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A medical practice in Florida recently settled a claim brought by the EEOC for genetic information discrimination under “GINA,” the Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act, according to Bloomberg BNA. The employer had asked into the COVID testing results of its employees’ family members, but GINA prohibits inquiries into an employee’s family medical history, and the EEOC had issued a COVID guidance prohibiting such inquiries. The EEOC’s position has not yet been fully tested in court, but employers would do well to…

The U.S. court of appeals in Richmond recently allowed a discrimination claim based on color, as in skin color, making it clear that such a claim is separate and distinct from a claim for race discrimination. In the case, Felder v. MGM National Harbor, the plaintiff claimed that African Americans with light skin – like him – were treated more harshly than African Americans with darker skin. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 specifically protects employees on…

Remember those federal vaccine mandates?  Well, one of them is still with us, and it has now started going into effect in Texas, the last state to be subject to the mandate. You may recall that when in January the U.S. Supreme Court nixed the Administration’s vaccine mandate for large employers, it allowed the vaccine mandate for health care employers, that is, Medicare- and Medicaid-certified providers and suppliers. The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) started setting deadlines for…

The President has signed a bill prohibiting mandatory arbitration of sexual harassment and sexual assault claims. The law’s name is a mouthful, the “Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act of 2021.” The new law also forbids mandatory waivers of an employee’s right to bring class actions or their cousins, “collective actions.” The Act states the predispute mandatory agreements are invalid and unenforceable with respect to “cases” involving sexual harassment or sexual assault; that would seem to…

In decisions handed down just yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court nixed OSHA’s vaccine mandate for employers with 100 or more employees but allowed a vaccine mandate for health care employers who receive Medicare and Medicaid funding.  The Court had heard oral argument in the two cases only last Friday, January 7th. The difference in the two decisions was Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh, both of whom voted to allow the health care mandate but not the mandate for large…

Just yesterday, December 17th, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati allowed the OSHA rule requiring employers with 100 or more employees to require their employees to be vaccinated. The rule had been blocked by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans since November 6th. The Department of Labor has said that employers will now have until January 10th to comply with the rule.  OSHA is giving employers until February 9th before…

On September 1st, Texans will see major changes in Texas law on sexual harassment, when Senate Bill 45 and House Bill 21 go into effect.  The bills were passed in the 2021 regular session of the Legislature. Taken together, the bills extend the prohibition on sexual harassment to every employer in Texas, not just ones with 15 or more employees, and extend the statute of limitations for filing a charge of sexual harassment with the Texas Workforce Commission from 180…

In a landmark event in the COVID pandemic, last week the U.S. Food & Drug Administration  granted full approval to the coronavirus vaccine made by Pfizer-BioNTech.  Pfizer’s was the first COVID vaccine to receive full approval by the FDA. The FDA’s full approval of the Pfizer vaccine takes away a potential defense employees might raise to a vaccine mandate, that the vaccine had only emergency use authorization, and that under the law people had to be told they had the…

Last week was not a slow news week for this blog!!! On March 10th, judges of the Fourth Court of Appeals in San Antonio threw out the City of San Antonio’s “Sick and Safe Leave Ordinance.”  Some of you may be old enough to remember that the ordinance passed originally in 2018 as the “Paid Sick Leave Ordinance.” To make a long, convoluted story short, several business groups filed suit against the enforcement of the ordinance, and Judge Peter Sakai…