Labor & Employment Developments Blog

There have been a couple of interesting developments this week in labor and employment law.  First, some may recall that I posted earlier this summer about the employment practice of refusing to consider the unemployed for open positions.  I mentioned at the time that a bill had been introduced, the Fair Employment Act of 2011 (H.R. 1113), that would amend Title VII to add “unemployment status” to the list of protected classes.  Employment Law Matters reports that the effort to pass such a law continues:

Those of you who follow such things have no doubt enjoyed the recent federal court decisions taking the EEOC to task for its “sue first, ask questions later” approach to class action litigation.  As one commentator has noted:

Perhaps the most notable of these recent cases is EEOC v. CRST Van Expedited, Inc., in which the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa dismissed a sexual harassment case filed by the EEOC on behalf of 67 women, and awarded CRST more than $4 million in attorneys’ fees. The district court, in finding the EEOC’s prosecution of the case to be frivolous, unreasonable and without foundation, sharply criticized the EEOC’s litigation strategy as one of “sue first, ask questions later.” Here, the district court found that the EEOC failed to investigate the specific allegations of the 67 class members until after the civil action was commenced. In fact, the EEOC had not interviewed any of the women who were supposedly sexually harassed and did not subpoena any documents to determine if the allegations were true. Before filing suit, the EEOC also did not identify any of the 67 female class members and did not attempt to conciliate the allegations of those women. In the end, the district court found that the EEOC had not complied with its own administrative requirements and dismissed the case due to the jurisdictional defects. 

As some readers may have noticed, I have been on a brief hiatus from blogging.  This was primarily due to my real job, practicing labor and employment law, and a much needed vacation.  I am back now and offer you some interesting reading that I came across recently: