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No, the law does not necessarily require this, although many companies often take this dramatic step to resolve a harassment situation.  Yet as the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals recently ruled, disciplinary actions less than discharge can often satisfy the law’s requirements and protect an employer from legal liability.  See Williams-Boldware v. Denton County, Texas.  Given the broad range of conduct that employees may perceive as harassing, employers should be aware of the options…

On March 6, 2014, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued two new technical assistance publications addressing workplace rights and responsibilities with respect to religious dress and grooming under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The EEOC published a question-and-answer guide and an accompanying fact sheet describing variations employers must allow from dress codes for religious reasons.  The guidance reminds employers that they must grant employee requests for reasonable accommodations due to

A civilian DoD employee lost her age-discrimination case last month, even though she successfully proved that her second-line supervisor was biased against older workers.  In Jernagin v. McHugh (No. 1:12-cv-1285), the U.S. District Court in Alexandria found that even though Lavina Jernagin established the existence of age bias on the part of her second-line supervisor, she failed to establish a causal nexus between that supervisor’s age bias and another supervisor’s decision to rate Jernagin a

Under the Rehabilitation Act (as with many other federal employment statutes), claimants must first exhaust their administrative remedies before proceeding with a civil action against their employer.  In some instances, courts may excuse an employee’s failure to exhaust administrative remedies if he or she clearly made a “good faith effort” to cooperate.  But in the case of Koch v. White, decided earlier this month by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, the