- “U.S. Chamber of Commerce challenges EEOC over its ‘unreasonable’ enforcement tactics” [Jon Hyman, more on House oversight hearing, earlier on court rebuffs to agency and more]
- On summary judgment: “EEOC case alleging ADA violations against Womble Carlyle nixed by federal judge” [ABA Journal]
- By 3-2 commissioner vote, EEOC adopts detailed, restrictive new guidance on pregnancy discrimination [Eric Meyer, Hyman]
- Commission thinks its investigation, mediation and other pre-litigation procedures should be immune from court oversight and public transparency [Merrily Archer]
- Survey: “Are Employers Adapting to EEOC Guidance on Employment Background Checks?” [Nick Fishman, Employee Screen, related earlier]
- Commission sues Wisconsin Plastics, Inc. for terminating employees with low-rated English skills as part of English on the job policy [Scott Greenfield, EEOC, my two cents way back]
- “Is the EEOC the new NLRB?” [John Holmquist, Michigan Employment Law Connection]
Posts Tagged ‘criminal records and hiring’
“Drug dealer gets €11k over Tesco sacking”
Annals of European employment law: “The Irish arm of supermarket giant Tesco has been ordered to pay a convicted drug dealer €11,500 for unfair dismissal.” The Employment Appeals Tribunal (EAT) found that the market should have considered sanctions less severe than dismissal given that the employee had cooperated with its process and that a manager admitted there was no evidence of public awareness of the employee’s legal troubles, which eventuated in a guilty plea and a suspended jail sentence. [Evening Herald (Ireland)]
Labor and employment roundup
- Los Angeles officials push SEIU-backed scheme to fasten unions on nonunion workforce at LAX airport [Brian Sumers, Contra Costa Times]
- Want to empower cities? Reform binding labor arbitration [Stephen Eide, Urbanophile]
- “Explainer: What Does President Obama’s Equal Pay Day Executive Order Change?” [Rachel Homer, On Labor]
- One lawyer’s advice: “when an employee complains about discrimination, or otherwise engages in protected conduct, you must treat that employee with kid gloves” [Jon Hyman on Sixth Circuit retaliation case]
- Detroit juggles pension numbers to fix deficit, papers over the real problem [Dan Kadlec, Time; Shikha Dalmia, Washington Examiner]
- No room left to cut budget, part 245,871: federal grants promote labor unions [Examiner]
- More on EEOC’s campaign to limit employment criminal background checks [Coyote, Daniel Schwartz]
Courts rebuff EEOC again
I’ve got a new post up at Cato (“Sixth Circuit: You’re Drunk, EEOC, Go Home“) on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s spectacular loss yesterday at the Sixth Circuit in the Kaplan case. As I comment, the victory for the defendant is
all the more impressive because one of the three judges on the opinion is liberal lion Damon Keith, about as sympathetic a judicial ear as the EEOC could normally hope for. It’s a sharp setback for the agency’s dubious “disparate impact” campaign against employer use of credit and criminal records in hiring. And it’s also part of a pattern of rebuffs and defeats the EEOC has been dealt by judges across the country since President Obama turned the agency on a sharp leftward course with his appointments.
The Sixth Circuit has actually been one of the EEOC’s better circuits in recent years. For example, it reversed a Michigan federal judge who in 2011 had awarded $2.6 million in attorneys’ fees to Cintas, the employee-uniform company, and reinstated the lawsuit. In doing so, the appellate panel nullified what had been the lower court’s findings of “egregious and unreasonable conduct” by the agency, including a “reckless sue first, ask questions later strategy.” The commission hailed the reversal as one of its big legal wins — although when one of your big boasts is getting $2.6 million in sanctions against you thrown out, it might be that you don’t have much to brag about.
For some other recent EEOC courtroom setbacks, check our roundup of last month. If you wonder why the commission persists in its extreme aggressiveness anyway, one answer may be that the strategy works: most defendants settle, and the commission hauled in a record $372 million in settlements last year. Yet here and there, as with Kaplan, defendants decide to put up a fight, with instructive results. When will Congress begin to hold the commission accountable? More: Hans Bader, CEI.
