Blogs

Employment Law

Fourth Circuit Concludes: False Rumor that Female Employee Slept with Her Male Boss to Obtain a Promotion Can Support a Claim of Sexual Harassment

In a decision that pushes the boundaries of past decisions defining hostile work environment sexual harassment, the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Parker v. Reema Consulting Services, Inc. , concluded that “a false rumor that a female employee slept with her male boss to obtain a promotion . . .” can give rise to employer liability under Title VII for discrimination ‘because of sex.’ When a supervisory employee perpetrates workplace innuendo of this kind, the court wrote, the employer…

February 25, 2019

Business and Financial Services

Virginia Employers: Are Your Non-Competes Enforceable?

Restrictive covenants continue to be among the most hotly contested employment law issues in Virginia. Non-solicitation and non-competition clauses are fundamentally important to a business like yours. Drafted well, they provide your company with significant legal protections against a key employee usurping the sales opportunities and client relationships developed while in your employ to start a competing business or to provide an unfair advantage to one of your competitors. However, Virginia…

August 1, 2018

Business and Financial Services

DOL Explains When Employees Must Be Paid for Travel Time

Eighty years ago the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) established federal minimum wage and overtime requirements for hourly employees. The law’s basic tenet seems straightforward: Employers must pay employees for their “work.” Yet for many employers, compliance with the FLSA on issues such as employee travel time continues to be problematic because the FLSA does not really explain when an employee is at “work.” The FLSA and Portal-to-Portal Act The Supreme Court initially explained that “work”…

July 6, 2018

Business and Financial Services

Is Your Business Website ADA Compliant?

The remarkable interconnectedness of our world through the internet has exponentially increased consumer access to information, goods, services and people. This nexus has also created some uncertainty regarding the application of many laws, including the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”). Congress clearly could not have anticipated widespread consumer use of the internet or the dramatic surge in e-commerce in recent years, when it passed the ADA more than twenty-five years ago. If you…

December 18, 2017

Employment Law

You Need What?: When Does Your Employee’s Request for More Leave Become Unreasonable Under the ADA?

Employee requests for extended leave as a reasonable accommodation of a disability continue to be among the most difficult for employers to evaluate under Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”). Consider this all too familiar scenario for many employers: Your employee is nearing exhaustion of all available forms of sick leave, including Family and Medical Leave Act (“FMLA”) leave and paid time off, and informs you that he is unable to return to work right now, requires additional medical…

August 4, 2017

Business and Financial Services

Federal Court Halts Implementation of New Overtime Final Rule

Yesterday afternoon, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas issued a nationwide preliminary injunction blocking implementation of the Department of Labor’s Final Rule that would have raised the minimum salary level for white-collar exempt employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) from $455 per week ($23,660 annually) to $913 per week ($47,476 annually), effective as of December 1, 2016. It should be emphasized that the Court’s decision to stay…

November 23, 2016

Business and Financial Services

Mandatory Paid Sick Leave Comes To Montgomery County Maryland

The Earned Sick and Safe Leave Law Montgomery County, Maryland (the “County”), has recently joined the growing list of jurisdictions requiring paid sick leave for employees. According to County legislators, paid sick and safe leave is necessary to promote the health and welfare of County residents and safeguard County employers from unfair competition from neighboring jurisdictions. Effective October 1, 2016, entities doing business in the County must be in full compliance with the Earned Sick…

October 19, 2016

Business and Financial Services

Uber Reaches Settlement of Independent Contractor Misclassification Lawsuits in California and Massachusetts

Last week, Uber, the on-demand ride-hailing service, reached a settlement of two class action lawsuits pending against it in California and Massachusetts. These were filed by Uber drivers who claimed that the company had misclassified them as independent contractors instead of employees. The settlement is pending approval by the federal district judges overseeing the cases. The California and Massachusetts lawsuits reportedly cover more than 385,000 Uber drivers. Similar class action law suits…

May 20, 2016

Employment Law

NLRB to Begin Targeting Employer Misclassification of Workers as Independent Contractors as an Unfair Labor Practice

With the Complaint issued recently by the National Labor Relations Board’s (“NLRB”) Regional Director in Los Angeles, the NLRB appears poised to enter the fray on the issue of employer misclassification of workers as independent contractors instead of employees. The NLRB’s Complaint alleges that Intermodal Bridge Transport “has misclassified its employee-drivers as independent contractors, thereby inhibiting them from engaging in Section 7 activity and depriving them of the protections” of the…

May 19, 2016

4th Circuit Rules that a Virginia School Board Violated Title IX by Preventing a Transgender Male Student from Using Boys’ Restroom

A sharply divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond ruled 2-1 last week in the case of G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board that a Gloucester County School Board regulation limiting the use of student restrooms and locker facilities to a student’s biological or birth gender was impermissibly in conflict with a U.S. Department of Education (“DOE”), Office of Civil Rights (“OCR”) interpretation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (“Title…

May 6, 2016