Category Archives: Employee Rights

Employer Religious Accommodation Obligations Increase

Discrimination, Employee Rights, Religion, , , , , ,

In light of a recent United States Supreme Court opinion, your burdens as an employer to accommodate your employee’s religious beliefs and practices have increased. It is now much harder for a business with at least 15 employees to deny a religious employee whatever changes to their job duties, schedule or conditions that the employee wants.

The Groff case

In Groff v. DeJoy, decided on June 29, 2023, the Court adopted a higher bar for businesses to meet before they can deny a requested religious accommodation. Gerald Groff, a postal worker, wanted Sundays off to observe his religious beliefs. But postal workers deliver Amazon packages on Sundays on a rotating basis. He refused to ever work on Sundays, and other employees had to deliver his packages on his designated Sundays. He received progressive discipline over a long period of time for his continuing refusal to perform that job duty and eventually resigned.

Groff claimed in his lawsuit that the postal service could have accommodated his religious request to not work Sundays “without undue hardship to the business.” For 50 years, that term “without undue hardship” has meant that the employer didn’t have to change its practices to accommodate a religious request if the request required more than a de minimis or trifling inconvenience for the business.

The 2023 Supreme Court overruled 50 years of precedent and now defines “undue hardship” as a financial determination. According to the Supreme Court, you as an employer may only deny a religious accommodation request if you can show that the request would result in substantial additional costs to the company, taking into account to the size and operating costs of your business. So hardship on other employees, inconvenience, disruption to the smooth running of your business and other challenges are not important. And the Court also said that if one accommodation costs too much, the employer still has to look for other, less expensive accommodations that would satisfy the religious employee.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) has always made it clear that infrequent payment of overtime to employees who cover shifts not worked by the religious employee is not considered an undue hardship. It appears that now even frequent overtime payments may not be enough to rise to the level of undue hardship for certain successful businesses.

The Court also said that co-worker hostility to the requested accommodation is insufficient to deny the change that the religious employee wants. So those coworkers of Mr. Groff’s who resented him not taking his turn in the Sunday delivery rotation were not an excuse for the employer to deny Groff’s demand that he never work on a Sunday.  

If this sounds like you as an employer are required to give preferential treatment to religious employees, you have correctly interpreted the current Supreme Court, the same court that vehemently decreed that even considering race in college admissions, much less preferential admission on the basis of race, is illegal.

What Religious Claims are Protected?

And despite the Supreme Court’s favoritism towards Christianity, U.S. businesses have to accommodate all religions this way—Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Native American tribal religions, Voodoo, Druidism, Scientology, the Jedi religion, Rastafarianism . . . . The law protects all religious beliefs, including those that are new, uncommon, not part of a formal church or sect, or only held by a small number of people. An employee’s belief or practice can be “religious” even if the employee is affiliated with a religious group that does not espouse or recognize that employee’s particular belief or practice. And it is up to you as an employer to now maneuver around all of the obstacles that this heightened religious accommodation requirement demands.

Continue reading Employer Religious Accommodation Obligations Increase →

New Laws Regarding Pregnant and Nursing Employees

Compensation, Discrimination, Employee Rights, Personnel Policies, , , ,

Every employer with 15 or more names on the payroll needs to understand its obligations under two new federal laws relating to pregnant and nursing employees. With bipartisan support in Congress, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) and the Providing Urgent Maternal Protections for Nursing Mothers Act (PUMP Act) were passed last month and take effect almost immediately.

PUMP Act

Nursing mothers received some protections under the Affordable Care Act in 2010 to take breaks at work to nurse their infants or to express milk to be refrigerated and saved for later. Those protections have been expanded and recodified with this new law.

What’s new under the PUMP Act?

