Rojgar Job News

By now, you may have read about yesterday’s decision by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals that Title VII bars discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Connecticut is in that federal circuit (along with New York and Vermont).  You can download the decision in Zarda v. Altitude Express, Inc., here. (You’ve been warned though — there are 163 pages to the various opinions!) The decision talks a lot of “associational discrimination” and other academic theories of proving a case under Title VII; that’s beyond the practical aspects of this blog for employers but practitioners in the area should review the decision as a whole. So what IS the practical impact on Connecticut employers?  Not as much as you might first think. Connecticut state law already bars employers from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation. Indeed, last year, I wrote that the debate over whether federal law includes a bar against discrimination on sexu...

Now that Thanksgiving is in the past, it’s time to look forward to the future. Well, not before getting a recap of everything that transpired in employment law in the last year. Or at least everything that we can fit in an hour long seminar. The webinar that broke attendance records last year is back again on December 4, 2018 at noon ET. This year, five employment law bloggers are presenting the “Best-Ever Year-End Employment Law Review that Five Employment Law Bloggers Have Ever Presented” webinar.  Registration is just $25 and it’s eligible for CLE/SHRM/HRCI credit. All that is needed is to sign up here.  The presenters this year are: Robin Shea, Constangy, Brooks, Smith & Prophete Kate Bischoff, tHRive Law & Consulting Jon Hyman, Meyers Roman Eric Meyer, FisherBroyles Jeff Nowak, Franczek Radelet Daniel Schwartz, Shipman & Goodwin Among the topics that you can surely expect to hear about: #MeToo, LGBT discrim...

One of the quirks of discrimination law in Connecticut concerns sexual orientation.  Back in 1991, the General Assembly passed a wide-ranging bill that added sexual orientation as one of the protected classes that employers could not base decisions on. Sort of. Rather than add sexual orientation to the key employment law statute that bars discrimination in employment, it created it’s own separate law.  While there may have been reasons for such a distinction nearly 30 years ago, it still a bit strange that we still do it this way. Notably, civil unions are still covered here even though same-sex marriages are now legal. So on to the next law in our Employment Law Checklist Project (#emplawchecklist).  You can find this one at Conn. Gen. Stat. Sec. 46a-81c (and related statutes.)  It states, in its relevant part: It shall be a discriminatory practice in violation of this section: (1) For an employer, by himself or his agent, except in the case of a bona fide occ...

My unabashed love of the New York Yankees has been well chronicled here on the blog. (Here and here for just a sample.) So imagine my surprise when I did a deeper dive last night into the Supreme Court’s landmark decision yesterday.  There on page ten, Justice Gorsuch digs deep into baseball loyalties for this example: Consider an employer with a policy of firing any woman he discovers to be a Yankees fan. Carrying out that rule because an employee is a woman and a fan of the Yankees is a firing “because of sex” if the employer would have tolerated the same allegiance in a male employee. Or, put another way, it’s ok to fire Yankees fans, so long as all employees who like the Yankees (both male and female) are treated the same. (I’m still waiting for a vociferous dissent from Justice Sotomayor – a devout Yankees fan herself.) Wait, you might say — That’s my private belief! How can I be fired for just liking a baseball team? But obvious...

In the most consequential U.S. Supreme Court case in many years, the Court ruled this morning that Title VII prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. You can download the 6-3 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, here. Connecticut has long prohibited employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity so the court’s decision will have less of an impact here for LGBT workers.  In fact, back in 2016 the Connecticut District Court already offered these protections for Title VII cases in this state in a decision that I covered back then.  In states without such protection, the new protections now offered to employees nationwide will be significant. And moreover, the message that this case is sending is unmistakable too: The statute’s message for our cases is equally simple and  momentous: An individual’s homosexuality or transgender status is not relevant to employment decisions....

On October 8, 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in three employment discrimination cases involving what protection, if any, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 – which prohibits discrimination in employment on the basis of, among other things, sex – affords against sexual orientation and gender identity-based discrimination.  As we previously discussed here, there is currently no explicit protection against such discrimination under federal law, and federal appellate courts are split on the issue.  This term, the Supreme Court will determine whether the language in Title VII that prohibits employment discrimination “because of … sex” also extends to sexual orientation and transgender-based discrimination.   The cases involve three employees, two gay men and a transgender woman, who were fired because of their LGBT status.  Pamela Karlan, attorney for the one of the men, argued before the Court that se...