Atlanta Employment Attorneys Blog

Eleventh Circuit Addresses Title VII Discrimination Claim in Downsizing Case

November 17, 2016 | Parks, Chesin & Walbert

Layoffs. Downsizing. Reductions in force. These words and phrases can be painful for employees and employers alike. However, the issue of downsizing an employee can be especially tricky if that employee is also a member of a protected class, such as women or racial minorities. In a case recently decided by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, a downsized employee brought but lost a sex discrimination case against her employer. She lost because she couldn’t prove an essential part of her case, which was that she was qualified to assume another open job with her employer after her employer eliminated her position.

Sixth Circuit Applies Federal ADEA Statute of Limitations to Employees’ State Law Discrimination Case

November 10, 2016 | Parks, Chesin & Walbert

The law can be full of twists and turns, with many nuances that may affect the resolution of an issue and, in the process, the ability of an employee to succeed in a discrimination case. In a recent Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals case involving several former employees at Chrysler, we saw this on display. The employees brought state, but not federal, age discrimination claims. However, since the alleged discrimination related to the employees’ retirement plans, the federal statute of limitations applied to their case and yielded a decision that they brought their legal action too late.

The Options Tennessee Employers Have When They Detect Perceived FMLA Leave Misuse

November 2, 2016 | Parks, Chesin & Walbert

It is often a tricky situation for an employer. You’ve approved an employee’s taking a certain amount of time off under the Family and Medical Leave Act, only to discover soon thereafter that your employee wasn’t completely honest with you about his leave. When an employer encounters this issue, it is important to understand what the laws says are your options. In a recent case from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, that court concluded that an employer couldn’t be liable for FMLA retaliation when it forced into retirement an employee whom it deemed to have misused his FMLA leave. The employer won because it had ample proof that the employee had been dishonest, and dishonesty and abuse of FMLA leave were permissible non-discriminatory reasons for the employer’s actions. Continue reading ›

11th Circuit Allows Employees to Bring FLSA Collective Action and State Class Action in One Case

October 26, 2016 | Parks, Chesin & Walbert

A recent ruling by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals is an important one for Georgia employers and employees to note, since it may affect some potential minimum wage and overtime cases. In the new decision, the 11th Circuit decided that it would join numerous other circuits in concluding that the Fair Labor Standards Act does not prohibit employees from bringing a case that contains within it both a FLSA collective action and a state-law class action.

Sixth Circuit: Employee’s Request for Additional Time Off Was Not Reasonable, and Employer Did Not Violate ADA by Refusing

October 19, 2016 | Parks, Chesin & Walbert

A recent disability discrimination case from the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals is useful to Tennessee employees and employers in that it shines a light on some of the “variables” that can tip the scales of an employee’s Americans with Disabilities Act case in one direction or the other. In this case, since the employee had already been granted a long period of time off and was not certain of her recovery when she sought an extension of her leave, the appeals court relied on existing caselaw in ruling that the trial court correctly found the employer not in violation of the ADA when it denied the extension request and terminated the employee instead.

Full 11th Circuit Scraps Georgia Job Applicant’s Age Discrimination Case: What it Means for Georgia Employers and Employees

October 12, 2016 | Parks, Chesin & Walbert

A recent ruling by the full 11th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a decision that an appellate panel had made earlier this year and also provided some clarity on which types of age discrimination claims job applicants in Georgia are and are not allowed to bring under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. The new opinion states that only employees, not employment candidates, can bring ADEA lawsuits in which they allege that the employer’s policies had a disproportionately harmful impact on older workers.

Sixth Circuit Follows “Honest Belief” Rule to Reject Wal-Mart Associate’s Age Discrimination Case

October 5, 2016 | Parks, Chesin & Walbert

A Wal-Mart employee lost her attempt to bring an age discrimination case against her former employer after the company terminated her at age 62. The employee’s unsuccessful case is a reminder to employers and employees of the wide breadth of the “honest belief” rule, which says that, if an employer reasonably relied upon facts it had before it when it made its decision, it cannot be deemed to be using non-discriminatory reasons as mere pretexts for discrimination. The application of this rule to this employee’s case proved to be one integral piece in the failure of her age discrimination case at the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Sixth Circuit Upholds Ruling for Employer in Harassment Case Arising from Two Unwanted Sex-Related Texts

September 28, 2016 | Parks, Chesin & Walbert

A nurse anesthetist, who was the recipient of two very unwelcome text messages from a co-worker encouraging her to have “wild sex” with her husband, lost her sexual harassment case against the co-worker and her employer. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ruling against the nurse anesthetist because the acts of harassment she endured were either unrelated to her gender or too few to constitute the sort of severe and pervasive harassment required by Title VII.

Eleventh Circuit Upholds Dismissal of Dreadlock Discrimination Argument in Title VII Case

September 21, 2016 | Parks, Chesin & Walbert

A would-be call center employee lost an offer of employment because she refused to do away with her hairstyle of wearing dreadlocks. The employer, who rescinded the offer of employment based upon its policy against certain hairstyles, was not forced to face trial for this decision. Even if a particular hairstyle is closely associated with people of a particular race and tied to the unique texture of their hair, a hairstyle cannot constitute an “immutable characteristic” as required under Title VII law, and that, according to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, doomed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s case against this employer.

Georgia Employer Allowed to Keep Some of Employees’ Tips as Long as Employees Received Minimum Wage

September 14, 2016 | Parks, Chesin & Walbert

A decision from a federal court in Atlanta this summer became the latest in a group to reject a recently created regulation by the U.S. Department of Labor declaring tips to be the property of employees in all circumstances, regardless of whether the tips were needed to raise the employee’s pay to a level that satisfied the minimum wage. The court decided that the plain language of the Fair Labor Standards Act is clear that employers are only required to hand over tip money when they pay a base wage below the applicable minimum wage.