Advocating for Employees in San Antonio, TX and Beyond
The Fifth Circuit has recognized that a hostile work environment claim can exist under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. The Fifth Circuit has never reached such a conclusion before now. In Dediol v. Best Chevrolet, Inc., the Federal appellate court reversed a grant of summary judgment in favor of the employer.
The Court…
Written counseling is important. I have advised and represented small business owners. The best protection from a false claim is written counseling made at the time of the alleged infraction. Even the most basic workplace will have scratch paper somewhere. You as a manager need to include the basics: what the employee did wrong, when…
The EEOC has been hit with another sanction of attorney’s fees. A court assessed $2.6 million in attorney’s fees against the EEOC due to a lawsuit they filed which they lost. See Workplace Prof blog post. The EEOC had sought class action status in EEOC v. Cintas and lost. Because the EEOC did not…
Residents of a north Bexar County community have accused a deputy Sheriff of racial profiling. See San Antonio Express News report. Some residents of Timberwood Park, near Bulverde, and local activists claim that Deputy Patrick Plate has been targeting Hispanics and pulling them over for traffic stops and calling US Immigration and Customs Enforcement…
Surina Dixon was hired by Texas Southern University in Houston, Texas to coach women’s basketball. She quit her job in Tennessee and moved to Texas with her husband in 2008. She noticed soon after she arrived that the new men’s basketball coach was paid $148,000 while she was to be paid only $75,000. She complained.
Retaliatory lawsuits are rarely a good idea. Employers can feel very offended when an employee files a lawsuit. The employment relationship can be like family. So, sure, many employers feel some betrayal when they are sued. But, to respond with a counter-lawsuit almost never works.
In one case, the employer responded to a discrimination lawsuit…
As a lawyer, I often tell my non-lawyer friends we have two duties as citizens: to vote and to serve on a jury. Surely, if nothing else, our Republic was founded on the principle of an educated electorate that casts votes. But, if we ask for time off from our job to vote, we can…
A federal jury in Houston has returned a verdict against a former County Judge of $3.2 million. James Blackstock, a former Brazoria County Court-at-Law Judge and former head of the Juvenile Probation Board was sued for sexual harassment by three female employees of the Juvenile Probation department. The jury found the judge had created a…
A woman claims she was fired from her job at a Houston, Texas title company because she refused to dye her gray hair and wear "younger, fancier" clothes and lots of jewelry. See ABA Bar Journal report. The CEO of the title company dismisses her claim, saying he has gray hair. Bill Shaddock says…
Russ Cawyer posts about the coming demise of the so-called "no fault" leave policy, better described as fixed leave policies. He notes that the EEOC has been aggressively pursuing companies who implement such policies. Under these policies, once an employee has been out on leave for a certain length of time, the employee is terminated…