  • Employees who are breastfeeding an infant can take advantage of the nursing protections at work for 2 years instead of 1 year allowed under the ACA. The wording in the PUMP Act is ambiguous as to when that two-year protection starts. It says, “for the 2-year period beginning on the date on which the circumstances related to such need arise”. What does that even mean?  My best legal guess is that if an employee nursing a child returns to work three months after the baby is born, then her two-year time period will start running on the date of her return.  But don’t let this ambiguity make you anxious. Employers should be patient and remember that only 35% of US babies are still breastfed at all after they are 12 months old. So many employees will not request this accommodation for two years. If an employee is still taking these breaks when the child is older than two years, call your employment lawyer for advice.
  • Although few employers made this distinction in the past, exempt salaried workers were not covered by the ACA nursing mothers provisions. They now have the same rights to nursing breaks under the PUMP Act as hourly workers had with the ACA. Of course, the challenging matter for employers of trying to figure out how to pay an hourly employee who takes nursing breaks is not an issue for salaried employees, because they are paid the same amount every day regardless of the number of breaks they take.
  • Before an employee complains to the EEOC or otherwise sues the employer over violating the PUMP Act, the employee has to tell the employer about its violation of the PUMP Act and give the employer 10 calendar days to start providing an adequate space and time for the employee to breastfeed or pump. In other words, there is a 10-day grace period for you to get your act together if you have somehow failed to comply with the PUMP Act with a particular employee.

The other provisions of the PUMP Act will be administered identically to the ACA provisions that have been in effect for 12 years, so most employers will have to make few significant changes to comply:

What do you as an employer need to do right now to comply with the PUMP Act?

Continue reading New Laws Regarding Pregnant and Nursing Employees →

“No Vaccination Passports”: What Does Abbott Mean?

Documentation, Employee Rights, Medical, Personnel Policies, ,

Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed an Executive Order on April 5, 2021, purporting to ban “vaccination passports” in Texas. But Texas employers are asking, “What does this mean for my business?”.

Abbott has said that in Texas “vaccinations are voluntary and never forced.” He continued by saying:

Government should not require any Texan to show proof of vaccination and reveal private health information just to go about their daily lives. That is why I have issued an Executive Order that prohibits government-mandated vaccine passports in Texas. We will continue to vaccinate more Texans and protect public health — and we will do so without treading on Texans’ personal freedoms.

https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-issues-executive-order-prohibiting-government-mandated-vaccine-passports

Of course, that press statement only addresses the government’s role and says nothing that clarifies how private Texas businesses are supposed to respond.

“Vaccination passports”, in the form of written documentation of having received a vaccination, have been used for years to prevent global travelers from spreading diseases. They are also required in most public schools (although Texas allows parents to sign an written opt out form because of vaccination objections).

Your college student probably had to prove vaccination for meningitis before moving into a dormitory. Few Texans cried “governmental overreach” when that meningitis vaccination requirement assured that their 18-year-old son or daughter would be protected from a potentially fatal disease that rapidly spreads in communal environments such as dorms.

Indoor sports arenas, performing arts centers, and live music venues have been hoping that vaccination passports would allow those venues to assure the public that they are once again safe to come back to live performances while sitting 18″ from the person in the next seat for a couple of hours.

But like masks, COVID-19 vaccinations have become a political hot potato. Gov. Abbott, seeking to appease a very vocal minority, generated headlines that proclaimed “Abbott Bans Vaccination Passports”. Once you dig down into the actual wording of Gov. Abbott’s Executive Order, you find that only these actions are prohibited:

Continue reading “No Vaccination Passports”: What Does Abbott Mean? →
Employees and Covid-19

Ten Ways to Get Sued by Employees During a Pandemic

Compensation, Discrimination, Documentation, Employee Rights, Medical, Personnel Policies, Termination, , , , , , , , , ,

Even though the idea has been in the news recently, at the current time there is no absolute liability immunity for Texas employers from COVID-19-related claims made by employees who are exposed to the virus in your workplace or otherwise harmed during the pandemic. You can be sued for many different legal failures as an employer during this crisis, so you should know what the law expects of you right now.

The law firm of Fisher Phillips is maintaining a fascinating database of COVID-19-related cases filed so far in 2020. Their database shows that 38 COVID lawsuits have been filed in Texas for claims such as unsafe workplaces, discrimination, paid leave violations, retaliation and even wrongful death. I have no doubt those claims will continue to increase as employers struggle with all of the safety guidance and other rules burying them during this crisis.

I’ve narrowed the possibilities of a Texas employer getting sued during this global pandemic down to these ten mistakes:

Continue reading Ten Ways to Get Sued by Employees During a Pandemic →

Supreme Court Outlaws Discrimination Against LGBT Employees

Discrimination, Documentation, Employee Rights, Hiring, Personnel Policies, Termination,

The United State Supreme Court ruled today in Bostock v. Clayton County that employers may be sued for sex discrimination by LGBT employees under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This opinion resolves a long-time disagreement between the various federal circuit courts and unwieldy patchwork of laws that had protected LGBT employees in some states but not others, and Texas cities like Austin, Dallas and Houston, but not Amarillo.

The Court combined three cases, one in which a male county employee was fired for conduct “unbecoming” a public employee when he joined a gay softball league, one in which a private employer fired an employee just days after he mentioned he was gay, and one where a funeral home fired an employee who presented as male when hired, but later stated that she was going to live, dress and work as a female going forward.

After reviewing each of these job terminations, the Court decided 6-3 in an opinion written by Trump-appointee Justice Neil Gorsuch that an employer who fires an individual based in part on being gay or transgender (and by natural extension, bisexual or lesbian) violates Title VII’s prohibition on discrimination on the basis of sex. “An employer who fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender defies the law”, Gorsuch wrote.

The Court pointed out several important rules for employers to know (these apply to any discriminatory job decision, whether it is based on race, age, national origin, disability, religion, etc.):

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Webinar for Texas Employers on CARES and FFCRA

Attendence, Benefits, Compensation, Employee Rights, Medical, Privacy, ,

Today, Texas employment attorney Vicki Wilmarth and health insurance benefits expert, Josh Butler, presented a webinar entitled Texas Employer’s Guide to Coronavirus Legal Issues.

Even if you missed the webinar live, you can watch the free 1-hour presentation for an overview about the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (“FFCRA”) (paid leave law) and Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (“CARES”) (stimulus bill) on your own time. https://youtu.be/BGJCnHOJp18

You can also view the slides from the webinar here.

COVID-19 Paid Leave Laws Affect Small Employers

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Congress has passed and President Trump has signed a new law that requires small employers to provide paid leave to employees for two weeks of sick leave and as many as 10 weeks of leave to take care of kids whose schools have closed.

This Families First Coronavirus Response Act (“FFCRA”) goes into effect on April 1, 2020. It requires all employers with less than 500 employees, including very small employers and nonprofits, to pay employees whose absences are caused by the COVID-19 epidemic. The DOL has created a fact sheet and an FAQ to help employers understand these laws better.

Here are a few highlights of the FFCRA law:

Paid sick leave for two weeks is available to all full-time, part-time, temporary, seasonal, and other kind of employee if the employee has to miss work for one of the following reasons:

  1. Employee is subject to government quarantine; or
  2. Employee has been advised by healthcare provider to self-quarantine; or
  3. Employee is experiencing symptoms and seeking a diagnosis; or
  4. Employee is caring for an individual subject to quarantine or self-quarantine as advised by healthcare provider; or
  5. Employee is caring for children under 18 because schools or “caregivers” are unavailable; or
  6. Employee is experiencing any other condition that is substantially similar to COVID-19, as specified in HHS regulations to come.

Paid Family and Medical Leave is available for up to 10 more weeks (after using up 2 weeks of unpaid time or 2 weeks of Emergency Paid Sick Leave as spelled out above) to all full-time, part-time, temporary, seasonal or other kind of employee if the employee has worked for the employer for at least 30 days and then has to miss work for this one reason:

  • The employee is unavailable to work or telework because the employee is caring for a child under the age of 18 because that child’s school or childcare facility is closed because of the coronavirus.

The paid sick leave has to be paid at the employees’ regular hourly rate (including commissions, tips and piece rates, but not overtime rates) if the employee is absent for reasons #1-3, above. The paid sick leave and the paid family and medical leave have to be paid at 2/3 of the employee’s regular hourly rate if the employee is absent for reasons #4-6, above. There are also daily and total caps on the amounts you have to pay the employees for these absences.

Employers with less than 50 employees are subject to these FFCRA paid leave laws, even though you have never before been required to comply with Family and Medical Leave Act or any paid leave law. There is a provision that the Secretary of Labor can exempt a business when giving the leave would “jeopardize the vitality of the business.” In other words, if granting this paid leave could make your company go out of business, and you can prove that in your financials, you might not have to provide this paid leave. You don’t have to get the Secretary of Labor’s permission for this exemption by filing anything, but you will have to be able to document the correctness of your decision after the fact.

This law is not retroactive, meaning you don’t have to pay for leave taken before April 1, 2020, if it wasn’t your company policy to pay employee absences.

However, you also can’t make employees apply your paid time off policy before using this emergency paid sick leave or family leave. It is the employee’s choice alone on how to coordinate their PTO and these paid leave laws.

