The Family and Medical Leave Act (“FMLA”) provides protections for eligible employees who must take time off of work to deal with serious medical conditions. These protections, codified at 29 U.S.C. § 2612(a)(1), allow employees time away from work and prevent employers from taking adverse employment actions against the employee as a result of serious medical conditions. At issue, however, is the definition of “serious” – just how serious must a medical condition be to warrant FMLA protection? In the case of Dalton v. ManorCare, the Eight Circuit added yet another to a list of items that aren’t serious enough to trigger the protections of the statute.

The Equal Pay Act of 1963 (“EPA”) bars employers from discriminating in the payment of wages between employees on the basis of their gender. The employees of different genders must be performing equal work in jobs which require “equal skill, effort, and responsibility, and which are performed under similar working conditions.”[1] In an odd set of facts, the Tenth Circuit case of Riser v. QEP Energy hinged on an unusual definition of “equal.”[2]

The National Labor Relations Act protects the rights of employees to connect and address conditions at work, and recent decisions have held that this protection extends to certain work-related conversations on social media.[1] However, it has yet to be determined exactly how far this protection will reach.

There are two important takeaways from Perez v. Mortgage Bankers Association,[1] one with a broad scope and the other much narrower. The broader ruling exempts agency interpretations of laws and regulations from any notice and comment requirements under the Administrative Procedures Act (“APA”), allowing agencies to substantially alter interpretations without notice. On a different note, however, is the finding that Department of Labor (“DoL”) Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) classification interpretations are subject to change at any moment.

As Comedy Central is discovering with the new host of The Daily Show, Trevor Noah, failure to fully vet an employee’s social media activity can have unexpected consequences. At the same time, an employee’s social media profiles can yield information that may be harmful to employers in the hiring process. There are potential pitfalls to examining an applicant’s social media profiles both too closely and not closely enough, and the lines are difficult to discern.

The vast majority of settlements between an employer and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) take the form of a court-approved consent decree. This document is a public record designed to highlight and account for certain wrongs in a way that sidesteps an admission of guilt in favor of the implementation of remedial measures to prevent further unlawful practices. A consent decree includes certain action and reporting mandates that employers must follow, providing the EEOC with the most powerful enforcement tool in its arsenal.

It was a difficult delivery, but the Supreme Court in Young v. UPS[1] gave birth to a new test in determining whether an employer has violated the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (“PDA”)[2].

Where there’s smoke, there may be fire – at least, that appears to be a key takeaway from the Seventh Circuit case of Ledbetter v. Good Samaritan Ministries. The holding in this case is predicated on the notion that suspicious timing in an adverse employment action can give rise to a claim of retaliation under Title VII in absence of other solid evidence.

Employers might be just a bit more anxious after learning that the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (“EEOC”) defined the “ability to interact with others” as a major life activity, bringing social anxiety disorder into the scope of protection afforded by the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”). The Fourth Circuit, in the case of Jacobs v. N.C. Administrative Office of the Courts,[1] recently agreed with the EEOC that social anxiety disorder may be a disability for ADA purposes. For practical purposes, however, the important takeaway in this case is that reasonable accommodation requests should never be taken lightly and all decisions that adversely affect employees should come with ample documentation.

What some might charitably consider a loophole in First Amendment protections of public employees received deferential treatment recently by the Third Circuit. In what seems like an upside-down scenario, the Third Circuit upheld the ability of a public employer to fire an employee for speech that he or she did not actually speak, while that employee likely would have had a claim against his or her employer had he or she actually engaged in the speech that didn’t take place. This confusing result is not the first of its kind, either, and public employees are now on uncertain ground as to whether what they don’t say can be used against them.