Last week I talked about the new state law regarding pregnancy discrimination that is going into effect on October 1, 2017. In that post, I mentioned a new notice that was required to comply with the law.
Although there is no set form that is required to be used, the Connecticut Department of Labor has
“President Trump is a Big Fat Idiot” or, for that matter, “Secretary Clinton is a Sore Loser.”
Let’s suppose you see one of your employees tweeting one of these expressions on Twitter during non-work hours from a personal account.
Can you discipline or even fire your employee over that tweet?
That, in essence, is at the heart of an issue that has been circulating in the sports pages (and in the President’s press briefings) over the last week due to the tweets of ESPN Sportscenter Anchor Jemele Hill from her personal account that were critical of the President.
The New York Times, in fact, ran a story on Saturday discussing the legal ramifications; it was nice to be quoted in the article.
While that article does a good job of summarizing the law in part, there’s a bit more to the story that is useful exploring (however briefly) in a blog post.
First off, people do not generally have a First Amendment protection for things that that they say that their employer finds out about.
Say you go to a white supremacist rally in, oh, Charlottesville and your employer finds out about your speech at the rally. You can be fired because of that generally.
But but but.
A state like Connecticut has a law that says that gives employee a right to sue their employer if the employer disciplines or fires the employee because of that employee exercised their free speech rights under both the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, AND the Connecticut Constitution.
Importantly, the speech has to be of a matter of “public concern” and courts will look to see if the person is speaking in his or her capacity as a concerned citizen; criticisms of your own personal workplace will often times not satisfy this standard.
Political speech is almost always the type of speech that courts will consider of a “public concern”.
The Connecticut Supreme Court said in 1999 (not 2015 as The New York Times indicated) in Cotto v. United Tech. Corp. that Connecticut’s free speech statute applied to speech made at an employer’s premises.
Continue Reading Calling President An Idiot May Be Protected Speech (But Maybe Not)
Update August 16th: Late yesterday, I received further confirmation that the provisions regarding FMLA were withdrawn entirely from the proposed Democrat-led budget bill. Moreover, the General Assembly early this morning voted on a Republican version of the budget implementer, which now goes on to Governor Malloy (who has indicated he will veto the bill). That
If you’ve ever tried a case in federal or state court, you know that picking a “jury of your peers” is often a challenge for all. Sometimes, otherwise qualified prospective jurors say that they have conflicts with their schedules, while others are all too happy to feel like they are participating in a Law &
Yesterday, I made a spectacular dive.
Unfortunately, it was not in a pool. It was in the middle of the street.
But it’s what happened AFTER that unfortunate fall, that I find most compelling.
Let me first say, however, that I’m FINE. Really, I’m fine. I’ve said that over and over the last 24 hours
For those unfamiliar with the way a lot of Connecticut laws get implemented, October 1st could seem like just another day. (Though for my kids, they would be impressed that it was a different October 1st in 1982 that EPCOT opened at Disney World.)
But a lot of bills that are passed by the Connecticut General Assembly go into effect on October 1st each year. This year is no exception.
For employers, the biggest of these bills is the new law concerning “Pregnant Women in the Workplace”. I’ve previously recapped the law for pregnant employees in a prior post way back in May, but because we’re getting close to implementation, it’s time for a little refresher.
Existing law makes it a discriminatory practice to:
Those rules remain unchanged. But the new law revises some other provisions and adds more to the protections. Effective October 1st, it will now also be unlawful to:
The changes don’t stop there. The new law also explains that the word “pregnancy” will also include “pregnancy, childbirth or a related condition, including but not limited to, lactation”. It also expands the definition of “reasonable accommodation ” and “undue hardship”.
Continue Reading Two Weeks Until New Protections for Pregnant Employees Become Effective
A lot has been made of the recent district court decision on legal job protections for qualifying medical marijuana patients.
But the decision has another piece that has been overlooked and which may cause employers some heartburn as well.
The “Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress” cause of action has been on life support for
There’s an old(?) Bonnie Raitt song that my parents used to listen to when I was in college called “Let’s Give Them Something to Talk About”. It’s about a crush, but the intro could be just as applicable to a new court decision. The lyrics start: “People are talkin’, talkin’ ’bout people, I hear
Labor Day has come and gone. Summer is over. Can we all stop listening to Despacito now. (Please?)
But it’s time to look at a decision that came out during the dog days of summer that might have been overlooked. A recent federal district court case (Noffsinger v. SSN Niantic Operating Co. LLC, download
A federal district court in Texas yesterday struck down (once and for all?) the changes to the overtime rules proposed by the Obama Administration. Previously, those rules (affecting the white collar exemptions) had been stayed, but the Court’s ruling suggests that there is a fatal