADA and NYC Human Rights Law (NYCHRL) failure-to-accommodate claims, which were based on his employer’s denial of his requests to work from home full-time, and then – when that request was denied – to work from home 3 days a week
$5 Million EEOC Settlement Puts Disability Accommodation Practices in the Spotlight
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) announced earlier this week that it reached a $5 million settlement with Battelle Energy Alliance resolving allegations that the company denied disability accommodation requests under its COVID-19 vaccine policy, made unlawful disability-related medical inquiries, and, in some
A medical transportation company declined to hire a deaf applicant as a chair car driver. A federal appellate court upheld the lower court’s decision that the decision not to hire was lawful, finding that no reasonable jury could determine that an accommodation would let him perform the essential communication functions of the job without undue
