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...

Summer feels really far away right now.  It’s just been brutally cold here in the Northeast. (How cold? Too cold for skiing.  That’s brutal by any stretch.) But summer WILL eventually come. So we’re told. So the news late Friday that the U.S. Department of Labor was scrapping the test it had released just a few years ago about interns probably went a bit unnoticed. At first blush, it might look like a big deal. But, in reality, not so much because the federal courts here (including New York as well) had already adopted the new test that the USDOL announced on Friday. I’ve covered both before, but the TL;DR version is this: The DOL is going to the “primary benefit” or “primary beneficiary” standard that had been outlined in 2015 by the Second Circuit. Law360 summarized it pretty well here: Under the [Second Circuit] test, courts have analyzed the “economic reality” of interns’ relationship with their employer to ...

There is news in the employment law world beyond sexual harassment.  Arbitration clauses to be exact. Yesterday, the Second Circuit issued a small, but important decision for employers that will continue to limit FLSA wage & hour claims. The court ruled that an employee’s FLSA claims in court were barred by the arbitration clause contained in his employment agreement.  While it isn’t the first time, it’s clear logic will be tough to ignore. (The case, Rodriguez-Depena v. Parts Authority, Inc. et al can be downloaded here.) For the court, it was not even a close call. The court ruled that the Supreme Court’s pronouncement years ago that age discrimination claims were barred by an arbitration clause controlled. The court also looked at whether its decision in the Cheeks v. Freeport Pancake House, Inc. – which required oversight of settlements of FLSA claims — precluded arbitration. The court said it did not. The rationale of Cheeks, h...