Though it is tempting to move on from the pandemic and to try and forget the deadly illness that started it, COVID-19 looks like it is here to stay in one form or another. As updated on February 16, 2024, the California Department of Public Health reported a 7-day weekly average of 1,882 hospital admissions
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, many employers allowed some of their employees to work from home (i.e., “telecommute” or “telework”) in the interest of public health. We are now entering our tenth month of the pandemic, and working from home has become “the new normal” for many employers and employees. Now, as vaccines
On December 16, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) updated existing guidance in order to address COVID-19 vaccinations.[1] In addition to discussing vaccinations in the context of equal employment opportunity (“EEO”) laws, the guidance also discusses the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (“FD&C Act”), a law outside of the EEOC’s jurisdiction that nevertheless provides a
Given the recent news coverage concerning COVID-19 vaccines and the government’s distribution plan for such vaccines, many of our clients have inquired whether it will be permissible to require school and community college district employees be vaccinated for COVID-19. This question is important from a public health perspective, complicated from a legal one, and almost
Given the recent news coverage concerning COVID-19 vaccines and the government’s distribution plan for such vaccines, many of our public agency clients have inquired whether it will be permissible to require that agency employees be vaccinated for COVID-19. This question is important from a public health perspective, complicated from a legal one, and almost certain
In the wake of recent attention to sexual harassment in the workplace, employers and members of the public are asking: what about all of those sexual harassment trainings we required? Are they helping? How do we know? And, if they’re not achieving our goals (public policy and agency-specific), what can we do better?
Just What
Title VII of the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964 (hereafter “Title VII”) has long prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex in the terms, conditions or privileges of employment. One question of ongoing statutory interpretation has not been definitively answered: what constitutes “sex” for the purposes of employment discrimination? Are the terms “sex” and
In a case called EEOC v. Sterling Jewelers, Inc., the Second Circuit Court of Appeals recently held that, as matter of first impression, while federal courts may review whether the EEOC conducted an investigation into a formal charge of discrimination against an employer, federal courts may not review the sufficiency of the
Last year, we reported on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Ford Motor Company case, a U.S. Court of Appeals case from Ohio. In that case, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a grant of summary judgment to Ford in a disability discrimination lawsuit. In a 2-1 split decision, the Court held that allowing
The National Football League’s handling of several recent high-profile domestic violence incidents involving players Ray Rice, Greg Hardy and Jonathan Dwyer has raised the national consciousness regarding how employers handle domestic violence issues. Domestic violence has been, and continues to be, a prevalent problem that creates many challenging issues for employers. A recent Centers for