The good news for employers is that the employer gets a tax credit on payroll taxes for 100% of these amounts paid to employees for emergency sick leave and paid Family and Medical Leave. On the next Form 941 that will be due by July 31, 2020, the IRS will add a line for the employer to take the tax credit. If the amount you paid out to your employees for these paid leave laws exceeds the payroll taxes that you owe, then you are supposed to be able to get a refund from the IRS within 2 weeks after filing your Form 941.

We are still waiting for the Secretary of Labor to provide more guidance through regulations. He should also be providing us with notices, posters and other explanations to give to your employees.

There are also other employment laws that a company has to consider in this crisis, which are summarized here.

Texas Employer’s Legal Guide to COVID-19 Issues

Attendence, Compensation, Discrimination, Employee Rights, Personnel Policies, Privacy, , , ,

Note: Some of these laws are changing rapidly as the federal government responds to the crisis. For example, paid sick leave and paid family leave are required of small employers beginning April 1, 2020. That’s why some of the information below has been deleted. Be sure to call an employment lawyer for the latest information and advice.

As COVID-19 dominates the headlines, Texas employers still have businesses to run and employees to supervise. The novel coronavirus, which causes the disease “COVID-19”, is creating all kinds of questions for these businesses, and most of those are best answered by medical and governmental resources.

But there are also employment law issues arising that a Texas employer may wrestle with. I wouldn’t even think about giving medical advice, but 32 years of practicing law has given me some insight that you may find helpful about the legal issues you are facing with your employees.

While there are some companies that can and should practice social isolation and allow employees to work from home, many businesses require employees to show up to perform work—think grocery stores, pharmacies, restaurants, retail, medical offices, hospitals, construction, feedlots, landscapers, agriculture, trucking companies, banks, childcare facilities, etc.

In those businesses, employers must walk the tightrope between compassion for those who are sick and the reality of needing your employees to be present in the workplace. There may also be tension between wanting to pay your employees even while they are absent and a possible huge decrease in your revenue during this time.

So there are no easy answers, but here are the laws you need to consider and discuss with your human resources professionals and your employment attorney BEFORE you take any action involving your employees:

Continue reading Texas Employer’s Legal Guide to COVID-19 Issues →

Docking A Salaried Employee’s Pay is Tricky

Attendence, Compensation, Employee Rights, , ,

Paying an exempt employee on salary means that employee receives the same amount of money each week regardless whether the employee works 35 hours or 45 hours. There are benefits for both you and the employee because you don’t have to calculate overtime and the employee doesn’t have to religiously track work hours.

Interestingly, employers ask me all the time about docking that weekly salary of an exempt employee. For some reason, if a salaried worker misses a half-day for a child’s school field trip or a distant relative’s funeral, suddenly employers want to dock the employee’s salary, possibly because the reason for missing work seems trivial. But that’s legally not how salaries work within the context of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”).

The FLSA requires that a salaried, exempt employee be paid a “fixed” weekly salary of at least $684 that cannot be docked regardless of the quantity or quality of work. One way to think about it is to tell yourself that a salaried, exempt employee earns her whole salary for the week by Monday morning at 8:05 a.m.

So if your marketing director is paid $1000 per week, she has to be paid $1000 even for the weeks when she goes home on two separate workdays after lunch because she is sick or when she recklessly spends $20,000 of the company’s funds on an unsuccessful marketing campaign. You cannot deduct from her pay just because she did not work the quantity of hours you expected or perform her job with the quality that you expected.

There are legal deductions you have to take from a salary when required by law (for example, income tax withholding, payroll taxes, child support) and legal deductions you can make for items that are authorized in writing by the employee (for example, health insurance premiums, retirement contributions, salary advance repayments).

But the FLSA is extremely strict when it comes to the employer deducting from an exempt employee’s salary for missed days or poor work.

Here are the absences and acts for which a Texas employer cannot dock a salaried, exempt employee:

Continue reading Docking A Salaried Employee’s Pay is Tricky →

Firing For Abortion is Discrimination

Discrimination, Employee Rights, Termination, , ,

Since abortion laws are such a hot topic right now, employers should be warned: firing a woman for obtaining an abortion is discrimination.

