Category: Florida BAR article

This is a legal case where a student sued their school for not providing accommodations for their disability. The court ruled in favor of the student and said the school had to make changes to help them. In Florida, if an employee gets hurt on the job, they can’t sue their employer for negligence. But…

Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act has been around for almost 40 years and has been the subject of many court cases. A recent Supreme Court decision called Desert Palace, Inc. v. Costa has changed the way discrimination in the workplace is proven. Before this, the Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins case set out…

Circle 9 Corporation installed new hand scanners for keeping track of employee time and attendance. A worker, Ali Ghieri, who is an Evangelical Christian, asked to keep using paper timesheets because she believes the hand scanners go against her religious beliefs. The company refused her request but allowed another employee who is missing fingers to…

Laws like the ADA and the FCRA make it illegal for employers to discriminate against people based on things like their age or disability. These laws use the phrase “because of” to show that discrimination was a significant factor in the employer’s decision. Similar laws at the federal and state level have the same purpose…

In 2012, the U.S. added about 151,000 jobs each month, which means a lot of new employees had to prove they could work legally. This can be complicated and if done wrong, employers can get in trouble. OCAHO is a group that deals with cases where employers didn’t follow the rules. If ICE thinks an…

There were a lot of lawsuits about wages and hours under a law called the Fair Labor Standards Act. The number of cases went way up because the law says that the winning side gets their lawyer fees paid, it’s strict about following the rules, and it lets one employee sue for a group of…

In Florida, employment discrimination laws protect workers from being treated unfairly because of their sex, but there is a debate about whether this includes protections for pregnant women. Federal law specifically prohibits discrimination based on pregnancy, but Florida’s law does not. This has led to a disagreement among courts about whether women can sue for…

The law is struggling to keep up with technology and social media. The things we do and say online are always there, and it’s harder to keep our private lives private. This was a concern even over a hundred years ago, and it’s still a big issue today. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) was…

Technology has a big impact on the workplace. The internet, computers, and cell phones have changed the way we work. We can communicate more easily, access information quickly, and work from anywhere. Social media sites like LinkedIn help professionals connect and find jobs, while video-sharing sites like YouTube have lots of content for people to…

E-Verify is a program that helps employers check if their employees are allowed to work in the US. It was created in 1996 and is run by the US Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration. It started as a voluntary program but is becoming mandatory in some places. The director of the…

In 2000, the U.S. Census estimated that 12.4 percent of the U.S. population was 65 or older. Between 2010 and 2030, that number is expected to go up to 21.8 percent because of the retirement of the baby boom generation. With fewer jobs available and more people looking for work, older Americans may face discrimination…