Susan L. Bickley and Emery G. Richards
In a victory for employers in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin, the Seventh Circuit ruled recently that the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) does not require employers to give workers extended additional leave after their allotment under the Family and Medical Leave Act (“FMLA”) runs out. The Court’s ruling in Severson v. Heartland Woodcraft, Inc. is the strongest rejection of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (“EEOC”) long-held and vigorously advocated position that long-term leaves are a required form of reasonable accommodation. Continue reading “Seventh Circuit Rebukes EEOC—Extended Leave Is Not a Reasonable Accommodation under the ADA”
Enacted in 1935, the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”) was designed, among other things, to protect the rights of employees and employers, including protecting an employee’s right to engage in protected concerted activity in the workplace, such as complaining to other employees about her manager or terms and conditions of employment, without fear of retaliation by his or her employer. The National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”), an independent federal agency with five members appointed by the president, enforces the NLRA and effectively controls its interpretation and application, subject to limited review by the courts. In less than a decade, the NLRB of the Obama administration extended the protections of the NLRA—in ways some would say were never contemplated by Congress—to employees’ work-related conversations conducted on social media, such as Facebook and Twitter. Those protections apply regardless of whether the employee is represented by a union or not. With this expansion of protection for social media activities, employers must carefully consider the NLRB’s decisions, or else proceed at their own peril. 
On August 31, 2017, a federal judge in the Eastern District of Texas 
There is an old saying that natural disasters bring out the worst in nature and the best in people. As Hurricane Harvey has shown us, massive devastation is often followed by extraordinary human achievements.