October 2020 E-Update

Click here to view entire E-Update as a PDF RECENT DEVELOPMENTS More Employees in Quarantine? CDC Expands Definition of “Close Contact” with an Individual with COVID-19 In revising its definition of who is considered to be in “close contact” with a person infected with COVID-19, the Centers for Disease Control […]

Employers should be warned that other employees’ accounts of their own experiences with discrimination may be admissible to support a plaintiff’s individual discrimination claim. In Pineda v. Abbott Laboratories, Inc., the plaintiff brought a number of claims against his employer, including under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. The federal […]

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit refused to allow an employee to sue a dealer network with which his employer was affiliated, finding no evidence to support the employee’s attempt to pierce the dealerships’ corporate veils and combine them for purposes of Title VII coverage. In Prince […]

As we previously noted in discussing the Department of Labor’s Proposed Rule on determining independent contractor v. employee status, there are many versions of the test across agencies and courts, leading to much confusion for employers – and the latest demonstration of this comes out of the U.S. Court of […]

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit provided some guidance on this issue in a recent case involving an employee’s claims of discrimination and retaliation. In Ali v. BC Architects Engineers, PLC, the employee alleged, among other things, that she was denied a promotion in retaliation for complaining of […]

Employers with employees in Montgomery County should be aware that illegal “harassment” is now defined more broadly than under Maryland state or Federal law. The expanded county law does the following: Specifically prohibits harassment on the basis of any protected characteristic (i.e. race, color, religious creed, ancestry, national origin, age, […]

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed the rather obvious point (although apparently not to the employee) that when an employee voluntarily requests – and the employer agrees – to a transfer, the employee has not experienced an adverse employment action for purposes of the Americans with […]

Continuing with its spate of activity, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs has issued a number of new resources for government contractors and subcontractors: Employment Referral Resource Directory. The OFCCP has updated its Employment Referral Resource Directory (ERRD), which lists government and nonprofit organizations as references to assist federal […]

Affirming that employees may be disciplined for abusive conduct that might otherwise be protected by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the National Labor Relations Board remanded a case to the administrative law judge (ALJ) to analyze whether the employee in this case was lawfully disciplined for his inappropriate conduct […]

In issuing a Final Rule that authorizes the digital transmission of charge-related documents, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission also took the opportunity to explain that a “no cause” finding at the conclusion of its investigation into an employee’s charge of discrimination is not necessarily a finding that the charge has […]