Labor and employment roundup
- If you imagine the primary goal of occupational licensure is to protect consumers, think again [Donald Boudreaux, Ramesh Ponnuru]
- “U.S. Civil Rights Commissioners Take EEOC to Task on Background Checks” [Nick Fishman, Employee Screen; Seyfarth Shaw]
- Pennsylvania lawmakers consider ending union exemption from stalking laws; Illinois, Nevada and California also shelter them from liability [Washington Examiner]
- “How Disruptive Can an Aggressive NLRB Be in a Non-Union Setting? More Than You Might Think” [Michael Fox]
- “A call for the DOL to fix what is wrong with our wage-and-hour laws” [Jon Hyman]
- Restaurant Opportunities Center, known for staging employee protests, bars own employees from same privilege [Florida Watchdog via Sean Higgins]
- Conference honoring assassinated professor Marco Biagi showcases classical liberal labor law scholarship (or so one would hope) [my comment at Workplace Prof, related call for papers, earlier]
EEOC roundup
- Federal judge in Buffalo “dismisses EEOC’s largest pending pattern or practice lawsuit for failure to investigate” [Gerald Maatman, Jr. and Jennifer Riley, Seyfarth Shaw] U.S. magistrate judge in North Carolina orders sanctions against agency in lawsuit against law firm Womble Carlyle [Mary Kissel, WSJ]
- Commission’s campaign against employer use of criminal background checks meets resistance from nine state attorneys general [Penelope Phillips, Minnesota Employment Law Report] Federal judge in Maryland dismisses EEOC criminal-and-credit-background-check case against Freeman Companies using words like “laughable,” “unreliable,” “mind-boggling” [Nick Fishman, Employee Screen; Eric B. Meyer]
- Is regular attendance an essential job function for ADA purposes? Commission takes a hard line against employers who insist that showing up regularly is essential to a job without building a case individualized to the particular dispute [Jon Hyman, Ohio Employer’s Law Blog]
- Missed this one in October: Cato files amicus brief in lower-court case of EEOC v. Kaplan, on disparate impacts of credit checks in hiring [Ilya Shapiro]
- More epic losses by agency last year (earlier posts on that here and here) include Evans Fruit case [AP/Seattle Times] Defendants disadvantaged by agency’s prejudicial delay [Molly DiBianca on PBM Graphics and Propak Logistics cases; Anastasia Killian, WLF] Federal judge in Iowa orders agency to pay $4.7 million in attorneys fees to defendant trucking company CRST [Gerald Maatman Jr. and Howard Wexler, Seyfarth Shaw, ABA Journal, Wall Street Journal]
- “Does the EEOC Try To Intimidate Employers?” Merrily Archer v. Robert Young [Richard Cohen, Fox Rothschild; more from Merrily Archer on agency incentives; her major 2012 victory in the Picture People case, and a dissent]
- In commission’s view, two “incidents which ended in ambulance trips to the hospital” not enough to classify employee as safety risk absent individualized ADA determination [Joe Lustig]
Labor and employment roundup
- Second wave of retired NYC cops, firefighters arrested on 9/11 disability fraud charges, Vance says sums stolen could reach $300 million [Reuters] Related on disability fraud [Coyote]
- Members of U.S. Commission on Civil Rights blast EEOC plans on employer criminal background checks in report now put online [USCCR, Washington Times]
- Your Friends look hot: FBI details indictment of 10 unionists in 2012 arson at Philadelphia Quaker meetinghouse [FBI press release (“‘The Helpful Union Guys,’ or THUGs”); Trey Kovacs, Workplace Choice]
- Lawyers for UAW seek do-over at Volkswagen in Chattanooga [Benjamin Sachs and Jordan Grossman/On Labor, Fred Wszolek, Real Clear Policy, WRCB (views of Sen. Bob Corker)]
- Do low-wage employers benefit from government welfare programs? [Bryan Caplan]
- NLRB revives much-criticized “ambush elections” scheme [Aloysius Hogan, CEI, earlier]
- Minimum wage law makes zero sense as safety net or as redistribution [Jeffrey Miron] “In the Court of Logic, Federal Minimum Wage Loses by Nine to Zero” [Ira Stoll, NY Sun]
Debo Adegbile nomination
It must not have been easy to find an appointee even farther left than the departing Thomas Perez to head the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, but the search eventuated with apparent success in the Obama Administration’s naming of former NAACP Legal Defense Fund official Debo Adegbile. While his confirmation is a foregone conclusion under the Senate’s new simple-majority Harry Reid rules, Republicans may still make an issue of Adegbile’s backing of the EEOC in its controversial campaign to require employers to hire felons and limit the use of criminal background checks before employment. [Byron York, Washington Examiner] Update: nomination fails narrowly in Senate, opposition driven substantially by nominee’s involvement in public efforts on behalf of convicted Philadelphia cop-killer [Politico]
Labor and employment roundup
- Labor Department wants to shut down consignors-as-volunteers consignment-sale business plan [Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Sean Higgins/Examiner]
- Operating Engineers Local 17: “Legality of union violence at heart of court case” [Buffalo News]
- Alternative to “Ban the Box”: revisit extent to which old convictions stay on the books [Eli Lehrer; Baltimore Sun on municipal proposal]
- Human capital investment by women has narrowed gender pay gap, desire for time flexibility crucial in explaining what remains [Tyler Cowen on Claudia Goldin paper]
- Carl Horowitz on UAW push to organize VW in Chattanooga [Capital Research Center]
- Seyfarth Shaw’s 10th annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report [Seyfarth, Daniel Fisher]
- Sixth Circuit: transfer can count as adverse action even when employee had previously requested it [Jon Hyman]
“Texas: Architects need to be fingerprinted”
Finally addressing the entrenched social problem of architect-perpetrated crime? Or just the security state running mindlessly forward on its own momentum? David Lancaster of the Texas Society of Architects told a trade newspaper that his group “believed fighting the legislation would be ‘futile.'” [Mike Riggs, Atlantic Cities]