The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC") is getting out the word on how it views the new Amendments to the ADA. Peggy Mastroianni, Esq., Associate Legal Counsel of the EEOC, Washington, DC, office recently spoke to lawyers and human resources professionals in Pasadena, CA. I attended the EEOC Training Institute’s seminar, and
What is Religion?
The question of "what is religion?" has been litigated extensively. What do you think about these groups? Rastafarian, Wiccan, Church of Marijuana, Voodoo, Atheism, Ethical Culture Society, Church of Body Modification?
According to the EEOC Technical Assistance Training Seminar I attended last week in Pasadena, "religion" is defined as follows:
A sincere and meaningful
EEOC Guidance on Criminal Records
I recently attended an EEOC Training Seminar in Pasadena where Maurice Emsellem, Esq., Director of the Second Chance Labor Project and National Employment Law Project provided an enlightening discussion on how criminal background checks have a disparate impact on people of color, California African American job applicants in particular. An interesting fact is that
Can Sexual Orientation Discrimination Equate to Religious Discrimination?
Yesterday, a fellow employment law blogger, Jon Hyman of the Ohio Employer’s Law Blog, made an interesting post. Sexual orientation discrimination by an employer is still legal in Ohio, so some creative plaintiff’s lawyers in Ohio have argued that the employers’ actions constituted religious discrimination because the plaintiff employees’ lifestyles did not comport with
Asking Job Applicants About Criminal Convictions
A benefit of using employment applications in hiring is the ability of the employer to directly ask an applicant if he/she has a criminal history that would show up if a thorough background check was conducted, according to Lester S. Rosen of Employment Screening Resources in his August 2009 article in the Lorman Education Service
Investigating Preferential Treatment Claims in Caregiver Disability Cases
Knowledge of Familial Disabilities
When investigating a claim of preferential treatment (or disparate treatment) by an employee alleging "Caregiver Disability Discrimination," the EEO investigator should first try to obtain information about familial disabilities of the employee who was allegedly treated preferentially in the case at hand. The EEO investigator should first ask