The Pregnancy Discrimination Act (“PDA”), which amended the federal discrimination law, Title VII, prohibits employers from taking adverse action against an employee “because of or on the basis of pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions”. The EEOC and the courts who have examined this question agree that this definition includes protection for women who chose abortion.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidance on the PDA states as follows:

Title VII protects women from being fired for having an abortion or contemplating having an abortion. . . . Title VII would similarly prohibit adverse employment actions against an employee based on her decision not to have an abortion. For example, it would be unlawful for a manager to pressure an employee to have an abortion, or not to have an abortion, in order to retain her job, get better assignments, or stay on a path for advancement.

While our Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has not ruled on this question, the most recent court to examine this issue is a federal district court in Louisiana, which answers to the Fifth Circuit. In Ducharme v. Crescent City Deja Vu, LLC (E.D. La. May 13, 2019)(emphasis added), last week the judge plainly stated:

[A]n abortion is only something that can be undergone during a pregnancy. Title VII requires that “women affected by pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions shall be treated the same for all employment-related purposes.” 42 U.S.C.A. § 2000e(k). A woman terminated from employment because she had an abortion was terminated because she was affected by pregnancy.

The judge in Ducharme found support for this decision in two earlier appellate cases. Doe v. C.A.R.S. Prot. Plus, Inc., 527 F.3d 358, 364 (3rd Cir.), order clarified on other grounds, 543 F.3d 178 (3rd Cir. 2008) (“Clearly, the plain language of the statute, together with the legislative history and the EEOC guidelines, support a conclusion that an employer may not discriminate against a woman employee because she has exercised her right to have an abortion. We now hold that the term ‘related medical conditions’ includes an abortion.”); Turic v. Holland Hosp., Inc., 85 F.3d 1211, 1214 (6th Cir. 1996) (“Thus, the plain language of the statute, the legislative history and the EEOC guidelines clearly indicate that an employer may not discriminate against a woman employee because ‘she has exercised her right to have an abortion.’).

There is another important lesson in this case besides understanding that abortion cannot play any role in an employment decision. The lesson for business owners, managers and supervisors is to think before you speak and keep your strong opinions about sensitive topics like abortion out of the workplace.

Even though the judge’s opinion acknowledged that a woman choosing abortion is protected under Title VII, the ex-employee in Ducharme did not prevail on her claim against her employer in part because she failed to demonstrate that her employer actually fired her for the abortion instead of the on-the-job drinking. A significant part of the court’s reasoning was based on the fact that the employer who did the firing, Ms. Salzer, did not actually demonstrate an anti-abortion bias:

Perhaps most fatal to plaintiff’s pregnancy discrimination claim, however, is the complete absence of any support for any alleged anti-abortion animus by Ms. Salzer. Here, it is uncontroverted that Ms. Salzer had never said anything about abortion or religion to Ms. Ducharme at any time during their 18-month relationship. Ms. Ducharme does not dispute that when she informed Ms. Salzer that she was planning on undergoing an abortion, Ms. Salzer did not attempt to talk her out of it and did not say that she disapproved of the decision. There is no evidence that prior to that, Ms. Salzer had ever said anything to suggest to Ms. Ducharme that she would disapprove of the abortion. Ms. Salzer had never said anything political about abortion. Ms. Ducharme did not think of Ms. Salzer as religious.

So the employer did not:

  • Say anything about abortion or religion to Ms. Ducharme at any time during the 18 months Ms. Ducharme worked there;
  • Try to talk Ms. Ducharme out of her decision to have an abortion;
  • Express disapproval about Ms. Ducharme’s decision;
  • Generally talk about her religious or political views in the workplace.

Consider how differently this case could have gone if the employer was a known abortion opponent who lectured his/her employees on the evils of abortion, strongly objected when an employee asked for time off for an abortion and then fired that employee soon thereafter. That employer’s words and actions on this sensitive medical, religious and political issue would definitely come back to bite the employer in a discrimination case.

Or consider the flipside. What if the employer were very strongly in favor of abortion rights and did not want a top-performing female employee to lose any work time to pregnancy and a maternity leave? That employer’s statements encouraging the employee to end the pregnancy “for the good of the business” and to increase the employee’s chances of advancement could also be strong evidence in a pregnancy discrimination case.

The lesson is that your workplace is not the right place for a boss to pontificate on religious and political hot topics. As an employer, you can be you without hostility or stridency towards who your employees are or what they believe. Successful leaders create more welcoming, tolerant workplaces and give fewer lectures.