Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Labor and employment roundup

  • EEOC guidance lost big in last week’s SCOTUS employment decisions [Daniel Fisher, Michael Greve]
  • Classification of obesity as a “disease” has huge employment law implications [Jon Hyman]
  • EEOC goes after BMW, Dollar General over criminal background checks on job candidates [ABA Journal, Althouse, Michael Carvin and Eric Dreiband (“The Government Checks Criminal Records. Why Can’t Private Employers?”), Employer’s Lawyer, earlier] “So the gov’t convicts minorities at a disproportionate rate. Then the gov’t sues companies that checks those records, smart.” [Surya Gunasekara] Why not ban Google too? (Don’t give them ideas, please) [ Mike Riggs]
  • Wage and hour suits soar, record number filed so far in 2013 [Corp Counsel, Overtime Lawyer, I-Sight] Related: what’s wrong with the epithet “wage theft” [Hyman]
  • Employer’s claim: I can’t get due process from Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities [Daniel Schwartz]
  • The First Amendment protects our speech rights against the government, not against those we deal with in the workplace who may disapprove [Schwartz and more on Connecticut employment proposal] NLRB “attempting to sanction a California newspaper despite a federal appeals court’s decision that such a ruling threatened the publisher’s First Amendment rights.” [Washington Free Beacon]
  • “Bergen, Passaic County towns saddled with costs as lawsuits filed by police add up” [Bergen Record via NJLRA]

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2 Comments

  • Let’s see if I understand the EEOC:
    If I seek to exercise my constitutionally protected rights and go to a firearms dealer to purchase a firearm, then s/he will do a criminal background check on me;
    however, if I apply for employment with the same dealer, although I have no constitutionally protected right to employment, that same dealer is prohibited from doing a criminal background check, although such a job would provide access to firearms and ammo?
    Although the US District Courts, not the EEOC, have habeas corpus jurisdiction, the EEOC is granting itself power to limit the effects of convictions based upon evidence of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. When did Congress empower the EEOC to perform h.c. type reviews of convictions?

    • By wfjag

  • […] from the important employment law implications linked last week in this space, the American Medical Association’s decision to reclassify obesity as a disease […]